HCM City (VNS/VNA) - International and local English lecturers have discussed teaching methodologies during a recent outline conferenceas the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted teachers’ traditionalface-to-face classrooms and shifted into e-learning settings.

Dr Ho Thi Quynh Nhu of Hue Industrial College said that adjusting thecurricula to sustain the quality of teaching and learning becomes an urgentneed in most countries.

Lecturer Nguyen Cam Nhung at the University of Languages and InternationalStudies under Vietnam National University in Hanoi said that there were anumber of challenges that teachers encountered in adapting to remote teaching,such as technological issues, classroom management, and material adaptation.

This was revealed from her study aimed at shedding light on how Vietnameseteachers who teach English as a foreign language respond to remote teachingduring the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a study conducted by lecturers of Saigon UniversityVietnam and HCM City University of Technology and Education, manyuniversities in the city have invested to set up infrastructure for onlineeducation. To guarantee students to be able to track their learning along withonline classes, Learning Management System platforms are quickly brought intouse.

Nicky Hockly, director of Pedagogy at The Consultants-E, an onlinetraining and development organisation in the UK, said: “Althoughvideoconferencing platforms are easily accessible these days, it can bechallenging for teachers to engage and motivate students in live onlineclasses.”

In her presentation, Hockly spoke about how to create live online tasks,key online teaching skills, and engaging online classes. 

Prof. Yilin Sun, who directs faculty development programmes at SeattleCollege in the US said: “Our life and work as TESOL (teachingEnglish to speakers of other languages) educators have changedsignificantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we cope with the many pandemicdisruptions and fight against Coronavirus fatigue, educators must buildconfidence, skill and strategies to face new challenges and continue ouractions and innovations to be successful in the new realities that define ourprofessional and social lives.”

She also shared practices and applicable strategies to help English languageteaching educators broaden their professional horizons and deepen theirunderstanding of essential teaching strategies and skills during challengingtimes.

The OpenTESOL International Conference series was established in 2012 by theFaculty of Foreign Languages and the Graduate School of HCM City Open University.

OpenTESOL is a conference for local and international professionals in thefield of foreign languages teaching and learning. It aims to establish aquality hub for sharing ideas of appropriate pedagogies in different teachingand learning contexts.

It has strengthened ties between the foreign language teaching communities inthe city and other provinces in Vietnam and connected local communities withinternational language education institutions or associations.  

State-of-the-art research into language and language education was alsopresented at OpenTESOL./.