This week we focused on professional development and different ways in which teachers can develop professionally.
In his presentation Brian was able to bring up and get the class to brainstorm many issues concerning professional development, among which attending conferences seemed to be the most catchy and popular one.
Concerning professional conferences, i myself attended a workshop at my home university held by an organization named Teachers helping Teachers (THT) in conjunction with the Japanese Association of Language Teaching (JALT), in which experienced English teachers from Europe, North America, Australia, South America, and Asia come to give presentations to English teachers at developing countries such as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Even though i attended the conferences as a student-teacher, i could see they were really helpful for our in-service teachers who do not always have an opportunity to be exposed to new changes and ideas in the language teaching world. Also, considering the fact that in many countries in Asia teaching is an honorable yet not economically wealthy career and teachers very often have a lot more to worry about outside the classroom apart from their teaching, conferences and lectures are good chances for them to immerse themselves in a highly integrative and professional atmosphere and talk and share ideas and experiences with each other, as well as motivate them to never stop learning and enriching their professional abilities.
Also, in my opinion, to non-native English speaking teachers, studying/going abroad to get to know more about the language and the culture they are teaching is a fruitful way to develop professionally, since however well a teacher is trained to teach a foreign language, it's always useful that he is able to get first-hand experience in using the language himself. Bearing this in mind, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has set a goal to send 2/3 of our English teachers to English speaking countries to study/ do research and enhance their abilities by 2020. Even though this is not easy concerning our economic situation, i greatly hope this goal will be met within the time prospected.
The next part of brainstorming all the questions we might have about various issues in language teaching and learning and writing them down was practical and useful in many way. My group came up with quite a few of them and decided to focus on the use of podcast in language teaching. It was interesting and at the same time challenging to create a detailed plan on how to carry out the research after that.
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4 comments:
I agree going to somewhere where they speak the lnaguage that you are teaching can be a great help to understnding culture and how the language is used in daily life.
I often thin that a teaching team of a NS and a NNS would be a good combination in a classroom - the best of both worlds.
Oops! I did not proof before I posted. Sorry!
That's interesting that the Vietnamese government has that goal for its English teachers. Do you know of any other countries that are currently doing this? I agree that by being able to immerse yourself in any foreign language you will definitely be more capable of teaching it to your future students.
I agree with Aaron that it's interesting that the Vietnamese government has goal for their english teachers. I think that one of the best way to learn any language is to be around the langauge as much as possible; for example, going aboard or being an exchange student. These experiences will not only get the language in which you are learning better but a better overview of the whole culture itself! Wouldn't you agree?
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