English teachers from Vietnam sharpen skills on KU campus

Nga Luu teaches English to gifted high schoolers in her home country of Vietnam, but she never had the chance to visit an English speaking country until now.

Luu is one of 13 Vietnamese teachers spending this school year on the Kansas University campus. They are improving their English and learning teaching techniques through the KU Vietnamese Teachers Program, an Applied English Center program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Luu said when she was small she listened to English songs on the radio and later chose teaching the language as her career because she wanted to help youth.

“English is the key for them to have a better job, a better life,” she said.

Kellie Smith Herrod, Applied English Center language specialist, spent the 2013-2014 school year teaching college English and working with future English teachers in Vietnam as a Fulbright Scholar. She chose Vietnam over other countries, she said, in part because KU needed a better connection with Vietnam. The university offered no study abroad programs and enrolled hardly any students from there, she said.

Toward the end of her stay, she had conversations with Michael Turner, Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, and said, “We need an exchange, and we need to get some Vietnamese people on the KU campus.”

Turner, who visited KU Friday to discuss the program, said the Department of State agreed to fund an exchange program and chose KU’s proposal from a pool of those from other schools. KU’s Vietnamese Teachers Program currently is awaiting word whether the Department of State will renew its funding to continue for another year.

Turner said building relationships between individuals — such as programs like KU’s — is a key pillar of the United States’ diplomatic relations efforts with Vietnam, an effort that is marking its 20th anniversary this year.

“Through exchange programs like that and many others we’ve built the people-to-people ties,” Turner said. “Teaching English better to these Vietnamese high school students means they’ll be able to use their English skills to be more integrated in this increasingly smaller world of ours.”

In Vietnam, students take aptitude tests and the brightest go to special high schools. Such students often are from poor rural areas and the schools, while home to gifted students, often lack resources and funding.

Luu said her English has improved since arriving in Lawrence and that she and her fellow teachers from Vietnam had been able to learn about and observe in action, at area high schools, teaching techniques and technology in action.

She plans to take that back to Vietnam and already has plans to share her knowledge and online resources with colleagues at her school and, of course, the students.

“They are very smart,” she said. “They have a passion to learn English.”