A critical Stance against Monolingual Foreign Language Instruction

On the afternoon of 11^th November, 2023, Creative Language Center of Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) held a seminar with the theme “A critical Stance against Monolingual Foreign Language Instruction” at building E (room E0412).

The attendees included Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Sy and Mr. Nguyen Hoang Tuan, the Center’s managers and more than 20 lecturers of the Center.

The keynote speaker of the workshop was Dr. Raqib Chowdhury. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. He taught in the Department of English, University of Dhaka from 1997 to 2004 and then joined the Monash Faculty of Education in 2009 upon completing his PhD in 2008. Dr. Raqib has published extensively in the areas of TESOL and ELT, culture and pedagogy, international education, social justice and identity. His publications include 6 books, including from Springer and Routledge. His latest book is The Privatisation of Higher Education in Postcolonial Bangladesh: The Politics of Intervention and Control (Routledge, 2021). Dr. Raqib has strong connections to Vietnam, has completed supervising several Vietnamese PhD students and delivering more than 20 presentations in Vietnam as a visiting scholar and a keynote/plenary speaker.

In the seminar, Dr Raqib discussed the issues in learning foreign languages experienced by foreign language learners, such as the discourage feeling of not being able to participate effectively in the foreign language environment; language anxiety as learners usually perceived themselves as “not sounding native enough”; suffering from significant levels of anxiety since they have to face the challenge of interpreting content in the medium of a language in which they are not very familiar; factors such as age, academic performance, background experience with the target language, students’ expectation, perceived academic abilities and self-esteem play a vital role in emerging or diminishing learners’ anxiety rate; being afraid of negative evaluation and communication apprehension, which eventually causes them to avoid speaking in their L2; among others.

He also emphasized the effect of scaffolding - a part of the education concept “zone of proximal development (ZPD)”, which refers to a teaching method that helps students learn more by working with a teacher or a more advanced student. Moreover, he presented the use of L1 as the medium to teach L2. To give further explanations on the topic, Dr Raqib showed several videos/recordings made throughout his long journey of teaching.

Here are some photos of the seminar: