In contemporary Cambodia, demands for the teaching of English continue to increase.  In particular, the demand for teachers of English has markedly increased as changing national systems and global concerns have created an interdependent world.  English has been viewed by the Royal Government of Cambodia as an indispensable tool of development and by individuals as the language of opportunity for career advancement. In addition, this language has been accepted as the international medium of communication in business, science and technology, politics, mass media, information, and tourism, and it is the language predominantly used on the World Wide Web.

Notwithstanding the widespread acceptance of the need for English in Cambodia, there are relatively few opportunities for teachers to upgrade their knowledge and skills in teaching it.  The Associate’s Degree in Education, majoring in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (A.Ed. in TESOL) is distinctive in its focus on actual experiential learning – students plan lessons, observe classes, and conduct practicum in real English classroom settings. 

The A.Ed. in TESOL program is designed for those who wish to teach English in public and/or private institutions. A part from this, this program aims to meet the need for professional development among the growing number of suitably qualified teachers of English in Cambodia.  The program is based on the conviction that teachers need a well-rounded, principled understanding of their practices. It, therefore, reviews the current state of knowledge from a critical point of view, thus encouraging teachers to develop their own opinions on current issues.  It also takes into account the specific context and the changing trends of learning and teaching English in our fast-changing Cambodia.

The program is composed of 21 courses which are taught through two consecutive academic years. The first academic year comprises ten courses among which eight courses focus on students’ English language development, one course focuses on computer study, and one more course is about development of students’ logic and critical thinking skills. The first year program aims to improve the students’ English language proficiency skills so that they are able to use English for effective communication. 

In the second academic year, six more English courses are taught to expand students’ English language proficiency skills to ensure that the students have enough confidence in using English for communication and teaching purposes. One course focuses on human development, and four other courses deal with English language teaching methodology and teaching practice to develop students’ English language teaching competency in various effective teaching methods and approaches.  

A.A. in TESOL

Notes:   

- ⁽¹⁾ ENGL 110 is pre-requisite for ENGL 120.

- ⁽²⁾ ENGL 150 is pre-requisite for ENGL200, ENGL 201 and ENGL300.

- ⁽³⁾ ENGL 130 is pre-requisite for ENGL 202.

- ⁽⁴⁾ ENGL 140 is pre-requisite for ENGL 205.

- ⁽⁵⁾ ENGL 201 is pre-requisite for ENGL 204 and ENGL 307.

- ⁽⁶⁾ EDUC 400 and ⁽⁷⁾ EDUC 402 are pre-requisite for EDUC 403 and EDUC 408.

- ⁽⁸⁾ EDUC 408 cannot be taken unless all the required courses are already taken. However, in case there are only

      three courses left the student can consult the Dean/Associate Dean to check if all the three courses can be taken

      at the same time.  

Course Descriptions

ENGL 110      English I: Reading and Composition (3 credits)

This course is designed to enable students of the foundation year to improve their reading and writing skills at an intermediate level. The students will read a wide range of interesting texts related to real situations. All the texts will enhance students’ reading competence through guided and independent reading activities for both academic work and pleasure. In addition to the reading skills, the students will develop their writing skills ranging from writing meaningful paragraphs to composing meaningful short essays which include descriptive essays, narrative essays, cause-effect essays, problem-solution essays, and opinion essays. To make this course more fun and productive, a variety of approaches and interactive practice activities will be employed. Those include student-centered, communicative, cooperative learning, task-based and project-based approaches, and communicative and interactive practice activities. The students are also required to do assignments and projects individually, in pairs, and/or in groups.

