The focus group with the instructors were hold openly and all of them felt no annoyance or intimidation during the interview and it helped the researcher to access their deep feelings, perceptions and decisions about the research topic. A micro analysis was carried out and the findings can be divided into major themes equivalent to the findings from the surveys as follows.
4.2.1. Professional knowledge and skills
The findings from the instructors‘ perspectives show that the program
provided with basic knowledge of English language, an understanding of methods of teaching English as a foreign language to young learners, and the knowledge of designing activities to teach English to young learners. Besides, the students were equipped with skills of assessing and evaluating development needs of young learners; students were able to design and organize learning, educating and taking-care activities for young learners;
students had the skills of critical thinking, doing research, communications and autonomy.
On analyzing the instructors‘ conceptualizations of effective components of the program, they mentioned English language proficiency syllabuses (See appendix 1 to 13), methods to make young learners familiar with English (See appendix 14), designing activities to make young learners familiar with English (See appendix 15); and they all missed out four other syllabuses including speaking translation (See appendix 16), writing translation (See appendix 17), English literature for young learners (See appendix 18), English grammar (See appendix 19) and level 3 in Vietnamese standardized test of English proficiency (See appendix 20). One instructor explained that English language syllabuses helped the students with good delivery of the lessons, and the method syllabus (See appendix 14) helped the students with good organization of the class and better understanding of teaching English to young learners.
The findings reveal that the instructors mostly had an agreement on the suitability of the program. However, two instructors mentioned the need to boost the program, it is to deliver more syllabuses using ‗socializing budgets‘, and provide more practice time for the students. Other instructors focused on the lack of a separate syllabuses for culture, especially cultures of English- speaking countries.
The instructors emphasized on the need to change the balance between theory and practice in the program. Two instructors expressed the need to have more theory lessons on syllabus 14 (See appendix 14). It was because
‗there are a lot of different methods to deliver to the students, and the students need to prepare the situations by themselves, and in the classroom, the instructor will only check and give solutions to the situations,‘ one instructor confirmed. Then, the instructors expressed the external need to teach the syllabuses of methods in teaching young learners in general first before teaching English syllabuses. It was explained as to give a better understanding of teaching at kindergarten before familiarizing with teaching English. Last but not least, some instructors paid attention to the internal need to update methods used at bilingual or multi-intelligent schools so that the program could closely meet the demand of the society in general.
4.2.2. Personal development
The findings reveal most of the instructors agreed upon the program provided the students with basic and necessary knowledge and skills to become kindergarten teachers. However, they expressed their concerns about the following issues in the personal development of the students. Firstly, the students had difficulties in acquiring English language, which caused them a lot of struggles in delivering a good lesson. The instructors proved that by citing the comments from the schools their students came for internship.
Secondly, the students need to improve their communication skills so that they can communicate with the parents and the students and organize the class better and that the instructors said they even experienced that some of their students could not say a word in the internship lesson. An instructor found the explanation in the shyness of the students, who always felt that they could not speak good English. The instructors went on to talk of the need to
teach cultures to promote confidence and communication skills among students.
The findings from the instructors‘ perspectives show that their students had weaknesses, especially in English language proficiency and the methods to teach English to young children. Some other instructors mentioned their students‘ awareness of learning English – they explained that their students did not pay enough attention to the learning process. However, there were several strong points to outweigh the weaknesses of their students‘ personal development. The findings show that most of the students had good attitudes toward learning and trained themselves to be a flexible and responsible kindergarten teacher in the future. Besides, the students knew how to organize their own learning process and organize good in-class lessons.
4.2.3. Methodological issues
On accessing the instructors‘ own comments on methods. They agreed that their methods used to deliver the program were suitable with some drawbacks. They need to read more and think of their own personal development to update more methods to teach; one instructor talked of the differences among their expertise practices and that they have to learn a lot to change themselves; last but not least, they agreed that they have to have a
‗close look‘ at the bilingual schools in the area and also in Vietnam so that they can update more methods.