Teachers and Trainers in Adult Education andLifelong Learning
Professional Development in Asia and Europe
29-30 June 2009 in Bergisch Gladbach/Germany

Le Hoang Anh Thu
The effectiveness of teaching life skills inuniversities

Deutsches Institut für Erwachsenenbildung
German Institute for Adult Education
URL: http://www.die-bonn.de/asem/asem0925.pdf
Published: 29.06.2009
State of information: 29.06.2009

This document is published with the following creative commons licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/de/

Theeffectivenessofteachinglife

skillsinuniversities

Le Hoang Anh Thu (Hoa Sen University)

Contents

1. Teaching life skills in Vietnam: ............................................................... 3
2. Teaching life skills at schools ................................................................. 5
3. Research methods ................................................................................. 6
4. How are life skills being taught in universities? ...................................... 7
5. The effectiveness of teaching life skills .................................................. 9
6. Conclusion............................................................................................ 12

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1. Teaching life skills in Vietnam:
As in definition of life skills by UNICEF, life skills include cognitive skills, practicalskills, personal and social skills. Life skills as defined by the WHO are “abilities
for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively withthe demands and challenges of everyday life”. Life skills are psycho-social skills
including problem-solving and critical thinking skills, personal skills such as selfawareness, and interpersonal skills. Possessing life skills means having qualities
such as high self-esteem, sociability, tolerance, action competencies to generatechange, capabilities to have the freedom to decide what to do and who to be. Lifeskills are therefore different from health skills or practical skills, livelihood skills(SelfGrowth.com, 2009).
During the past few years, demand for life skills training is increasing at highspeed in Vietnam. The term “life skills” has become familiar and well heard of.
Life skill courses draw attention from a wide range of population such as college
students, or young employees to parents who are looking for life skills courses fortheir children. With such a demand, life skill courses can be found easily,especially in big cities like Hochiminh City or Hanoi. These courses cover several
aspects or dimensions of life skills, such as communication skill, public speaking
skill, to creative thinking skill, decision making skill.
Life skill courses in Vietnam are offered to a wide range of age. Several life skill
courses offered by Fastrackids, MARPLE- BEAR, John Robert Power in
Hochiminh City are designed for young kids, and receive welcome from parents
who wish their kids can be equipped with the capabilities of setting goals forthemselves, understanding who they are in relation to friends, families, interactingwith others. Psychologists say these programs can empower a child the ability todevelop his personality, recognize the potentials in each child, and develop otherlife skills ranging from goal setting, presentation skill, communication skill, or
teach moral lessons, and even how to use household facilities such as computers,
telephones. Parents gradually turn their attention from English or music lessons,but to life skill classes (Huynh, 2009).
Life skill courses are also offered to adults, especially to young people. For
example, club Den Voi nhau (Come together Club) in Hochiminh City is ameeting place for professionals in life skills training and young people to meetand discuss about life skills and how to educate people in this area (Thai Binh,2009).

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3Teaching life skills are paid attention to by some schools in Hochiminh City.
However, they are not taught as a formal subject, but are offered in form of
discussion sessions or games on certain topics. So the courses are a chance torelax and students can pick up some tips on life skills.
Tuition fee at training centers specializing in this area are too expensive to beaffordable to the majority of people. Hochiminh city’s state-run convention centersor youth clubs are the major venues for classes on life skills at the affordable
price to most people. Lessons on life skills are given to a big number ofparticipant in one class. Therefore, practicing and activities are missing in general,
which significantly affect on the quality and effectiveness of these courses. (ThaiBinh, 2009)
One example is a course on “Life skills” offered by the Youth Center in Hochiminh
City started in September 2007. This course offers lessons on analysis skills, how
to react to varied life situations, stress management, managing feelings, selfawareness and self-evaluation. Being organized for the first time, this threemonth course is limited to just a small number of excellent students of somehighschools in Hochiminh City (Anh Van, 2007).
Companies and training centers jump into the competition to provide life skills
courses. Life skills are broadly advertised as “indispensable skills for life” and thisdraws even more people into taking these classes. Learners believe that life skill
courses can prepare them to cope with many difficult situations in life, and themore life skills courses they take, the more stable they can be. Vietnam’s formal
education has focused only on teaching knowledge, and neflected to provide life
skills training. Together with the increasing demand of the society for competentworkers, people rush to take life skill classes offered by many training centersbooming during the past recent years. Curricula of these training centers arequite similar to each other, and they teach skills such as group work,communication skills, to understanding the feelings of others, etc. These courses
are provided at considerably high cost. Cheaper courses provided by public
centers are mainly in the form of discussion between facilitators and learners. In
many training centers, facilitators only tell their life stories hoping that learners
can learn from them with little relating to theory. Since life stories of every
individual are very different, learners might never face the same situation in the
trainers’ stories in their lives. Some trainers neglect the fact that theory is crucial
in teaching life skills because with the knowledge, learners can apply to thesituation that he faces to solve it in a rational way.