COMP 110    Introduction to Computers (4 Credits)

This course is one of the general education courses in the Foundation Year program required by PUC to familiarize the students to the use of computer as an efficient tool for their study and work. It is designed to provide non-IT students an overview of how computer work, fundamental concepts and basic terminologies of computer system, mobile devices, network system (both hardware and software) and computer security, computer assembly, and troubleshooting. This course also enables students to install basic software such MS Windows Operating System, to set up printer and scanner, and to use MS Office such as MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

ENGL 150      English Grammar in Context I (3 credits)

This course is designed to develop the students’ language competency in English grammar at an intermediate level. A Communicative Language Teaching Approach is applied to ensure that the grammar is introduced implicitly through various reading texts, and it is practiced interactively in class. The course covers a large range of English language structures which include all English tenses, phrasal verbs, modals, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, gerunds and infinitives, and articles. In addition, four macro-skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing are integrated and practiced to enable the students to develop those four skills for their academic and employment purposes. 

ENGL 130      English Phonetics and Pronunciation I (3 credits)

This course is designed primarily to enable students of the foundation year to improve their pronunciation of English so that they can acquire a near-native accent and be understood more easily by native speakers in both formal and informal situations. The students are expected to develop a basic understanding of the sound system of English, and to develop phonics, phonemic and phonological awareness by looking into how English sounds operate at word and discourse levels. The main features of English pronunciation, such as the individual sounds of English consonants and vowels, word endings, strong and weak forms, contractions, linking, sentence and word stress, rhythm and intonation are covered in the course.

ENGL 120      English II: Reading and Composition (3 credits)

Continuing from ENGL 110, this course aims to further enhance students’ reading and writing skills at an intermediate level. The students will read various interesting texts on different topics and themes related to real situations. All the texts will enhance students’ reading competence through guided and independent reading activities for both academic work and pleasure. In addition to the reading skills, the students will develop skills in writing longer essays which include descriptive essays, narrative essays, cause-effect essays, problem-solution essays, compare and contrast essays, opinion essays, persuasive essays, and summaries of reading texts. To make this course more fun and productive, a variety of approaches and interactive practice activities will be employed in class. Those include student-centered, communicative, cooperative learning, task-based and project-based approaches, and lots of communicative and interactive practice activities. The students are also required to do assignments and projects individually, in pairs, and/or in groups.

ENGL 200      English Grammar in Context II (3 Credits)

This course aims to develop the students’ language competency in English grammar at a high-intermediate level. The grammar is taught through reading texts of various topics such as customs, wedding, sports and exercises, health, science, small businesses, and everyday life. The students will study selected types of English tenses in both active and passive voice, possessive and reflexive pronouns, subject-verb agreements, determiners such as some, any, a lot of, etc., adjectives, adverbs, noun modifiers, pronouns, clauses, modals, gerunds, infinitives, comparison of adjectives and adverbs, articles, etc. In addition, this course integrates speaking and writing activities which require the students to apply their grammar knowledge and understanding.

ENGL 140      Listening and Speaking Development (3 credits)

This course is designed to develop oral communication skills of undergraduates at an intermediate level. Grammatical structures and vocabulary of English are presented in contexts and are practiced through real speaking and listening situations and natural settings to get students to be accustomed to natural English language spoken by both native and non-native speakers of English. Students are stimulated to express their opinions by a wide range of pictures, photographs, advertisements, tables and diagrams, drawings and data, with various authentic listening and reading texts. All speaking and listening practice activities are task-based and are much related to various real life contexts and situations to encourage students to be involved in classroom interaction and participation, critically solve problems, describe their real life experiences, exchange ideas and information, and participate in role-plays, simulations and discussions to enhance their communication competence. In order to promote high quality of learning performance and achieve student learning outcomes, many different teaching and learning approaches, such as learner-centered, task-based, communicative, cooperative and participatory approaches are integrated. Although this course focuses on speaking and listening skills, reading and writing skills are also integrated to a certain degree of their necessity.

ENGL 201      Writing Development I (3 credits)

This course is designed to develop academic writing competency and proficiency of undergraduates at a high-intermediate level. This course enables students, first, to prepare and organize their writing based on some common characteristics such as coherence, cohesion, unity and completeness; then, to understand how important it is to collect relevant data and information from various sources to write successful essays; finally, to write process essays, expository essays, comparison/contrast essays, argumentative essays, paraphrase and summary effectively.

