Teaching practice is one of the most important components of the teacher training program since it provides an opportunity for student teachers to put their theoretical knowledge into practice and facilitate the transition from teacher-student to the teacher. At the same time, the teaching practice assignment gives the teachers training institutions an opportunity to evaluate the students teaching capabilities. For years, students of Faculty of Foreign languages, University of Technology and Education has practised their teaching in their own university. Yet this year, 2019, the first batch of 10 English Language Teaching majored students had their teaching practicum in Johor Bahru, Malaysia in a joint program between Faculty of Foreign Languages, UTE and Faculty of Social Science and Humanity, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
As Brown and Brown (1990) claimed, teaching practice provides students with a range of benefits including:
- An opportunity to gain confidence.
- Chance to put theories into practice.
- An opportunity to learn the skills and attitudes of a competent and effective teacher.
- The chance to learn about children in real life.
- An opportunity to improve the knowledge of the subject matter.
- The chance to gain from the benefits of constructive criticism.
- An opportunity for self-evaluation and to discover strengths and weaknesses.
- An opportunity for the teaching institutions to evaluate itself.
Obviously, these aforementioned benefits for both the teacher trainees and institution are observed and recognized in this batch of students. What worth mentioning here are the obstacles as well as fruits yielded during this abroad practicum. Teaching in a new context where English is spoken as an official language such as in Malaysia was a real challenge for students for two reasons. The first issue was the foreign teaching environment. Teaching English to Malaysian students without knowing their native language means that the trainees had to use English completely to get their messages across. To make the matter worse, they were only familiar with listening to standard English on media but not regional accents, especially Malaysian's one. Consequently, they had difficulties in communicating. After the trip, the trainees realized that their conversational skills, flexibility and alertness were weak and they need to improve these skills to facilitate themselves in conversations and teaching. Also, teacher trainees are also overwhelmed by the level of English of the local students despite the fact that they did some research about English being used as an official language in Malaysia. Yet, teaching these students was a chance for them to gain valuable and unique experience as well as be inspired to perfect their English.
The teaching practicum in Malaysia was also a platform for students to showcase their pedagogical skills as well as their confidence and national pride. Being in UTM and in Malaysia, they represented not just FFL and UTE but also a facet of Vietnamese students. They revealed that through the experience and time spent in Malaysia, they had given a 200% effort to make their families, friends, lecturers and most importantly themselves, proud. Hard work was paid off in the end when their students, mentors and supervisors acknowledged their effort. Those photoshoot requests and bags of goodies and cards of good wishes were the solid proof for their accomplishment. Another gain after the trip was that teacher trainees nurtured the love of teaching as receiving the warm welcome, love and support from their Malaysian mentors and students.
The teaching Practicum was also a chance for cultural exchange. Coincidently, students were lucky enough to be invited to participate in a cultural corner which was being held at the time of their arrivals with students from over 30 countries and enlarged their networks. During their stay, making friends with their Malaysian, Chinese background Malaysians or Indian background Malaysians was an eye-opening experience that eliminates their prejudice against the locals.
Anyone who has ever lived abroad will surely agree that getting used to the food or weather of the new country is never a pleasant experience at first. Due to close proximity to the equator, the weather is quite hot in Malaysia - hotter than in Vietnam - despite its having large areas of green. To the Vietnamese students, food of the Indian in Malaysia and their way of eating food is bizarre. However, it turned out to be a chance for them to practise their cooking and life skills since they had to prepare food and do house chores themselves.
Obviously, despite ups and downs, this year Practicum in Malaysia has brought about the valuable lessons and experiences to the teacher trainees and the institutions as well. From the administration perspective, probably FFL of UTE is not the first institution in Vietnam to offer such kind of program for their students yet this cooperation is an encouraging sign for both the Faculty and University since their images were brought closer to other regional institutions, starting with UTM.
For future programs to yield even greater success, it is suggested that more proper planning for teaching practice should be made before its commencement such as accommodation, the orientation of culture differences, detailed evaluation and assessment, information about the rules and regulations of the practising schools as well as the coordination between the schools and the two Universities. Despite its own limits, the success is undeniable since students in the program admit that they would recommend this to other juniors to join in the upcoming year.
Reference
Brown, D.P. and R.N.Brown, (1990). Effective Teaching Practice. Lechhampton, Cheltenham: Thornes Publishers Ltd
By: Le Mai Hien Trang, MA
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