Workshop on “Increasing confidence: Speaking practice for real life and developing effective skills for IELTS tasks”

Hà Nội, 11^th July 2012 - The English Faculty of the DAV organised a workshop on “Increasing confidence: Speaking practice for real life and developing effective skills for IELTS tasks”. The workshop drew attention Vietnamese lecturers and foreign teachers.

Participants from the DAV were Mr. Nguyễn Đình Thao, Vice President; Ms. Nguyễn Thị Thìn, Head of Academic Training Department; Mr. Hoàng Văn Hanh, Dean of the English Faculty; Ms. Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Deputy-Dean of the English Faculty and lecturers from other language departments and centres of the DAV. The invited presenters were Mr. David Persey, Regional expert in English language of the National Geographic Learning, part of Engage Learning publisher and Mr. Richard Hallows, author of the course books entitled “IELTS Express”, together with the participation of Vietnamese lecturers and foreign teachers from other educational institutions in Hanoi.

Overview of the workshop

The workshop aimed at improving teaching quality for lecturers of English, creating opportunities for lecturers and those who are interested in teaching and learning English to exchange their experience, design curricula and investigate into how to better use technology in learning and teaching English, especially to develop language skills effectively, such as skills for learning and teaching IELTS.

Mr. David Persey presented approaches in increasing confidence: Speaking practice for real life

The workshop showed some ideas of how to exploit and extend speaking tasks so that students can leave a class with confidence that they are able to use new language effectively. During the teaching process, lecturers can look at how the use of technology can increase student autonomy and, through this, increase students’ confidence to use English in real life situations. As a regional expert in English language, Mr. David Persey, presented different approaches that made the atmosphere of the workshop exciting, especially the practical questions and responses. These approaches helped make students become more confident in using English in everyday life.

The workshop also showed how to develop effective skills for IELTS tasks presented by Richard Hallows, author of a series of course books namely “IELTS Express”. In teaching skills for IELTS, lecturers need to firstly identify the underlying skills that are being targeted by the task, and devise ways to practice these skills accordingly. In this practical talk, Mr. Richard Hallows presented various ways to do this by using examples from the “IELTS Express” series. His presentation of the most effective ways helped make participants easily understand and precisely perceive their concerns.

The workshop was exciting to not only participants but also presenters. It was also an approach for teaching and learning English within the DAV as well as increasing students’ confidence in using English in real life practice. Hopefully, there will be more workshops like this in the coming time, thus lecturers can further improve their ability to use English language in teaching.