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Welcome to the 12th edition of English Now. We hope you liked the ‘new look’ pages and features of the last issue and that this issue continues to provide you with ideas and tips to refresh and stimulate even the most jaded among you! Since the last publication there have been many VTTN activities, the biggest being the 3rd National VTTN Conference in Hanoi in December 2005. You can read all about it in this issue. And for those of you who didn’t get a chance to attend the conference, we have uploaded some of the presentations and workshops onto our website for you to access. March this year saw another round of VTTN provincial workshops. Feedback from these was extremely positive and you all felt that you came away from the workshops with some practical ideas for your classroom and with new methodology to digest and implement. In this issue we have included a lot of the ideas and activities from these workshops on “Promoting Written Work”. There are tips on how to make your writing lessons fun, notes about process writing, example writing lessons taken from the new Tieng Anh 10 textbook, creative ideas and activities, and guidelines for correcting written work.
Other features in this issue include
VTTN News,
Dear
Language Doctor
and the regular
Primary VTTN
slot.
This season we have concentrated on story telling in
the primary class as we were all so inspired by the UK
storyteller Cassandra Wye during her visit to Hanoi and
Saigon in April.
Finally, I’d like to share with you a story written by
Tran Thi Su from Soc Trang, which, in my mind, sums up the
constant struggle teachers have implementing change
in their schools.
She is one of the most enthusiastic participants in the
workshops and really tries hard to do as well as
possible. One morning, after carefully preparing a
language game the night before, she came to class
confident that this game was going to motivate her
students. She began with clear instructions and the
game started well…. Suddenly one of her colleagues
appeared in the doorway looking very aggressive. He
rudely complained that there was too much noise in her
class. Everything stopped. The class froze. She stood
still, her heart still singing, but a sad, slow song. She
heard the repeated saying of the parents of her
students, “ our children need to pass the final exam –
we should not expect anything new”.
I see her at the workshops and she is still studious,
thoughtful and playful, but a light has gone out in her
eyes. I hope it comes back.
Thank you to
Bao Kham
and
Lam Son
for their endless efforts in putting this magazine together and to
all of you for your continued support and encouragement.
Laura
Grassick
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