Importance Of EFL Teaching

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

This introductory chapter is comprised of five main sections. The rationale of the study presents the importance of college EFL teachers’ professional development and of the effectiveness of classroom observation for professional development at tertiary education, followed by the reason for conducting the current study. The subsequent part is related to the major objectives, the research questions and the significance of the study. Lastly, the structure of the paper is described.

1.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In the world, the role of English has grown considerately. As a matter of fact, in 2008, English has been the official language of forty-five countries and the number of non-native speakers of English is four times

In this respect, Tran (2000) claimed that EFL teaching in Vietnam is still of low quality which has led to the unsatisfactory demands for competent English speaking people. Because teaching ability is crucial for students’ learning achievement, teachers have to be responsible for developing their profession to provide quality education all students (American Federation of teachers, 1999). In fact, professional development is considered as the catalyst that helps teachers transform theory into their current best teaching practice (Kent, 2004) and it also benefits all the students due to teachers’ ongoing learning (Underhill, 1998). Despite the importance of professional development for language teachers, EFL teacher development has been paid inadequate attention in Vietnam. In fact, “the notion of organizing in service development in form of classroom observations, seminars, workshops or even informal talks, which would give colleagues from the same working context the opportunity to exchange ideas and share experiences and innovations, seems uncommon in Vietnam” (Pham, 2001, p.32).

The better-qualified teachers are importantly required in order to meet the goals of training session and learning outcomes of each institution. However, at university time, each student at pedagogy is trained in only one course of teaching methodology in a very short time of 60-75 periods and seriously spends 8-week-practising teaching at a certain secondary school for evaluation and assessment before graduation and starting a teaching job. There fore, new teachers mostly lack of teaching experience as well as classroom management at the beginning time in their teaching career. That is the reason why classroom observation is considered as a frequent responsibility of EFL teachers for professional