Psychological and cultural factors related to methodologies to Hanoi Foreign Languages Teachers' College students

Abstract

With the increasing contact between Vietnam and English speaking countries and the growing demand for foreign language professionals in the last decades, the teaching of foreign languages, especially English, has gained considerable prominence in Vietnamese education. However, English has been taught in Vietnam for a relatively short time, there are significant deficiencies in this area. If these deficiencies are to be addressed then methodology is a crucial variable worthy of examination. Many of the EFL teaching {Teaching English as a Foreign Language) methods developed in the last twenty years are unfamiliar to a great number of the Vietnamese teachers, although they may be introduced to Vietnam in the near future. In this study a historical overview of language teaching development is provided. Since language teaching methods are products of Western experience, a scrutiny of their relevance to the Vietnamese teaching situation is necessary. In particular it is important to focus on the psychological and cultural appropriateness of different methods to the Vietnamese settings. A number of most crucial psychological issues such as the learner’s motivation, iii aptitude, personality and learning style are discussed together with some social and cultural influences which may affect the learner’s psychological attributes. The study also provides a specific investigation of the psychological attributes of Vietnamese students . and a number of cultural problems faced by this type of learners in their English learning process. Finally some practical, though tentative, suggestions are made in the hope that more and more Vietnamese teachers of English will respond to the problem of teaching methodology and search for ways to cring about effective learning.

Date of Award	1985
Original language	English