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Problems for learners in vietnam?Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel? Socrates. It is a phrase that summarizes the education system in vietnam. For many students coming to school means coming from a vivid world into a place where information flows only in one direction; a place where you sit and listen. This could probably due to a couple of reasons. The main culprit is culture. Traditionally, Vietnamese culture evolved from the chinese. The old chinese respect their teachers and will not utter a word of protest even when their teachers made mistakes. Likewise, this have be handed down from their descendents. It is especially true for the older generation where addressing another person as teacher is deemed as the highest respect. As such, the students will not protest even if they know their teachers have made a mistake or many mistakes. It is especially so in an ESL class where the local teacher pronounce inaccurately ? the children will have to assume that their teachers are correct and start the chain reaction of ?monkey see monkey do?. One of the rudiments of the problems lies in the exposure of the teachers. Teachers may have attended a proper class conducted by native teacher over a period of time. Without daily practices with English foreign speakers, over a period of time whatever residue left in their memory will not be adequate to take on a more advanced ESL class. The Ministry now focuses the delivery of the ESL program for the primary school level thinking that a solid foundation for this group of young learners is adequate for the time being. However, without proper follow up into the upper level and beyond, this effort is only a temporarily solution. Teachers are unwilling to explore beyond the English text book although some braver one are turning to DIY English uploaded in U-tube. I once observed a local teacher delivering such a lesson and told the teacher that I have doubt on the spoken English of that particular video. The speaker delivering that particular lesson has a very strong Pilipino accent and some of the pronunciations seem strange. The replied that I obtained from the teacher was that ?he seems to be a native speaker?. The majority of the teachers use the school text books like a gospel ? whatever questions dished out to the students must be almost identical to the answers key found in the teacher guide. Fortunately, the text books used were from Oxford Press. As a result of refusing to venture out of the text books the teachers focused on grammar rules and depend on a wide choice of reliable materials on Q&A. Therefore, the students did not see the need to learn the language except for examination purposes. How many words a student can accumulated in his/her vocabularies bank depends on his/her memory size. How these vocabularies can be applied in their encountered with the language is not important. As such you may have a walking dictionary or thesaurus with absolute no knowledge of how to use them. The lack of opportunity to practice the language daily is another area that added to the problem. Teachers hardly have any opportunity to encounter a foreign speaker. Even if they have they would probably run away at the sight of them. This is mainly due to the lack of confident in using the language. They are afraid that the foreign speaker will mock at them for some local esl teachers can hardly formed 2 proper continuous sentences in their speech. If the teachers have that mental block, they will never be able to motivate their students to follow likewise. Credits must be given to the students especially the young learners. They are eager to into practice what they have learnt in class. They will normally run quickly to you and said ?How are you or I?m fine and you?? Whatever chant that they have learnt, they will try to use it without a second thought of loosing face. And if a foreign speaker cares to point out their mistakes, they will quickly learn it and asked you again in the corrected sentences. In summary, learners here are eager to learn but what is lacking are the opportunity for them to constantly engaged with qualified speakers to apply what they have learnt.
