Over 200 teachers, lecturers and language assessment professionals from across Viet Nam gathered in Ho Chi Minh City’s Van Lang University for the third Viet Nam Language Assessment Symposium (VLAS 2023). VLAS was previously held in 2017 and 2019 and is part of a New Directions Series of language assessment events leading up to the New Directions East Asia conference (October 2023) a flagship event of the UK/Viet Nam Season 2023, celebrating 30 years of British Council in Viet Nam.
The event was opened by the National Foreign Languages Project Deputy Director, Dr Nguyen To Chung, who said that, ‘events like this, in partnership with British Council and Van Lang University, are just one example of how we intend to support and promote research and insight to support teachers with professional development in the field of assessment and testing’.
Following the opening speeches, a series of research, discussions and practical activities around the two themes of ‘Teaching, Learning and Assessment in education systems: Empowering teachers’ and ‘Assessing young learners, spanning grades 6 to 12’ were presented to the audience. One of the speakers, Dr Duong Thu Mai from VNU-ULIS shared her feelings, ‘I've learnt so much while contemplating the sessions and it is great to see that our sharing was well received by the participants’.
Indeed, this was echoed by one of the participants, who said, ‘it gave us a deeper understanding about assessment policies and practice in Vietnam; including the many opportunities and challenges that teachers face. I really hope that in the future there will be more sessions like this for teachers because they are in need when assessment policies and practice have been in transition.’
On this point, over the next few months, between now and the flagship New Directions East Asia conference in October 2023, there will be a series of online webinars on the topic of assessment. Check here for more details about these pre-conference events.
Finally, if you missed VLAS 2023, you can still have access to the abstracts and biographies of all the presenters, as well as access and download their presentations here.
We look forward to welcoming more teachers at New Directions Series events between now and October 2023 to learn more about the importance of language assessment in English language teaching and learning.