The English language occupied a specially important status in the increasing development of science, technology, culture and international relations in Vietnam, which has resulted in a growing demand for English Language Teaching (ELT) all over the country. The Hanoi Foreign Languages Teachers' Training College in general and its Department of English in particular plays a very important role in this by producing as many teachers of English as possible for high schools as well as for other Colleges and Universities in Vietnam as a whole. Unfortunately, ELT in Vietnam is still far from satisfactory. There exists a common problem of communicative competence in Vietnamese students, even in Vietnamese teachers of English. ELT at HFLTTC is taken to illustrate the fact that even after five years' training, graduates remain deficient in the ability of language use as well as understanding its use in normal communication. This being the case, how can they carry out effectively the teaching of English to high school pupils or students at other institutions? In this situation, we need to take a serious look at ELT in the Department of English at the HFLTTC so as to suggest suitable materials and methods which will enable the Institution to function more effectively. This project makes an exploratory study of the problem. To provide a context for the study, the background to ELT in the Department of English is reviewed. This is followed by a detailed description of different approaches used in ELT with the reference to the actual activities of teaching and learning in the Department of English. A special emphasis is placed on the difference between conventional approaches and the currently influential one - The Functional- Notional-Approach to language teaching and learning. The basic notions of this approach will be covered and also different categories of functions and categories of situations which the students of English often encounter in using English. Different techniques of teaching functional spoken English will be suggested with an aim to improving the teaching of spoken English in the above-mentioned setting. It is hoped that this project may become a contribution to solving some of the existing problems of inadequate communicative competence of Vietnamese students of English and to teaching and learning English with effective communication skills in the Department of English at the HFLTTC.