A meaningful educational program called "Sowing Seeds of Happiness" recently launched by the Da Nang-based Iris English Center has brought hope to children from disadvantaged families as the center has extended a helping hand to them, and facilitate deeper learning in a foreign language apart from their native tongue among these children.

Learning English phonetics helps children improve their listening skills, understand English sentence structure, and show confident when communicating with foreigners. Photo: HUYNH LE.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thu's family who lives in Nai Hien Dong ward, Son Tra District faced difficulties as she fell into unemployment in mid-2023 due to layoff of seasonal employees. She lost her job with monthly salary of nearly VND 5 million, she now works as a breakfast shop assistant while waiting to find a new job. With a meager income, Mrs. Thu is forced to trim her household budget, including expenses for her children's education.

Her daughter, a pupil of the To Vinh Dien Primary School, hardly participates in extracurricular activities which are programs outside of the regular school curriculum. Mrs. Thu realized that knowing English is important in today's world as speaking English will help her daughter communicate with people from countries all over the world, not just English-speaking ones. However, she can only encourage her daughter to study English well at school as her family cannot afford to send her daughter to foreign language training centers. Although her daughter still begs her mother to let her attend an English course to improve her listening and speaking skills.

For that reason, when I learned that the Iris English Center had launched its "Sowing the Seeds of Happiness" program to offer 100 free phonetics courses totaling VND 450,000,000 to children of employees who lost their jobs in 2023, Mrs. Thu did not hesitate to register her daughter for such a course. Her daughter was eligible to attend this course for free in a bid to improve her English language skills.

Teacher Ha Thi Kieu Phuong from the Iris English Center said that teaching children in difficult circumstances under the "Sowing Seeds of Happiness" program makes her touched and feel happy. She added that in the coming time, she would do her utmost to create English lessons with appropriate content and format in an effort to help improve her students’ English language skills.

“As a longtime English teacher, I understand that listening and speaking skills are very important to English learning, but school goers, especially disadvantaged pupils, do not have enough time to practise these skills at school. Therefore, they need more support from foreign language training centers to help them improve these skills. However, parents in financial difficulties cannot afford to send their children to foreign language training centers as the cost of language learning in these institutes is often quite high. By providing free standard phonetics course, I hope that disadvantaged pupil will improve their listening and speaking skills, as well as learn English effectively," teacher Phuong remarked.

It is known that the "Sowing the Seeds of Happiness" program prioritizes supporting disadvantaged children aged 6-12 who are living and studying in Da Nang. To achieve the best results, the program requires parents to support and remind their children during their attendance in such a course while encouraging them to join English Practice Clubs in a bid to help them feel more confidence while communicating with foreigners. Mrs. Doan Thi Lan, the Deputy Director of the Iris English English Center System, said that the course aims to help disadvantaged children become proficient at standard spelling.

According to Mrs. Lan, the key to success in speaking English is to learn all English sounds and pronounce words clearly and correctly, thereby helping children learn English effectively, and speak English confidently and fluently.

“Learning phonetics not only helps children improve their English pronunciation, but also helps them boost their confident when speaking English. Besides, learning phonetics also helps children quickly improve their listening skills, clearly understand sentence structure, and speak English confidently and fluently. We hope that the "Sowing Seeds of Happiness" program will help learners acquire knowledge and skills to lead a healthy lifestyle, and their efforts will pay off in the future as such a course will bring positive changes to them during the process of learning English in an efficient and sustainable way," Mrs. Lan shared.

Reporting by HUYNH LE – Translating by H.L