chau chi

Educator/Teacher

I was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh city –the most densely populated and prosperous city in Vietnam. Due to the rapid international adaptation, I have realized that learning and mastering a foreign language, especially English, is essential from my early childhood. Having realized that, I have been trying my best to pursue my passion for English. Unlike other English learners, my English learning path has been very intriguing and not tedious because of my inspiring teachers who always strive to discover and apply novel teaching approaches. Having seen the extent to which students were affected by monotonous lessons and taking inspiration from my teachers, I have enthusiastically decided my profession must be an English teacher. I want to change people’s misconceptions that English was tough and prove that it will be downright helpful for the betterment of their future. I am currently a junior at Ho Chi Minh University of Pedagogy, majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. My short-term teaching purpose is to provide comprehensive English knowledge to apply it to their life fluently. However, an English teacher is also responsible for inspiring students and show what is useful for students down the road. This engenders my long-term teaching goal is to enhance students’ learning autonomy. Hence, they will not stop learning and remain passionate about English.

In terms of my teaching style, I have learned many teaching approaches but the Communicative Approach (1980) appeals to me the most. It is probably because this approach makes learning English an exciting process, and students can apply what they have learned to daily life. It is necessary to teach all four skills for students since teaching vocabulary and grammar is tedious and inapplicable to students who want to use English effectively in daily conversations. I have taught high school students for two years since I was a freshman; using CLT made my students more responsive and engaged in my lesson compared to the Grammar Translation Method. When it comes to adult students, grammar exercises and multiple-choice questions seem useless, so the teacher must be creative and passionate to comprehensively provide what their learners need or relevant to their professions. I often employ the P-P-P cycle: Presentation, Practice and Production. Furthermore, genuinely communicative activities (in Johnson and Morrow 1981), which contain information gap, choice and feedback, have been employed effectively in my former lessons. More notably, the authentic materials, including articles, novel extracts, songs, film reviews, really pique my students’ interest because these materials are close to them. Lastly, the Communicative Approach allows teachers to use the first language judiciously, which will make meanings more comprehensible for elementary students.

Entrance Tests Compiling, Lesson Planning, Motivating Students