Job Discussion Forums

[TawtViet]

I am working as an AET in Japan at 2 JHS. I also teach some adults. It seems the Japanese are neither creative nor indepedent thinkers which can drive a a Westerner crazy as well as impede English learning greatly. Are the Vietnamese any different?

[Mr Wind-up Bird]

The Vietnamese government doesn't seem to encourage independent, creative thought...however the Vietnamese are naturally quite artistic & creative. But generally they're mostly interested in anything that can help them make money, so you're more likely to end up teaching business English than helping them get to grips with Shakespeare or write their own stories. I think this applies to Asia in general, not just VN.

[Twisting in the Wind]

The Vietnamese students I have had in the Los Angeles area were good, serious students. Their main problem was PRONUNCIATION, PRONUNCIATION, PRONUNCIATION. Because their language is so tonal they seem to want to impose this tonality on English, as well, causing them to make English unecessarily difficult for them to learn and giving them a very difficult-to-understand accent.

You will have to drill, drill, drill them in proper pronunciation. I suggest you get a book on minimal pairs or some papers on tongue twisters esp. for Vietnamese before you go. There's a good book on pronunciation that you might be able to find on Amazon. I wish I could remember the name of it. It goes country by country and tells the letters and sounds in English that give problems for that country's speakers.

[Twisting in the Wind]

The book is called Pronunciation Contrasts in English and is one of the best books I've used on pronunciation because it goes country by country giving problematic areas for each country's language learners. It is available on Amazon.

[liehtzu]

Like most places in Asia, the Vietnamese education system is very rigid and there isn't much room for thinking outside the box. I don't find that there's a whole lot of "creative and independent thinking" where I am. However, the students are much sharper in Vietnam than a lot of other places and are generally much better educated than, say, the Thais. Pronunciation is the worst I've encountered anywhere and, as others have pointed out, that is the primary obstacle to overcome as a teacher. You'll find you often have to ask them to spell things out.

[OzBurn]

The Vietnamese school system does everything it can to destroy creativity, critical thinking, or independence. I have asked many students of mine about their experience in school. They universally agree that the student never asks a question, never discusses anything, never disagrees with the teacher -- the student's job is to absorb what the teacher says, then regurgitate it. This goes through the college level. I have watched college classes, and the students never do anything but listen to the teacher lecture; they sometimes take notes (sometimes read, sometimes play with their cell phones, etc.).

Vietnamese "university" begins with a week or so of communist lecturing -- a fat fool of a commissar sits on stage in his green swaggering uniform and rants at the students about their responsibilities to the state and I suppose Lenin, Marx, and Uncle Ho. As far as I can tell, having viewed several of these degrading scenes, almost nobody listens. But this system, in the end, takes its toll. It is very hard to get Vietnamese students to break out of their prescribed submissive role in relation to the teacher, although they can be quite lively in pair or group work.

The Vietnamese teachers tend to relate all the students' problems in open discussion (and in acquiring oral English, in general) to their "shyness," although having seen the students gambol, argue, sport, joke, and tease in the halls, it is hard for me to stomach this explanation.

Vietnam is a lovely country, in general, with wonderful people, but unfortunately the government and school system is authoritarian and hierarchical in the extreme.