Bac Giang students participate in English camp.

Natalie, a 20 year- old student of English Teaching Faculty in Northern Colorado University (USA) is one of 8 volunteers in this year programme. She will graduate in the next two years, thus Natalie spent her summer break on experiencing the voluntary activities in Bac Giang province, Vietnam.

In every morning, she and 7 members of the delegation wake up early, strolled around the city then prepared for the upcoming class. Playing the role of a teacher, Natalie looks like the students’ friend to join in the mutual games and sharing about the life and hobbies, which brought her deeper knowledge about Vietnamese culture and lifestyle of the young generation.

“I like the students in Bac Giang province because of their industriousness, a quick study, pleasant character and fun learning atmosphere”, shared Natalie.

Instead of using chalk and board, each student was provided with paper and crayon to note down the hard words and meaningful sentences. Besides, the teacher helped them learn to speak English correctly with appropriate sentences, pronunciation and stress. The new words were immediately used in both simple and complex sentence samples.

200 students were divided into small classes and groups under the instruction of the American volunteers to hold several games such as moving the ball, hide and seek among others.

Particularly in the game of moving the ball, all members of the class stood in a circle while two teachers questioned and the ball keeper had to give a quick answer within 5 seconds. The topics included the name of famous footballers, vegetables, roots, fruits and animals and others. If the student failed to answer, he or she must sing an English song as the fine. Meanwhile, the teacher loudly repeated each word the student spoke so as to instruct all members or correct their speaking.

An English using environment at the camp inspired the students’ passion for foreign language study. Thanks to the interesting activities and funny games, they overcome the cultural differences and obstacles. After a few weeks, most of the members can speak English confidently.

The English camp provides the Vietnamese students with a chance to practice and improve their English listening and speaking skills as well as further grasp American culture while American volunteers would gain more information about Vietnamese people and nation in general and Bac Giang provincial culture and traditional history in particular.

Additionally, this was the first trip of Molly (born in 1998) who is a student at Colorado University (USA) to Bac Giang province. After the class was finished in the afternoon, Molly and her friends were taken to visit Bac Giang city and enjoy the local cuisine by the DoET representative. She has tasted several rural specialties like Ke rice pancake, dried lychee and Chu rice noodle as well as listened to many historical relics and landscapes such as Bo Da pagoda, Xuong Giang Victory Historic Site or Tay Yen Tu complex.

She said: “The camp is an occasion for me and other students to discover the differences between Vietnamese and American cultures as well as learn more about the bilateral development of the two nations via the topics of film, music and fine art. Especially, the students had a chance to share about their concerns and solutions to the popular issues in the community like environment pollution, trade war and so on.

The local students joined in the English camp free of charge and textbooks. Hoang Tran Dieu Linh, a student in Ngo Si Lien Highschool revealed that “I hope the school and DoIT will continue giving us a chance to regularly access to an English communication environment, which helps improve the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills in this subject”.

Tuyet Mai