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4Most of the courses on life skills are given to young adults, or new employees
and focus on business setting. For example, courses at the Youth Club of
Hochiminh City are on: communication skills, how to change the way of thinking
in order to lead happy life, sales strategies, how to manage a projects. In thismarket of life skill courses, learning skill or study skill are paid very little attention
to compared with skills on social and psychological domain.

2. Teaching life skills at schools
Students, especially those in tertiary education where teaching and study
methods are very different from that in high-schools, are reported to have very
insufficient knowledge of learning skills. Classes teaching study skills arecompletely missing in training programs not only in training centers, but also inschools and universities.
Students meet with a lot of difficulties when entering universities. A lot of students
face challenges in managing their study during their transitions from highschools
where teachers do not demand students to take lecture notes, or to givepresentations or to work in group, to a more active learning environment as incollege. Some universities are alerted by the big number of students who apply
for cancelling courses, with the reason that they cannot manage their heavy
study schedules. For example, in University of Technology and Pedagogy in
Hochiminh City, in the second semester of 2007-2008 academic year, 7,000
students applied to quit their classes, and the same trend can be seen in the firstsemester of 2008-2009 academic year when 6,000 students quit their classes.
Teachers of universities usually complain about students’ lack of self-study ability.
Students usually wait for others to arrange their study schedule, dictate theclassnotes, and assign homework to them. This habits cause them trouble when
they move to a new study environment as in university where they are supposed
to have to arrange time for cramming exams, reading materials by themselves.
(Người Lao Động, April 2009)
Despite this fact, life skills teaching is seriously missing from universities, except
for skills courses required for certain majors, such as public speaking forpedagogy students. Only a few universities and vocational schools include study
skills and some life skills courses into their curriculum. Yet, it is not to say thatcollege students do not pay attention to life skills. In fact, many students whose
concern about improving life skills and study skills have set up their own circles of

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5friends and teachers to meet regularly and exchange ideas, or organize activities
to learn skills.
Teaching life skills has started to draw the concern of the Ministry of Education
and Training. In 2009, Ministry of Education in cooperation with the UNICEF
operated a program aiming to train life skills, mostly sex education, to secondary
highschool students. The objectives of this course is to train youngster to have ahealthy lifestyle, and to provide them with proper understanding about the society
and mental health. The target of this program also extends to parents to makethem better educators to their children at home (Thu Huong, 2009).
On May 20th 2009, the Ministry has held a conference on this theme. In thisconference, the importance of teaching life skills for pupils from early isemphasized considering the low competency in coping with life situations andconflicts among Vietnamese youths. Life skills mentioned in this conference
range from sex education, to training in stress management, overcoming life
difficulties, communication skills, etc. Both the training program specializing in life
skills and the qualifications of teachers of this subject were put into discussion
although no final conclusion or regulation was made.
Participants also stress that in the long term, it is necessary to build a separate
life skills education program for pupils in all the grades of pre-tertiary education.
For the time being, the knowledge about these skills should be incorporated into
lessons delivered at schools, and be provided to teachers (Tien Dung, 2009).
In order to develop the program effectively, it is first and foremost needed tosurvey the present knowledge base of the students and design programs suitable
to different ages and to specific purposes.

3. Research methods
Taking my advantage as a teacher of College Study Skill in Hoa Sen University,
one of the universities advocating teaching life skills in Hochiminh City, I havechosen mainly students and teachers in my school to conduct in-depth interviews
about life skill courses they have ever taken, how they think they are changed
after those courses, and from where they take up certain life skills they think they
are good at. I have also interviewed life skills teachers about how they conduct
their classes, and the effects on their students that they hope to exert, and toteachers who are not teaching life skills about whether they incorporate any

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training in life skills in their classes. I also interview students from otheruniversities that do not offer any life skill classes, such as Open University of
Hochiminh City, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Huflit University,
etc, to see whether there is any difference in the confidence in life skills among
these students and students at Hoa Sen University.
Although life skills cover a very wide scope of skills as discussed in the earlier
part of this paper, in this section, I will give examples of only three skills that are
taught in Hoa Sen University: communication skills, critical thinking skills andstudy skills.

4. How are life skills being taught in universities?
Life skills are taught using mainly two teaching methods: teaching through theory
and teaching through a lot of practices, activities.
In-class activities can be divided into two main types: one is activities that are
directly related to the background familiar to students, and another is activities
that simulate environments that students are not exposed to yet, such as working
places, offices.

