Speaker
Description
Fostering learners’ self-awareness of progress in the primary ESL classroom is often constrained by children’s cognitive and linguistic limitations (Cameron, 2001). However, my classroom practice has always supported encouraging autonomy from an early age, because, as Dam (2009) claims, even young learners can reflect and take ownership of their own learning when provided with age-appropriate structures and support. Additionally, in Vietnamese primary ESL classrooms, assessment is often associated with grades, tests, and teacher evaluation, limiting opportunities for learners to recognise and reflect on their own progress. This highlights the need for assessment practices that foster learner autonomy and progress awareness from an early age. This workshop explores outcomes of a classroom-based action research exploring how autonomy-directed assessment and reflective practices can help Vietnamese primary learners better understand their own progress. The study used learner diaries, reflective tasks, and autonomy-directed assessment tools to help learners identify, record, and monitor their progress more effectively. The session introduces key concepts related to assessment, self-regulation, and learner autonomy while encouraging participants to reflect on their own classroom practices. The workshop then discusses findings from a classroom-based action research intervention conducted with Vietnamese learners aged 8-10. Participants will engage in reflective questions, prediction activities, peer discussion, and classroom examples throughout the session and explore ways to apply the strategies to their own context. By the end of the workshop, attendees will leave with adaptable strategies and practical tools that can be implemented in Vietnamese primary ESL contexts to support learner autonomy and progress awareness.
Biography
Indeewari Mendis is an Academic Coordinator at British Council Vietnam with over ten years of experience in English Language Teaching across Sri Lanka and Vietnam. She has also worked with Indian and Pakistani learners in multilingual online classroom contexts. Indeewari holds Cambridge DELTA qualification and is currently completing the final year of an MA in Education (TESOL - Online) at the University of Chichester in the UK. Her professional interests include assessment, learner autonomy, learner engagement, motivation, and teacher training, with a particular focus on supporting young learners in developing greater ownership of their learning. She recently presented at the IATEFL conference 2026 in Brighton, UK as a Cambridge University Press and Assessment global scholarship winner. Her current research explores reflective assessment practices and their role in helping primary learners recognise and communicate their own progress.
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