Today, English has become an international language. It is spoken as a second language and an official language in many countries, and millions of people speak English as a foreign language. Besides, English is considered the medium of communication in many fields such as science, technology, aviation, internet, commerce, and so on. Therefore learning and teaching English are getting more and more important to non-native nations of English. Vietnam is not an exception.
In Vietnam, English is a compulsory subject at schools and colleges. It plays a key role in getting a good job. The number of Vietnamese people learning English is on the rise. Also, English is no longer taught in a traditional way, in which much attention is paid to grammatical competence. In the view of communicative language teaching (CLT) approach, the goal of learning a foreign language is to communicate in that target language. According to this approach, the learner is considered the center of the learning process; the teacher serves as a facilitator.
At Hanoi university of Industry (HaUI), the aim of teaching and learning English is to provide students with communicative competence. That is the reason why we choose the textbooks “New Headway” by Liz & John Soars (1999) and “International express” by Liz Taylor (2004), which focus on teaching communicative competence. Also, all the teachers are encouraged to use pair work and group work activities in their teaching.
In my observation, students are more interested and less anxious when they work in groups and in pairs. Moreover, pair work and group work can increase the amount of talking for individual students; encourage boarder skills of participation, cooperation, negotiation and so on.