PHIL 210       Logic and Critical Thinking (3 Credits)

Students will be introduced to the basic methods and principles of logic. Students will study and apply various methods to test arguments, and apply the principles of logic, through various exercises, puzzles, and problem solving, to develop critical thinking skills. Students will study assorted forms of false reasoning and examine possible applications of this study in academic and non-academic life.

ENGL 205      English for Effective Communication (3 credits)

This high-intermediate level course is specifically designed to improve students’ technical English language skills in effective oral communication in business and different work settings. It enables students to use English effectively for a variety of business and working activities, such as conducting meetings, discussions, debates, presentations, negotiations, telephoning, etc. The course consists of a wide range of English language structures and competencies or functions related to different working environments to enhance students’ language communication competence. Students are expected to practically work hard through a large number of speaking and listening practice activities related to various real working situations.

ENGL 202      English Phonetics and Pronunciation II (3 credits)

Continuing from ENGL 130, this course reviews the main features of English pronunciation and discusses the differences between spelling and pronunciation. Many different spelling rules, rules for stress placement in words of two or more syllables, and other rules for other pronunciation features are applied so that students will be able to pronounce English clearly and accurately. The pronunciation problems that Khmer learners normally face due to their mother-tongue language sound influence are highlighted and clearly demonstrated to differentiate the sounds between English and Khmer. A variety of classroom practice activities including listening to the tapes is required.   

PSYC 212       Personal Growth and Development (3 Credits)

This course is designed to teach discipline, good behaviors, positive attitude, self-respect and self-confidence at the university as well as in the society. It will also teach study skills and time management for success in college as well as in life. Buddhist as well as western philosophies and thoughts are essential parts of this course. Students can learn how to value life and develop virtues, molding themselves after great heroes. The way to obtain the “positive mental attitudes” is taught through this course.

ENGL 300      Advanced English Grammar in Context (3 credits)

This course is designed to improve language accuracy, fluency and proficiency of advanced learners in both spoken and written forms. The course includes a large range of grammatical structures, such as passive voice, questions, question tags, modal verbs, countable and uncountable nouns, articles, comparative and superlative, and verb patterns (gerunds and infinitives), all types of clauses (noun clauses, adjective clauses, adverb clauses), phrasal verbs, discourse markers (linking words and transitions), ellipsis, modifiers, inversion, hypothesizing, and conditionals. These grammatical structures will be presented and practiced using learner-centered, communicative and participatory approaches. Both, accuracy and fluency are practiced through a variety of activities including controlled, less-controlled and free productive speaking and writing techniques designed and collected by the instructor. These teaching methods, techniques and approaches will make students feel that learning grammar is fun. 

ENGL 204      Writing Development II (3 credits)

Continuing from ENGL 201, this course is designed to develop academic writing competency and proficiency of undergraduates at a high-intermediate level. This course puts great emphasis, first of all, on revision of some basic grammatical structures for academic writing and on revision of all types of essays; and secondly, on expansion of essay writing, especially all types of essays which include process essays, expository essays, comparison/contrast essays, and argumentative essays.

ENGL 400      English for the Teacher of TESOL (3 credits)

English Language Development for the Teacher of TESOL is designed to improve English language skills and competency of English teachers whose first language is not English. It focuses particularly on the language skills, specific classroom language instructions and competence that teachers need for use in the classroom, for their teaching career, for their further teacher development studies and teacher-training in English, and for making work-related contacts. All content, topics, issues and classroom practice activities are highly relevant to real teaching and learning contexts so that teachers will be able to learn both English language competencies for teaching as well as other skills related to teaching and learning English language. This course focuses on improving all the four skills: Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing.

ENGL 307      Professional writing (3 credits)

This course is designed to reinforce undergraduates’ writing competency, and to improve their high-level writing proficiency demanded in business and other professions. The course enables students to use effective writing guidelines to write effective informal and formal letters for business at the work place; effective cover letters, CVs or résumés, and applications for successful job seeking; memos, faxes, and e-mails at work; winning proposals and effective short and long reports; advertisements, information leaflets and brochures. The students will also learn to fill up different forms, such as job application forms, visa application forms, and scholarship application forms. Learner-centered, cooperative, participatory and task-based approaches are highly recommended to reinforce and enhance students’ learning efficiency and competency.

