Teaching also requires strategy.

More than 100 new English teachers and recent graduates who want to start their English teaching careers attended the workshop "Teaching How to Learn: Strategies for Early-Career" yesterday afternoon, August 6, at The American Center (District 1, Ho Chi Minh City).

Mr. Hoang Minh Thong, a masterof education , a speaker at the workshop, mentioned the reality that many English teachers and new graduates, despite having impressive degrees and foreign language certificates, still struggle to know where and how to teach their students. As someone who has spent 15 years on the journey of "growing people", Mr. Hoang Minh Thong emphasized: "This is obvious because finding a method to teach English effectively is not a journey that can be done in a day or two, but requires constant research and learning".

Mr. Hoang Minh Thong emphasizes the importance of the professional qualifications of the teacher because it is a necessary condition. However, the sufficient condition to satisfy the learner is the teaching method, intuitive and easy-to-understand explanations from the teacher.

"It could be symbols, ways to highlight key words for students to remember the lesson, or illustrations... Teaching in the past could only be done orally, but why not take advantage of today's modern technology to make the lecture more interesting?", Mr. Hoang Minh Thong asked.

Mr. Hoang Minh Thong shared that the first step in teaching is to analyze the characteristics of the students he is teaching. "Teaching requires strategies and tactics because there will be different types of students with different goals. It is impossible to teach children the same way as teaching adults," Mr. Minh Thong explained.

Next, Mr. Thong pointed out diagrams of the principles of knowledge acquisition by learners from scientific research reports combined with his own experience. The process of knowledge acquisition begins with signals from the recipient's senses such as "seeing", "hearing", "smelling", etc. to "short-term memory". However, over time and the impact of external factors, a small amount of knowledge is forgotten. To overcome this, creating interactive activities such as minigames, dancing, etc. will help recall important details throughout the lesson, helping to optimize the amount of knowledge of learners in "long-term memory".

Meaningful activities

Nguyen Ngoc Tuong Lam (teaching assistant at BRIS - Blue Ridge International School) has been organizing classes for children for 2 months and thinks that participating in the workshop was the right decision.

"After the workshop, my eyes were opened and I accumulated creative and professional teaching directions. I hope there will be more similar events to help solve the concerns of those who are new to teaching English like me," said Tuong Lam.

Doan Minh Huy has been an English teaching assistant since his first year of university and is now an IELTS teacher at Ho Thanh Center. He said that through this training session, he realized that he still has many skills to improve. "Sometimes people with teaching experience get stuck in a rut and are no longer creative in their teaching methods. I was surprised by the useful sharing from Mr. Minh Thong and his colleagues and friends," Huy said.

The workshop "Teaching how to learn - training for inexperienced English teachers", free for participants, is organized by The Learning Puzzle in cooperation with The Regional English Language Office (RELO) with the desire to motivate and inspire work and study; provide more useful knowledge in teaching English. The Learning Puzzle project was initiated by a group of 7 English teachers.