Two major UK-based book publishers have recently provided a short English teaching course to elementary school teachers and specialists from district-level education boards in Ho Chi Minh City.

More than 350 grade-1 English teachers and education specialists from 24 city districts attended a three-day teacher training workshop last week jointly organized by Pearson, Oxford University Press, and the local Department of Education and Training.

This is part of the city’s efforts to implement a national project for better teaching the English language to Vietnamese students from now until 2020.

At the workshop, Pearson introduced “Gogo Loves English” and “Goodbye Germs”, two of its elementary courses, to all the course takers in preparation for the so-called “Passion for Reading” session slated for English teaching at local elementary schools in this 2012-13 academic year.

“I think the training is very helpful for all of us,” said Thuy, with a district’s education board. “I like the way the trainer carried out the warm-up activities and the way she taught pronunciation”,

Both based in the UK, Pearson and Oxford are two of the world’s leading publishers of English textbooks.