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FINAL ASSIGNMENT

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

My name is Vo Nguyen Thien Phuc. I am 23 years old and have been working as an English

teacher for over one year. I graduated from the university of Education (major in Teaching English as a

Foreign Language) in 2018. Now I am working in the Ho Chi Minh College of Economics, teaching the

syllabus of Life Elementary for non-major freshmen students. The level of those students’ proficiency

ranges from A1 to A2, since they paid mostly no attention to English during their high school’s time.

They only attend the class because they are afraid of losing marks for their class attendance and they

show an attitude of indifference in learning English.

PROMOTING LEARNER AUTONOMY

As the development of teaching goes on, there has been a significant shift in teaching from

merely conveying the knowledge to teaching the learner “learning to learn”. In other words, teachers

now become coaches or trainers in aiding learner to become autonomous, which means that learners

“should feel responsible for their own learning and for the learning of those with whom they interact.”

(Farrell & Jacobs, 2010). In fact, the theories of learning autonomy enquire teachers to understand our

learners’ backgrounds/ interests and integrate them into lesson design. However, from my experience, I

cannot have enough time to understand all of the interests of learners, and I can just apply generally and

partly the theory by integrating some hot trends/ issues within the teenagers that I believe they may be

mostly interested in, and incorporating songs and videos as a way to encourage the enjoyment of the

learning process, and try to vary the learning activities to meet learners’ multiple intelligences.

Nevertheless, I cannot choose songs/ videos based on only the learner’s interests, because they should

serve my teaching purposes of the syllabus and assure the contents, and sometimes they also distract the
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learning process and cause the class to be out of control. In addition, I oblige my learners to make a

presentation as an effort for them to take more control of their learning, in a way that they can look for

the information in the internet by themselves and have more freedom to choose the content on which

they will present. Then, I will give them some feedback based on their presentation’s performation so

that the learners realize which language aspects they need to improve.

I believe that if I had more freedom to decide the assessment method and teaching syllabus

based on learners’ interests, my students will benefit more and be more responsible for their learning,

instead of being forced to learn some knowledge that are too boring or abstract and focusing on mainly

summative tests. Therefore, from my point of view, since testing affects teaching and learning, if I have

more freedom in assessing my students, the theories and techniques of learner autonomy can be applied

completely and bring about ultimate effects, or else I can just partially enhance my students’ learning

autonomy and it seems not to have many effects on my learners as I observed.

PROMOTING SOCIAL INTERACTION

As cited in Mai & Ngoc & Tuan (2013), Ellis (2005) claimed that social interaction is

considered “the matrix in which acquisition takes place”. This means that conversation or

communication is not an end of learning, but also an occasion or a tool for students to learn and create

their own path of learning (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Teacher can enhance social interaction by

organizing group work activities, providing feedback or set up opportunities for students to interact

with native speakers, and creating positive and supportive learning environment, in which the learners

have chances to express themselves and learn from each other through the negotiation of meaning.

Regarding group work activities, they are good means of developing collaborating skill among

the language learners. However, since my learners’ level of proficiency is just pre-intermediate, I must
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accept the interfering use of L1 to ensure that their ideas are conveyed thoroughly. Besides, I do not

leave them to work in the same group all the time, but provide them a wide range of chances to work

with different partners with various personalities. Such chances can help them to learn how to handle

the relationship and solve some conflicts that may arise during the group work activitities.

In addition, providing feedback as a method to promoting social interaction is no longer the role

that I should take full responsibility of or should be taken place inside the classroom. I allow my

students to contact me through social networks whenever they encounter any problems or seek for my

advice for their language learning. Besides, I also assign more roles to my students where they can be

the feedback provider of their peers’ performance, which can help the learners to practice their critical

thinking and logical reasoning when reaching a conclusion. Moreover, as I have just mentioned above,

communicating with native speakers is another way for learners to acquire the knowledge through

authentic conversation. Nevertheless, from my teaching experience, finding native speakers for public

schools is very problematic and costly; thus, as a teacher, I think using authentic videos is an acceptable

alternative although it is less interactive than real native speakers. With pre-intermediate learners, if

they have some opportunities to interact with foreigners in class, teachers should play the role of

cultural mediator and translator as well. In fact, there were once two voluntary foreign students coming

to my class to support my students learning English, at which I realized those two additional roles of

the teachers when my students got stuck with their expressing the ideas or asked some personal

information which should be avoided in intercultural communication, although the students were really

excited and motivated to interact with native speakers.

Last but not least, creating a friendly and positive learning environment is of ultimate

importance to foster not only social interaction but also learner autonomy, but teacher should play the

role model first in sharing with the learners some problems or advices in learning a foreign language,
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because the learners usually insist on the fact that language teachers demonstrate reliability and

understanding in advance. This will help them be more open-minded to rise their voices, speak out their

thoughts, and their problems. Thus, we can supply them with some praise, encouragement, and even

appropriate strategies to overcome the matters and to some extent, at the same time, we are setting up

the attitude of self-studying in the learners with the strategies they have been provided.

REFERENCES

Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. System, 33 (2), 209-224.

Farrell, T. S. C., & Jacobs, G. M. (2010). Essentials for Successful English Language Teaching.

Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Beyond methods: macro strategies for language teaching. New Delhi :

Orient Longman.

Mai, L. H., Ngoc, L. T. B., & Tuan, L. T. (2013). Teaching English through Principles of Instructed

Language Learning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(4). doi: 10.4304/tpls.3.4.605-

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