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Saeeda Verrall writes...

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

I was teaching English speaking and English reading comprehension to a first year class, as well as one night class in conversation skills. I really enjoyed the whole teaching experience, the students were lovely and there was plenty of support from the foreign language school as well. I have never taught English before but it really wasn't a problem. I have had a little bit of prior teaching experience in other areas while I was at University, but I do not think experience is necessary if you are enthusiastic and have a reasonable amount of common sense.

I was fairly fortunate in that the reading and speaking courses I was teaching had set text books, so there wasn't a lot of planning required on my behalf. the big problem, as I saw it, was that these textbooks were often completely inappropriate for the Vietnamese way of life, and the topics would often be on issues so unfamiliar (i.e. "lets talk about air travel and our favorite countries to visit") that the students really struggled to even understand the questions let alone improve their contextual English. So after a while I became a lot more selective about which part of the textbooks I actually wanted to teach. Often I found the students were a lot more engaged and hence improved their vocal and understanding a lot more just from a discussion about current events etc rather than following the prescribed texts. in retrospect I think that if I had stayed any longer than a month I would have tried to re-vamp the teaching materials a lot more and perhaps design a lot more of my own tasks. I would recommend to any new volunteer coming over that it is worth having a think about some teaching materials/ techniques before you come over, because even though there are set texts -sometimes they are best ignored!

The University was exceptionally good to work with - both the foreign language department who we taught for, and the office of international affairs that looked after all our other matters. But again I would stress that coming from New Zealand I had very different preconceptions about what "organized" really meant. the people I worked for were very professional but that is not to say there was not a lot of uncertainty at times regarding what I would be teaching, when, etc. But again - it all works itself out in the end and you just need to go there with a flexible attitude. It was a really integral part of coming to appreciate another culture - learning that our western concepts of time and rigid structure don't necessarily mean a lot elsewhere!

A big advantage of being in the University program is that the University is full of people who want to meet you, show you around, get to know you etc.Both the office of international affairs and the foreign languages department have wonderful staff who are incredibly helpful and also genuinely really nice, fun people. They also tend to speak pretty good English (in the Vietnamese scheme of things) so if you do have questions or concerns it is pretty easy to ask someone about it. I thoroughly recommend volunteers to take any opportunity they can to get out and do things with the locals - during my stay there were no shortage of teachers and members of the international affairs office willing to show me around and let me gain some insights into "normal" Vietnamese life.