Teaching Reflection to First-year Students of ESL: A Three-year Collective Case Study in Rural Vietnam

Abstract

Quality teaching and learning English require educators and students to actively update their knowledge of English language as well as to reflect on their teaching and learning techniques. They also need to learn new technology as the Covid-19 Pandemic has forced educators around the globe to teach online which many of them as well as their students have never done before. In this paper, we demonstrate how we used a reflective cycle framework that consists of five actions: Describe, Analyse, Transform, Act and Evaluate (DATAE framework) to teach English and how we facilitated reflective practice among students who were mainly from rural areas in Vietnam and had never studied English online before our course. We will explain how we empowered 29 students at a university in a small town in Vietnam to engage in learning online with educators from Australia for nine weeks during 2021 and how technology such as Moodle can enhance English language teaching and learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Our reflection on our teaching experience and on students’ learning experience will contribute to the rethinking of English Language Education in the COVID Era.