tertiary education

With its prevalence as a global language, universities in Vietnam have striven to enhance students’ proficiency in English. This endeavor responds to the language requirements set by Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), the prominence of English as a medium of instruction in higher education, and the necessity of preparing students for better employability. This study focuses on General English programs currently deployed in most universities in Vietnam in terms of expected learning outcomes, course design and assessment practices. Drawing on document analysis, it examines the General English program of a public university and a private one in Ho Chi Minh City in relation to these three components. Findings show that these universities conformed to MoET’s policy on language education but developed different approaches to language program design and assessment in order to achieve their respective learning outcomes and ensure the quality of language learning and teaching in their own contexts. This study provides course designers, coordinators and language teachers with in-depth understandings of the deployment of General English programs and the theoretical bases underpinning such processes. These insights will enable them to become more aware of the elements constituting such programs and the considerations to be taken in updating and innovating the language curricula.

Teachers are expected to learn new things about their abilities by thinking about their actions in educational contexts. The dynamic reflection on self-teaching would enable teachers to improve their instructional practice. The present study was an attempt to shed light on university level teachers’ self-efficacy perceptions in relation to their reflective practice and instructional practice. For this purpose, 70 teachers from both public and private universities in Iran took part in this survey research. Participants were asked to fill out three Likert-type questionnaires: Teacher Efficacy Scale, The Instructional Practices Survey, and Teacher Reflection Questionnaire. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed using SPSS version 21. Results of Pearson correlation coefficients revealed that although teachers’ self-efficacy perceptions were significantly correlated with both their instructional practice and reflective practice, the former established a relationship with a higher effect size than the latter. Implications of the results with respect to teacher development are presented and directions for further research are offered.