Where first graders learn English for the first time

Bringing English to children in mountainous areas

In mid-December, we arrived at Khao Mang Primary Boarding School (Mu Cang Chai District) right at English class time. As soon as we entered the hallway, we heard the bustling classroom atmosphere, the teacher asking questions, the students excitedly answering…

Students of Mao Khang Primary Boarding School are excited during an online English class.

Entering the classroom, the English teacher was actually on a "small screen" hanging on the board, with the support of a teacher who taught math and Vietnamese every day. However, the students did not feel distant or bored. The teacher "on TV" still organized games and activities, and the way the students followed her instructions and answered questions was not much different from a live class.

This is one of 117 classes with nearly 3,600 students at 16 primary schools in Mu Cang Chai district learning English since January 10. The main teacher in Hanoi teaches online via the Zoom application and digital lectures to all connection points throughout Mu Cang Chai district, where co-teachers who are local teachers will guide students to learn with just one action:... pressing a button.

This is an activity of iSMART's iLINK Project under EQuest Education Group, carried out in one of the most difficult areas in the country in terms of education, in which the problem of lack of English teachers emerged. The project lasts 5 years and is completely free.

In a conversation with Thanh Nien reporters about the introduction of English into teaching, when asked when students started learning English, Ms. Pham Thi Minh Hang, Principal of Khao Mang Primary Boarding School, said that since last school year, students from grade 1 here have only known about English. Before that, because there were no teachers, although it was an elective subject in primary schools, the school could not organize for students to choose to learn English.

Because the school has never taught English before, according to Ms. Hang, when initially approaching this project, although it was completely free and committed to support for 5 years, the school still had many concerns.

According to the requirements of this model, each class must have a co-teacher to provide on-site technical support. Because most of the teachers themselves do not know English and are not yet proficient in technology, they are afraid of instructing students to do things wrong.

However, Ms. Hang said that through the training sessions, 10 co-teachers can use basic software and interact with students. Teachers also have access to new educational models in teaching and learning as well as digital transformation models in English teaching methods.

Students of Mao Khang Primary Boarding School attentively follow the teacher's instructions at the Hanoi bridge point.

Ms. Hang shared her joy: "Over the past year, what we have seen most clearly is that the children are very excited, looking forward to English lessons, interacting better and better with teachers and other connecting points in game activities and choosing the team that answers the fastest and most correctly.

The brightest point for students after 1 year is that they have recognized vocabulary in both written and visual form, especially many children have been able to listen and understand simple English words and sentences through games and group activities.

New direction in "seemingly deadlocked difficulties"

Mr. Nguyen Anh Thuy, Head of the Department of Education and Training of Mu Cang Chai District, shared: " Currently, the whole district only has 1 English teacher on the payroll at the primary level. Every year, teachers are recruited for this subject but there are no applicants. There are difficult times when it seems like a deadlock."

"However, thanks to two phrases that I really like, one is "flexible adaptation" and the other is "online combined with direct", the time of responding to the Covid-19 epidemic has helped us open up a new way of doing things. Because there were almost no teachers, the leaders of the Department of Education and Training had to look for every solution and luckily had the "chance" to approach and receive systematic support from this project after receiving very quick approval from the Department of Education and Training of Yen Bai and the People's Committee of Mu Cang Chai District", Mr. Thuy said.

For online learning, the District People's Committee and some charity funds invest in fully equipped classrooms, with at least a TV, screen, camera and internet connection to each class.

In the 2022-2023 school year, the project will be implemented for all 117 classes with about 3,600 students. In the 2023-2024 school year, it is being implemented for 114 classes with more than 3,900 students in grades 2 and 4. Before each semester, the project management board inspects and trains new teachers and implements new content and new models related to the design lesson. This is one of the models that contributes to solving the problem of teacher shortage.

Online English lessons with the support of co-teachers at Mo De Primary Boarding School (Mu Cang Chai District)

According to Mr. Thuy, by the end of the last school year, the initial assessment results were considered to have exceeded expectations. Although they were all ethnic minority students and were naturally shy, thanks to the intuitive and lively lesson design, many forms of learning through games and cartoon characters, the students were very excited, willing to interact and wanted to come to English class to learn.

Mr. Thuy also frankly said that up to this point, difficulties still exist, because co-teachers at schools do not have a major in teaching English but have the duty to support during English classes, so confusion is inevitable.

Therefore, teachers have to spend a lot of time investing in learning English. But thanks to overcoming these difficulties, now and in the future, there will certainly be many teachers who can learn English with their students.

Mr. Hoang Dinh Que, Director of iLINK Project, said: "To operate all the programs that everyone sees, the team of more than 20 teachers always researches to optimize each lesson, how to best suit the students in the highlands who have never been exposed to English, how to make teachers who do not know English but can easily manage the class, interact with students, and evaluate the effectiveness"...

The Head of the Department of Education and Training of Mu Cang Chai District shared: "Mu Cang Chai has almost no industrial development but is developing smokeless industry, green industry, and tourism industry, so the issue of English for the people is one of the very necessary issues. We hope that in the future, nearly 3,700 students studying this program will be a large source of English human resources for the district.

That is also one of the things that people want and expect about the long-term effectiveness of this project. The 5-year project is a great motivation and encouragement, a quite effective solution to overcome difficulties for education in mountainous areas, especially for English."

According to information from EQuest Group, the implementation of this model in Mu Cang Chai district has brought impressive results. In the 2022-2023 school year, 3,691 students participated, including 1,827 grade 1 students and 1,864 from grade 3, along with 146 co-teachers in Mu Cang Chai. 2,564 students completed the English science program, accounting for 69.6% of the participating students, while 2,853 students (77.6%) successfully completed the English math program.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/o-noi-lan-dau-hoc-sinh-tu-lop-1-duoc-hoc-tieng-anh-185231218204654782.htm