My own class of College study skill is a good example of the first type.
Students have to do a variety of activities and homework relating to theskill they study in every lesson. These activities are closely connected tothe objectives of the lesson. For instant, for a lesson on Taking note in
lectures, students have to practice to take note of TV news,
documentaries at home.
Teachers of Research methodology classes told me that they assign theirstudents to practice immediately the research steps that are taught inclass, for example, students have to write a research proposal when theylearn the lesson about writing research proposal.
In short, activities in these classes are put right in the context that is close to thedescription in the lesson and at the same time familiar with students, whichenables students to practice these skills right at school or at home.
The second type of activities can be found in classes that teach skills more usedin the society, rather than in academic context. Teachers of Communication skill

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classes shared with me in interviews about the communication scenarios they
design to help students learn communication rules. The scenarios these teachers
employ usually are in business environment, such as how to encourage aconfused customer tell the learner (in role of a salesman) what he is looking for ina shop, or how to cooperate with two partners who has personal dislikes against
each other when the learner is in role of a manager, etc.
Besides practice, the theory of the skills are also emphasized. Students can learn
skills in communication, research, thinking, studying, etc, from what theyexperience directly in their daily lives and this process might already start sinceyoung ages.
By teaching theory, teachers expect that students can remember what they aretaught in classes and turn knowledge into practice in real life. With a lot ofpractice in real life, new skills can stick with a person to become his habit.
Theories taught in skill classes can vary depending on each teacher’s perception
and belief about the role of practice and theory in helping their students be able
to actually apply the skills in real life. Theories are to empower students with theunderstanding of the rationales behind actions, behaviours, etc, in the otherwords, to let students know why people behave, learn, communicate, or think incertain ways.
Learning theories together with practicing can also enhance what students
already know about certain skills from experience. Many students think that they
already know some basic skills such as reading skill, thinking skill,communication skill, but actually their knowledge learned from experience are
only partial and applied to limited circumstances. Knowledge they learn from skill
classes is more general and thus students can find the use for them in various
circumstances.

The main objectives of Communication Skill courses are to equip students
with the theory on principles in communication so that they can handle
communication with more understanding about personal psyches and why
they react in those certain ways, rather than just following the hunch or habit
as before. So

when they have a quarrel, students will not judge theinterlocutor by his or her reactions, but rather can react by theirunderstanding of that person’s temperaments, and motives.

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8Critical thinking skill classes aim not to make students winners in all
discussions or debates, but rather make them reason better and know how to
examine an object from different perspectives.
Besides, teaching theories can help students to save time and energy to go
through all the failures and learning from failures.

5. The effectiveness of teaching life skills
The effectiveness of teaching life skills can be measured by the extent to which
students can actually apply what they learn at school in their life. Teachers aim
for effectiveness in both long term and short term.
For long term objectives, students are expected to be able to recall and apply thetheory that they learned at school. Some teachers of life skill courses predict thiscan happen when students are more mature and find the use for skills they havelearned in their work and lives, or when they are actually put into the contexts
similar to the scenarios practiced in class. Not only teachers, but students I
interviewed also emphasize the importance of theory. A student told me that she
wishes to attend a class on Public Speaking skill, even though she has
experienced enough public speaking opportunities now, she still wants toparticipate into one class on this subject. She wants to attend a class packed withtheory of the steps to give effective presentations.
For short term objectives, teachers expect that the skills they teach in class canbe applied right away to fulfill real-life tasks that students face at the present.

For instant, in one class on Communication Skill, one teacher described tome the various scenarios that she introduced in class to make students
discuss or act roles to find out what is the best way to react in thosecircumstances if they meet the similar situations in real life. According to thisteacher, basic etiquettes such as making a phone call, shaking hands are
known to all learners without taking Communication skill class. So the teacher
rather uses very awkward situations in which no matter how thecommunicators react, they still have to accept some loss. The key point of
conversation hence shifts from merely having a conversation, to how toconverse while calculating the gain against the loss and eliminate the loss tothe minimum. She also uses clips taken from TV drama series, especially

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clips that show awkward conversation situations to introduce to the students
in class. Most of the scenarios are taken from business context, such as
conversation between a manager and his business partner. The teacher
hopes that when students face the same situation in real lives, they can havethe ability to analyse the reason why it happens the way it does, and react
wisely.
Students are usually bored with lectures packed with too much theory, and theyfind skill classes are not an exception. Classes of this type tend to include a lot of
in-class activities, yet students find these activities are not really helpful because
the scenarios or discussion topics are not directly related to their current student
life or are rarely encountered in real life.

