Meet Yen Dao – A working professional and dedicated teacher mom in Vietnam.

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In this article, we’ve had a chat with Thi Yen Dao from Vietnam. She’s a working professional that decided to pursue teacher training in order to help tutor her young son. As a local and a mother of a young learner in Vietnam, she’s shared her insight on how to succeed as a teacher in Vietnam, as well as her best tips on how you can use your English teaching training to complement your personal daily life.

Training to become an English teacher does not always mean that you have to pick up a full-time teaching career. Nowadays, it’s quite common for aspiring teachers to pursue English teaching as a part-time gig that can help them develop new skills and earn a little bit extra on the side.

Some also pursue English teaching certifications due to intrinsic motivational factors such as personal and professional development. In fact, many of the skills that you develop throughout your teacher training courses are often transferable and can be beneficial in other areas of your personal life and career. 

Essential teaching skills such as people management, good communication, how to motivate and engage people, and helping people set and realise goals, are just some of the professional skills that you’ll learn that can be repurposed for settings outside of the classroom.

Yen Dao decided to pursue English teaching training in order to get a better understanding of how young students learn and to help her son to pick up English from an early age.

Let’s hear her thoughts on how professional English teaching training can be applied to other areas outside of the classroom, and also what you should keep in mind if you wish to build credibility with your student’s parents when teaching English in Vietnam.

Yen Dao’s interview:

💬 What is your name and where are you from?

“Hello everyone, my name is Thi Yen Dao, but you can also call me Sophia. I come from Quang Ninh province and currently live and work in the capital city of Hanoi, Vietnam.”

💬 Are you currently working as an English teacher?

“Actually no, I currently work as an Executive Assistant in a technology start-up company in Hanoi, Vietnam. However, I used to teach English to kids next-door and children of my acquaintances for a short period of time. Nowadays, I consider myself a tutor for my 3 year-old son.

I started to teach him English the first day I knew his physical existence inside my body. My son even took his first English exam with me when I had prepared for my IELTS test in the 5th month of pregnancy.

Now that he is older and in kindergarten, we’ve started practicing speaking English more frequently using new words daily. So it would be more precise to call me either a mother-teacher or a teacher-mother.”

💬 What made you decide on pursuing professional English teaching training?

“Although I’m not working as an official English teacher in formal education, I am very interested in how to teach people around me to speak English. Being a mother is incredible and it was a major motivation for me to move on with improving my teaching skills.”

💬 What are you currently teaching your son?

“My son is very excited to see countries’ flags, and he’s so far able to recognize nearly 200 flags. The most fantastic thing is that he also learns how to pronounce the name of the countries through a Youtube video and repeats nearly 70% precisely as the words are.

Nevertheless, since I want to help him to memorize vocabulary with 100% precise pronunciation, I used the tips and techniques from my teacher training course and bought a collection of flash cards with flags on them to play games with him. So we are currently practicing how to pronounce the name of countries together.”

💬 Do you have any fun teaching memories?

“When practicing together with him, I occasionally found that there were a few words that I used to pronounce incorrectly, and even my son was able to recognize this and fixed it for me. This memory is not only great for me as a teaching mother, but also for my son.“

💬 What are some of the perks of teaching young learners?

“Honestly, children are preferable to me when I consider the factors of age and knowledge absorption. They are faster learners than teenagers and adults, and their perception is still limited to such simple topics as animals, school, family, etc., which they are familiar with through their daily activities. Therefore I do not have to consume as much time to create engaging and fun lessons for them.”

💬 What kind of teaching qualifications do you possess?

“Thanks to World TESOL Academy I’ve now got the first English teaching qualification of my life – the 60-hour Teaching English to Young Learners TEYL certificate.”

💬 How do you maintain your personal development as a working professional and a mother?

“I am dedicated to everything I do, no matter what it is, so that’s the way I maintain my personal development. For me, work-life balance is crucial to maintain a positive lifestyle. I teach English to my son every day, and this is also the way I spend time enjoying learning and sharing new knowledgeable.

