Although I have been teaching English for years and gained much hands-on experience from the job, the practicum in Nha Trang awakened me that there is still room for me to discover and develop my career. It was an occasion for me to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself in a new teaching context. This experience provoked me to reflect and remedy the skills and knowledge that I had neglected due to personal frustration and interest. Tackling these weaknesses enables me to be more confident, skillful and versatile and to have more occupational opportunities. Not only professional skills, the trip also helped me to polish my soft skills in communication, team working as well as project management since most of the tasks were required to perform in groups. Honestly, group teaching or five-minute demo teaching is an experience that I can only obtain in this practicum, and the demand for various advanced skills to ensure smooth coordination among members’ parts taught me many lessons. These lessons emerge either from my reflection of personal attributes or my observation of peers’ performance.

 

   During my career, I only had opportunities to observe classes of older and more experienced teachers when I worked as a teaching assistant. Although these observations provided me with reliable guidelines for developing effective lesson plans, I always believe that observing teachers who are at the same age and level with me is very important. Peer teachers may demonstrate several mistakes, but those may also be the mistakes that I am committing. We could never realize our own mistakes, but we recognize the deficiencies of others quite easily. Nevertheless, I had not gotten any chance to observe my peers until the practicum. In class, I may have participated in my friends’ demo teaching sessions, but those were simulated settings in which practical issues did not emerge as in the real classes at Nha Trang University (NTU). 

 

   Indeed, when I sat at the back of the class, taking notes and assessing groupmates’ performance, I realized many problems that I am still having in my teaching. The most valuable lessons that I learnt from my friends are the need for developing decision making, time management, observation and problem solving skills. Particularly, some of my friends were quite greedy and included a lot of new words, examples, and exercises in their parts, and this practice made the lesson become overwhelming, unfocused and consumed much time. Some of the teaching contents were even quite theoretical and required analytical skills, which is a little unsuitable for non-majors. Besides the contents, some members also demonstrated weaknesses in delivery when they interacted with a small group and ignored the rest of the class, resulting in some dead minutes and lower motivation among students. Some others deliver inefficiently due to their quiet voice and technical problems. 

 

   When reflecting on all the above problems from my friends, I find the solutions for myself to make my classes more engaging and efficient in the future. From one aspect, I learnt that a skilled teacher should take into consideration the information processing capacity of learners when building lessons. A lesson should not be crammed with too many teaching items, either vocabulary or grammar structures; otherwise, the students cannot digest well. Less knowledge to be taught in a specific time can also help teachers explain the lessons more thoroughly, which is beneficial for the students’ needs as well as the time management. In order to achieve these benefits, it is also crucial to develop the skills to decide which items are most relevant and feasible for students to keep in teaching plans, and teachers should also be able to estimate the appropriate amount of items to be taught in a specific time. Furthermore, when carrying out the plan, teachers should adapt to the real situations, observe the attitudes from learners to make quick decisions on expanding or omitting activities to make the class livelier. Another lesson that I learnt from my friends is that a good teacher should always be prepared to use their own voice without technical support. This means that a teacher should pay attention to improving their voice with adequate resonance and power so it can be projected clearly even without the microphone.

 

   After the practicum, I also enhanced many of my soft skills since I had to work with a large group of people. I would not describe myself as a perfect introvert, but, ideally, I would prefer working individually. Due to this mindset, I encountered many difficulties in the planning phase. Whenever we made an appointment for discussion, I felt quite uncomfortable because it usually interrupted my working and self-learning schedules and also because I prefer written and asynchronous communication. Since the majority of the members voted to orally discuss, I had to follow, and I found that these meetings were mind-changing. Having to join several meetings continuously, the hatred for gatherings in me diminished. I grew closer to my friends, talked more comfortably with them and somehow became more empathetic. I realized that oral discussions were more effective because there were problems that needed detailed explanations and thorough discussions to solve. Real-time interactions also sparked spontaneous ideas which helped us to fully eliminate all possible problems that would come up in the trip. Since I needed to join the discussions orally, I also polished my presentation skills, conveying my opinions more clearly and concisely with convincing arguments. The disagreements among members in task assignment or decisions of lesson plans’ contents also forged my tougher and more reasonable negotiating skills. In most cases, I had to ensure that all decisions would not negatively affect my individual performance and, at the same time, avoid conflicts which may lead to inefficient group’s performance. From this criteria, I learnt the power of silence. When I was enraged by a decision, I prevented myself from talking and waited until I felt completely relaxed to propose an alternative solution for the group, or I would text the group leader after meetings to express my disagreement with a softer tone. This practice has helped me to maintain relationships better recently. 

 

   Teaching non-majors in a smaller province than Ho Chi Minh City also gave me an eye-opening experience. Generally, I deal with high-level students and give them a lot of communicative activities to practice, so mostly I do not spoon feed my students with vocabulary, grammar or ideas but help them to remedy their techniques instead. Thus, I do not have to spend a lot of time on lesson planning or explaining new language forms for majored students. However, for students in Nha Trang, they do not specialize in English linguistics and, according to the admission grade of the university, they do not have a strong foundation of English. For these reasons, when I prepared my lesson plan, I had to ensure that the activities do not require unspontaneous production of language and include advanced expressions. The choice of target vocabulary or authentic materials also needed close attention, and when I delivered the lesson, I had to adopt frequent explanations in simple English and Vietnamese, a practice that I rarely use in my classes. From the observation of my friends’ teaching as well as from the reactions of the students to my task, I understood that teaching non-major required a higher level of patience and empathy. In fact, a teacher should not demand a non-major living in small provinces to actively learn English and criticize them for basic mistakes because they lack motivation and conditions for practice. Instead, teachers of these students should be inspiring and give learners prizes in class to generate a friendly learning environment. Teaching these students also makes me less critical towards my students and recognizes their efforts more.

 

   Overall, this practicum was very meaningful to me. After all the group work, seminars, sharings, academic exchanges and teaching sessions, I can realize some fundamental changes in my characteristics. I have become more gentle in the way I communicate with my colleagues and students, more patient in instructing the lessons and assessing the learners' performance. I also managed to get rid of some of my bad attributes like being selfish, ignorant of the community and thinking pessimistically. Since I have to ensure my part in the lesson plan does not affect other members’ time or ensure that the lesson is suitable for a new type of learners, I gradually grew the sense of responsibility for the community rather than just showing off my own capabilities. Besides, when I receive positive feedback from the instructors for my demo teaching and positive reactions for my performance on the Gala stage, I have developed a more positive attitude towards my self image, becoming more confident and articulate in personality. The feeling also encouraged me to contribute more for community service and project in the future.