On the morning of 22th May, HCMCOU organized the 9^th OpenTESOL International Conference 2021 under the theme of “Language Education in Challenging Times: Designing Digital Transformations”. The OpenTESOL Conference has been organized by the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​and the Graduate School of HCMCOU since 2012. Since 2016, OpenTESOL has been upgraded as an International Conference.

Due to the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, this year's conference continues to be held virtually. There are 50 presentations by speakers and experts in TESOL sector, applied linguistics as well as Chinese and Japanese major uploaded on the conference website (http://opentesol.ou.edu.vn/2021conference) from May 21^st to 31^st, 2021.

This year's OpenTESOL conference has attracted more than 800 participants including scientists, administrators, researchers, lecturers, graduates majoring in TESOL as well as Applied Linguistics sector, and students in Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching from over 500 universities along with educational and training institutions from more than 50 countries. The 9th OpenTESOL also selected more 42 yearbook essays published in proceedings from international researchers and lecturers from the countries: the United States, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom. … along with many domestic authors.

At the conference, scientists, researchers, lecturers, teachers, delegates, the main speakers are prestigious scholars in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), including: Prof. Yilin Sun (from Seattle College, Seattle, WA, USA) ; Assoc. Prof. Andy Gao ( from University of New South Wales, Australia) ; Ms. Nicky Hockly (from The Consultants-E Foundation, UK) ; Ms. Tran Thi Thuy ( from Duc Hop High School, Hung Yen Province, Vietnam) ; Ms. Dinh Nguyen Thien An (from University of Economics and Finance, Ho Chi Minh City (UEF), Vietnam), together exchanged expertise, reported research; shared teaching and research experiences in the context of social distancing is still a mandatory requirement in some countries around the world and international flights are not yet ready to reopen in Vietnam.

Speaking at the conference by Prof. Dr. Nguyen Minh Ha – The President of Ho Chi Minh City Open University: Technology and Education always supplement and promote each other's development. In this conference, technology continues to give lecturers, teachers, experts and researchers the opportunity to listen to the up-to-date reports in the field of Language teaching from leading experts around the world.

 “We are here to share the latest achievements in language teaching innovation as well as the diversification of technology application in education, etc. Thereby together we build and accumulate the most useful experience for your teaching career. Therefore, we hope that this conference will receive contributions from all of scholars," said Prof. Ha.