A CLOSER LOOK AT WRITING SKILLS AND CULTURE: GLOBAL CLASSROOM SESSION WITH HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

PEKAN, 21 August 2026 – Students enrolled in the ULE1212 Essential English for Preliminary Semester (2026/2027) course at Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah (UMPSA) recently participated in an enriching Global Classroom session aimed at strengthening their English writing skills, particularly in sentence construction, while broadening their cultural awareness.

Conducted online via Google Meet, the session brought together more than 40 first-year Diploma students from various programmes at UMPSA and an English lecturer from Hanoi Open University, Vietnam, Hoang Thi Thanh.

Drawing on her expertise in tourism and English language teaching, Thanh incorporated elements of Vietnamese culture into the lesson to engage the students, particularly those from engineering programmes. By integrating cultural content into language activities, the session provided an engaging approach to learning sentence construction while creating a meaningful opportunity for cross-cultural interaction.

Although the session focused primarily on helping students master different sentence types, it offered much more than language practice. Through examples related to Vietnam, students were introduced to Vietnamese culture, experiences, and ways of life, making the lesson feel like a virtual visit to the country. At the same time, they strengthened their ability to construct simple, compound, and complex sentences while gaining insights into Vietnamese culture and everyday experiences.

The session also fostered cultural exchange in both directions, as students had the opportunity to learn about Vietnamese culture while sharing aspects of their own culture and experiences. In this way, the session went beyond a conventional language lesson and became a platform for broadening perspectives, encouraging intercultural understanding, and demonstrating how English can connect people from different countries and cultural backgrounds.

Overall, the Global Classroom initiative not only provides a platform for meaningful online language learning but also exposes students to different teaching approaches and cultural perspectives. More importantly, such international learning experiences can help students develop greater confidence in communicating in English while preparing them to engage more effectively with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Prepared by: Siti Ainun Jariyah Hassan & Hamizah Zahari