At the same time I also learn languages (I am a polyglot). Apart from my mother tongue Vietnamese and English, I can also speak 5 other foreign languages – Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, and Korean. I also read books, as well as write my own book, have a podcast, do housework, and spread out my self-learning and lifelong learning spirit to the people around me.“

💬 Would you recommend others to also pursue English teaching certifications like the 60-hour TEAL certificate?

“Yes, definitely! I know that a lot of English teachers in Vietnamese kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary schools do not possess accredited English teaching certification for teaching young learners, which means their academic lecturing skills are not always guaranteed.

With the 60-hour TEYL course, they can learn how to teach English to young learners at a reasonable price and they do not have to attend any classes in person, which is a great benefit. Such a good offer should not be missed out!“

💬 What do you think makes a good English teacher?

“Personally speaking, I think that your dedication to your students is the most important thing that helps you stand out. Don’t care too much about salaries, and instead focus on being a nice and knowledgeable teacher that care about your students all the time you are with them. This will give you so much more value than money in the long run.“

💬 Do you have any tips for teachers that are just starting out?

“Being an avid language learner myself, I think language learning is natural to any of us like the way babies learn how to speak their first words, the only difference is our age. Therefore I highly recommend that new teachers should practice being patient with slow learners and encourage them to move forward at their own pace.

Besides this, you should also focus on improving how you deliver the lessons to your learners by putting yourself in their shoes to figure out what’s wrong with the way they learn English. In this case, listening is the key to understanding their difficulties and helping them to overcome them.”

💬 Can you see yourself working as an English teacher in the future?

“Fow now, I want to focus on my son’s learning. My goal was never to pursue English teaching as a job to earn a living, but rather as a way to enable a better life for my son and other kids. If I were to start teaching, it would be through voluntary work.

I hope to one day be able to open a tuition-free class to teach English to homeless kids or orphans in the future because I truly believe that good English will bring about a bright future for kids.

It is Nelson Mandela’s quote that inspires me a lot: “If you speak to a man in a language he understands, you speak to his head. If you speak to him in his language, you speak to his heart.” I truly hope that my son and other kids can also enjoy the same happiness with English.”

💬 What makes Vietnam a great teaching destination?

“English is not a second language in my country as the way it is in Singapore or some European countries. However, Vietnamese parents born in the 1980s generation and younger are highly aware of the importance of English. This is why most of us encourage our children to familiarize themselves with English and pursue English language learning. This creates a lot of job opportunities for English teachers.

Living expenses in Vietnam are extremely cheap compared to Singapore or Malaysia and finding accommodation is not that difficult. All of these things are some of the most fabulous thing to talk about teaching when it comes to teaching English in Vietnam.“

💬 Do you have any tips for teachers that wish to start teaching in Vietnam?

“If foreign teachers want to adapt to the Vietnamese ESL teaching industry, you must make sure that your local agency is trustworthy and accredited by governmental authorities. Their reputation and credibility will be decisive to your visa application and teaching vacancy.

It’s also very important that you possess accredited teaching certificates like TESOL/TEFL and TEYL to be qualified for jobs in English centers or schools.“

💬 What’s next in store for you?

“I truly believe that languages are borderless, and that learning new languages shouldn’t be limited to where you are born. In the future, I would like to provide tuition-free English classes to homeless and orphaned children, as well as work as an volunteer teacher for children living in mountainous areas where the access to English learning materials and facilities are limited.

However, right now it’s unclear when I would be able to pursue these dreams. Therefore I will first focus on accumulating experience as a teacher for my little son for at least the next 5 to 6 years. I’m also planning on enrolling in the 120-hour TESOL/TEFL course at World TESOL Academy in 2023, to further develop my teaching skills.“

Conclusion

As Yen Dao has helped show, professional English teaching training is not limited to only the classroom. Many of the skills that you learn in your teacher training course are also transferable to other areas of your personal and professional life.

Whether you are interested in pursuing professional teacher training with the goal of launching a teaching career or just simply wish to get a better understanding of how to provide an effective learning experience for people around you, a professional teacher training course can help provide you with the right foundation to make it possible.

If you too are interested in personal and professional development, just like Yen Dao, now is the perfect time to take the first step and start your journey with your own teacher training course.