One student described to me his Communication skill class. Theories areheavy and conveyed not in a listener-friendly way that gives students hardtime to fully concentrate. The scenario is not real to the student because
he has never been in the same situation to know how to react
appropriately. He thinks he can apply those skills when he starts working
in a company.
Thus, discussion topics, scenarios, in-class activities should be very close to theexperience and backgrounds of students and from these experiences, teachers
should help students to withdraw lessons, principles for more general cases
rather than providing the students with a completely new horizons and students
will wonder when they will actually see these cases in real life.
While teachers see the effectiveness of life skills classes in term of the prospectof applicability of skills in the long run, students usually measure theeffectiveness by seeing whether the classes help them at all at the present. Theirmotto is “You learn what you need right now.” A group of students said theCommunication skill class they took would be of more help if the scenariosteachers make them to discuss about in class are more real to them, more likethe daily conversations and situations that they are facing everyday. All thestudents I interview say they like to take life skill classes that are directly related
to what they need to improve at that moment. For example, before enteringcollege, they wished to be equipped with better communication and public
speaking skills for they believe that those skills are necessary at college. For
students in their senior year, they wish to take classes that teach skills necessary
for working life such as communication skill, presentation skill, etc.

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10The effectiveness of teaching life skills might be decided by various factors, notjust by the teacher and how he operates his class.
In the interview, I ask students about the study skills they think they are good at.
And when asked from where they learned those skills, students, both those whohave taken classes in Study skill and those who have not, all give credit to theexperience they are exposed to that makes them master those skills.
More often than not, several life skills including study skill, communication skill,skill of overcoming stress are taught in family or in the environment to which aperson is exposed to since childhood. Family guidance is certainly a major
implication on a person’s adeptness at dealing with various situations in life. Thisimplication is emphasized by both teachers and students in my interview. During
the interviews with students, I found out that although family plays a significant
role in educating a person with proper social skills, it is not as influencing when it
comes to academic and thinking skills. Family usually gives guidance mainly interm of social etiquettes, or appropriate social manners, and not much can besaid about other skills such as public speaking, or critical thinking skills.
New skills are also picked up along the way. The changing environment from astrict high-school learning environment to a freer one in college is also anexperience that forces many students to equip themselves with new skills. Since
there is a big gap between studying in high-school and college, many students
report that they find themselves unfamiliar with the way classes are conducted
and the assignments in college. Very often, students mark their first year atcollege as a difficult time when they are not familiar with taking lecture notes,
writing research papers, communicating with classmates from many different
backgrounds.
Several interviewees remember their college time as a time for enhancing lecturenote taking skill, or reading skill, for these skills are the most fundamental ones
that a student will have to learn sooner or later to cope with demands in college. I
found a more proactive attitude in another group of students who are from a
university where skill classes are offered and other non-skill courses encourage
students to involve in group work, presentation giving assignments, in-classdiscussions. For example, classes that require students working in groups
enhance their communication, and the ability to defend their opinions and help
them to change the old habit of agreeing with whatever others say. Classes thatmake students produce presentations help students overcome stage fright, andlearn to express their ideas better. The improvement of skills is observed among

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students who are imposed to several opportunities to practice the skills in non-lifeskill classes.
Last but not least, each student’s attributes and personality also have
implications on how effectively teaching of life skills can work on him. The extent
to which a person can adopt new skills depends very much on that person’s own
will. If the person is willing to change himself, open himself to new knowledge andis enthusiastic about developing his capability, serious with his own life, he ismost likely to learn a great deal from life skill classes. Life skill classes are only
an exterior motivation and this motivation is short lived, whereas interior
motivation such as the desire to develop oneself to the fullest will be the longlasting force to keep a student focus on training himself with the new skills.

6. Conclusion
The necessity of teaching life skills is recognized only very recently in Vietnam.
Together with this recognition, classes on these skills are offered in universities,
vocational schools, and more frequently, in the form of short-term classes intraining centers at considerably high prices. The society is hoping to improve thequality of its citizens, and universities re expecting to train more active learners.
Self-help books are published in massive amount and immediately capture theattention of young readers and of their teachers, and parents. However, the lackof cooperation between all these factors lead to a picture of a construction site inwhich the main theme is to build up life skills, yet in separate corner of thisconstruction site is a trainer working on his own, and unaware of what the others
are doing.
Life skills, therefore, should be taught in conjunction with other subjects, rather
than as a separate disconnected subject as the way it is taught now. Given thefact that skills can be acquired through practices and experiences, sufficientamount of time should be invested into these classes. However , life skills aretaught in universities in these recent years just as any other courses, under hightime pressure and there is no training given to teachers. These shortages leave
teachers with a lot of difficulties in how to plan a lesson to bring the highest result.
So besides classes dedicated only to teach life skills, life skill teaching should
also be incorporated in other subjects where teachers should give students
opportunities to practice critical thinking, communication, group work, time
management, etc. Therefore, the interconnection between subjects taught in a

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school is of very high importance because it can give the teachers a helicopter
vision of what are required in other subjects and how they can cooperate witheach other in term of teaching methodology to boost students’ skills to the fullest.

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