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Margaret and Peter Fisher write...

...about their experiences while volunteering in the Vietnam University program.

Quynh at Duy Tan University was extremely caring and diligent in taking care of us. Not only were all of the organisational arrangements well managed, but his personal concern and care of us were heartwarming and contributed enormously to our enjoyment of our time at the university. We found our students enormously receptive to what we had to teach them and very keen to learn. The friendliness of the people and their preparedness to allow us to share their lives was an overwhelming impression.

We taught three classes:

Research Methodology in English for two classes of second year students
Job preparation skills for three classes of fourth (final year) students
A course in Business Communication in English which was offered as an evening class to people from the Da Nang community

We put in a solid effort both to develop the curriculum for each of those subjects, and to present them. We are not practising teachers - both Peter and I are half way through graduate qualifications in teaching English as a second language - so are not experienced either in curriculum design or presenting classes. That being said, I believe that we did well in each of the classes we presented. We have almost 60 years' experience between us in public administration and management so our skills are well suited to the subjects we taught. In that sense, the requirements of preparing the curriculum were not overly daunting.

We loved being in the classroom with the students. We both have a strong commitment to maximising the learning for all of the students and we genuinely put in a solid effort to achieving that. We enjoyed particularly working together and felt that there was a lot of benefit to be gained by the students from having us work together in the classroom. The classes of second year students, for example, comprised 120 and 80 students respectively. We incorporated a lot of group work in our teaching, and this would have been impossible for one person to manage in such large classes. There was benefit also, given that these students had not experienced native English-speaking teachers before, to be exposed to the speaking and teaching styles of two people. Also, given that the assignment was challenging, the two of us were able to be mutually supportive in working our way through preparation and delivery of the lessons. We feel as if we had about five years' teaching experience in just one month. Our time at the university represented a quantum leap in our abilities. We thoroughly recommend that any aspiring TESOL teachers leap at taking on a similar opportunity. For us, the key lesson was that it is absolutely essential to be flexible!!!

The living conditions were just fabulous. Our house was very comfortable, and the cook we had was excellent. A particularly nice aspect was to be in a shared house with other volunteers. The other volunteer who spent most time in the house with us has become a friend. We found that we went out infrequently at night because we spent long nights over the dinner table with Richard enjoying good food, indifferent wine (but hey!!) and extremely good conversation. We just loved having the bicycles available for travel around the city. Peter and I would love to return to Duy Tan university for a further teaching period next year.