A BRIEF DESCRIPTION ABOUT I-LEARN SMART START SERIES

Writing is a process. As Prowse (1998 & 2011) said, “When inspiration comes, writers’ hands cannot keep up with the speed of their thoughts. However, when the ideas do not come, it’s frustrating.” I have a fortunate opportunity to enjoy that experience when joining the process of designing a textbook series with my colleagues at DTPOnline Company, an education solutions provider in Vietnam. It was truly an unforgettable memory in my career!

The English textbook series that I co-wrote with my colleagues at DTPOnline is called the i-learn Smart Start series. With the birth of i-learn Smart Start, the ESL market in Vietnam has a new choice, and customers have more options that suit their learning styles and pathways. I am therefore very happy to share with you a brief story about “our baby”.

Needless to say, like many other Asian countries, there is an emerging trend in Vietnam to introduce English to children starting from early age, through formal and informal education. This can be seen from the growing number of bilingual and international schools where English is used as an instructional language as well as the mushrooming of English courses aimed especially at children in Vietnam.

In the mainstream of education system in Vietnam, even though English used to be an optional subject at primary level, most of primary schools, especially those in cities and national standard primary schools (the schools which meet the national standards set by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam)-now tend to teach English to children from grade 3. The English textbooks for this level are freely chosen by the schools, as long as the chosen textbooks align with MOET’s curriculum framework.

This fact has actually caused the market for English textbooks to boom in Vietnam. More and more English textbooks published by big and small publishers in the world, all trying to find a place in this dynamic and potential market. The I-learn Smart Start series was also born in such a high competitive situation.

It is obvious that we had to struggle a lot before i-learm Smart Start was practically formed. “Which approach should we follow?” or “How to make our book unique among thousands of other English textbooks in the market?” was the question that gave us headaches throughout the process of working out on i-learn Smart Start. We then realized that it was important that the textbook/material be appropriate to the context in which it was used. We also noted the fact that while people often want to learn about other cultures, it is difficult for them to apply this in their daily life. For children, this becomes even more difficult as they do not yet have enough background knowledge to understand and apply them.

To illustrate this, I would like to give an example mentioned by Jolly and Bolitho (2011:108) in their research:

“It’s very nice book and very lively, but in the section on ‘Processes’ for example all the exercises are about unusual things for our country. We are hot country and also have many Muslims. The exercises are about snow, ice, cold morning, water cisterns; writing and publishing ELT textbooks and making wine, I can tell I can’t do making wine and smoking pot in my country" (Experienced teacher from the Ivory Coast)

At that point, we made a decision on the approach: while most of the available English textbooks in Vietnam market focus on overseas context, I-learn Smart Start series differentiated itself from other competitors by being designed especially for Vietnamese learners, helping them get used to English through contexts farmilar in Vietnam.

I-learn Smart Start is a five-level series developed by a team of international and Vietnamese writers and editors. With this mix, the team hoped to integrate Vietnamese culture and content to the course so that Vietnamese young learners could learn English through authentic descriptions of their surrounding and apply it to their daily communication.

The course focuses on 3 main aims:

- Developing Vietnamese young learners’ listening, speaking, reading and writing skills through activities that engage them in using English in a natural and meaningful way.

- Connecting English to the context in Vietnam by adding Vietnamese cultural events, customs and habits.

- Helping Vietnamese students prepare well for the Cambridge Young Learner’s tests.

To achieve these aims, the i-learn Smart Start Syllabus was designed based on both the MOET elementary curriculum and Cambridge Young Learner’s syllabus, and then expanded with Vietnamese content. In addition, to ensure students’ learning progress, a systematic approach was explicitly adopted. In each lesson, students were first introduced and practiced new items of vocabulary using flash cards and interactive games. Based on these newly acquired vocabularies, a target structure was developed and contextualized in an engaging story with a series of listening activities. This was followed by a mini song to help reinforce the target language. After mastering the key structure, students practiced the sound of English and then used these sound patterns to further practice the target language in a controlled way. Finally, students were given an opportunity to personalize what they had learnt in a freer and fun activity.