EDUC 400      Introduction to TESOL (3 credits)

Introduction to TESOL is designed to prepare students of the B.A. in TESOL program for their Methodology in TESOL courses and their future English language teaching career. This course focuses on two main components: practical classroom training input and real classroom observation. Practical classroom training input makes those pre-service students partly aware of what a professional language teaching career is like. Specifically it deals with real classroom situations such as teacher and students’ behaviors, teaching and learning problems, and other issues. Those pre-service students will learn a range of skills such as how to create an effective learning environment, how to motivate students, how to manage the classroom effectively, how to handle heterogeneous classes, how to tackle misbehaviors and discipline problems of students with free of both physical and emotional harms, how to give effective instructions for classroom practices, how to continue developing their teaching skills after the end of their training and how to act as a role model for their students. In order to see how those theories and skills of teaching and learning are applied in the real world of English language teaching, those pre-service students will be required to conduct real English language classroom observations. Students will write observation reports and present them before the class at the end of the course.

EDUC 402      Methodology in TESOL I (3 credits)

This course is designed to practically train students to teach English grammar and vocabulary communicatively. That means the new grammatical structures and vocabulary are presented through real-life contexts. Various presentation and practice techniques, with very clear procedures, for teaching and practice grammatical structures and vocabulary are demonstrated for and practiced by students. Different sample lesson plans for teaching new grammatical items and new vocabulary items are provided. A variety of workshops in lesson planning, peer teaching and feedback sessions are included to enable the students, first, be able to demonstrate those presentation and practice techniques for introducing and practicing new grammatical structures and vocabulary by following the correct procedures in an efficient manner; second, to plan effective lessons for teaching new grammatical structures and new vocabulary using the learner-centered and communicative language teaching approaches; then, to further understand the importance of and practice accuracy and fluency during the grammatical structure or vocabulary lessons; and finally, to demonstrate their planned lessons and share constructive feedback among their peers during peer teaching workshops.

ENGL 401      English Proficiency Testing (3 credits)

This workshop-like course aims primarily at upgrading students’ English proficiency and at teaching them how to do TOEFL/IELTS tests. This course is divided into two parts. The first part is the revision of the English syntax, semantics, phonology, and stylistics, covering the four macro skills of English learning: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The second part is a more practical process. The teacher provides instructions and guides the students in doing various TOEFL/IELTS tests that are selected and organized in order of degrees of difficulty and interest. The test results will be kept in a portfolio that will be used as the basis for assessing the student learning outcomes. 

EDUC 403      Methodology in TESOL II (3 credits)

This course is designed to train students how to effectively teach the four language skills, namely speaking, writing, reading and listening. A large number of techniques for those four skills will be demonstrated by the trainer and practiced by all students in the class. As this course is highly practical and hands-on, the class will be asked to practice making lesson plans, to demonstrate those planned lessons and to give constructive feedback during lesson planning workshops and peer teaching sessions. Integrated skills are also introduced and practiced in each main language skill-focused lesson. In addition, the course will help students to develop weekly and monthly teaching plans in which the skill-focused lessons should be well-balanced so that the students are able to have equal access to learn and practice each skill.

EDUC 408      Practicum in TESOL (3 credits)

This course is designed for TESOL students who have already completed all in-classroom courses related to methodology in TESOL or teaching English as a second language, to primarily gain experiential knowledge of real teaching through the application of teaching and learning theories and skills learned from the training. The Practicum consists of four phases: Practicum Orientation, Classroom Observation, Real Teaching Practice, and Writing Practicum Report. The students who observe their peers or home-classroom teachers will give some constructive feedback at an appropriate time to improve their teaching skills. Each student will be asked to conduct several lessons, a few of which will be observed and assessed by a home-classroom teacher and a practicum supervisor. The details of this course are provided in the Practicum Guide manual.