With this systematic approach, according to the author of the book (our boss), the language that we aim to teach learners will be “broken down into small parts (words, structures, listening skills, pronunciation elements) and be introduced in a gradual and controlled way, building them into the point where learners can use them all comfortably together to communicate.”

The Smart Start course is comprised of a Student Book, Class Audio CDs, Workbook, Teacher’s Book, CD-ROM, iTool computer software and an online interactive website. Each student book is divided into 10 themes, each of which is further divided into 6 lessons.

Lesson 1 to 4 follow the same pattern:

A. New words: Students are introduced to 5-8 new vocabulary items.

B. Story: Each Part B in lessons 1–4 is an episode in a four-part narrative, illustrated comic-style to engage students. It includes three activities:

• Listen and Read → students listen to the whole story and read along to grasp the gist and see examples of target language.

• A listening task (e.g., Listen and circle or Listen and write) to reinforce comprehension.

• A structure box that helps teachers summarize key language.

C. Mini song: Using short and fun songs that feature the lesson’s key structure, this activity helps students familiarize themselves with the sound patterns of English before they are asked to practice language in follow-up activities. The author claims that if students are forced to produce language before they are familiar with the rhythm, they will tend to “use very different rhythm patterns” which are often influenced by their first language. This can lead to incorrect pronunciation and gradually become habitual.

Under the mini song is a small corner for pronunciation tip. Focusing on the sound features of lessons, these tips especially help non-native learners cope with their difficulty in producing some of the sounds or achieving correct intonation in English.

D. Practice: This is the controlled speaking activity that provides support for students to practice target language, vocabularies and sound features taught in previous parts (A, B, C) of the lessons.

E. Production: At this stage when students are comfortable with the target language, they are given an opportunity to personalize the learnt language/ key structure to say true things about themselves, things around them or their ideas/opinion.

Lesson 5: Culture and Content. Following a different format in each theme, Lesson 5s especially describe Vietnamese setting. These lessons are thematically linked to the unit theme but aim to introduce Vietnam-specific cross curricular and value/civic contents. In these lessons, students are taught important features of Vietnam such as popular food / famous places, key subject content like math/science, or value covered in Vietnamese curriculum, e.g. be kind/ be tidy.

Lesson 6: Review and Practice. In Smart Start, every theme ends with a thorough review lesson. The key aims of Lesson 6s are to review all the content from lesson 1-5 and to prepare students for CYLET exams. In addition, Lesson 6s also include a fun song and communicative game that help students reinforce the target language and skills taught in the theme.

On the plus side, Smart Start student textbook is colorful and easy to navigate. Every theme follows the same pattern of activities, which makes it easier for students and teachers to quickly become familiar with the lesson style and progression. The characters are rich with full backstories. The four-part story in each theme, where the characters have a series of adventures and discover new things, get students more engaged into learning English. In addition, the Vietnamese content-focused sections provide specific topics about Vietnam that are not found in other textbooks and are often interesting and educational for students.

Despite these appealing features, there are some areas that Smart Start needs to improve to provide better quality for students. In some lessons, vocabulary items are included randomly, mostly for the purpose of the story in part B. There is some vocabulary that appears once and never be practiced or reviewed throughout lessons, making it difficult for students to retain new language. Such thing goes against the systematic approach that the author claims. Some listening tasks in part B are either too difficult or confusing for teachers and students. Besides, the Smart Start course seems to heavily rely on audio. Most of the activities in the book are audio-based tasks such as Part A (Listen, point and say), Part B (Listen and Read), and Part C (Mini song). This is one of the disadvantages for some rural schools in Vietnam, where teachers usually deal with a larger group of students in low-teach classrooms. It is easy to imagine that without a good sound system, teachers may find it hard to successfully deliver Smart Start course. I think, this is truly one of the challenges for i-learn Smart Start if it is adopted not only in big cities but also in rural areas.

Overall, the Smart Start series, in my opinion, is an important step in the right direction for young learners’ resources, providing a good support package for Vietnamese students and teachers. With this course, Vietnamese students have an opportunity to practically learn and practice English in a practical way, through content connected to their own country, culture and traditions.

We are looking forwards to receiving feedback from schools and learners who have used i-learn Smart Start for 2015-2016 academic year!