Reasons why students cannot speak English

According to Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Huu, Director of the National Foreign Language Project, Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam is among the group of countries using English as a foreign language. Currently, statistics on the English ability of Vietnamese people are not scientific because this requires criteria, tools and accurate sampling methods.

"In general, Vietnamese people's basic English proficiency each year achieves better results than the previous year. Learning is also easier because our writing is similar to English, unlike Chinese or Thai," said Ms. Huu, at the 11th International Conference on Foreign Language Assessment New Directions East Asia on October 28 in Hanoi.

However, Ms. Huu said that it is very difficult to have an even level across the country. The first reason is the large population and not everyone has the motivation to learn English.

Many students with high test scores still cannot speak English because the teaching in schools is still inadequate. First, in the old general education program (2006 program), with academic teaching methods, students learn more about vocabulary, grammar, and phonetics than listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

Second, English is a subject that develops skills and abilities, so it should be used and practiced as much as possible. However, students do not have an environment to listen and speak. Class sizes are large, and even working in groups or pairs is still limited in time and space.

"Many places lack the infrastructure to support effective English learning," Ms. Huu shared.

Finally, the high school graduation exam does not have a Listening and Speaking section, which somewhat negatively impacts the teaching and learning process, because without the exam, teachers and students do not invest.

Ms. Mina Patel, examination expert, British Council, agrees with this view. According to her, learning will be effective when there are two factors: motivation and learning conditions.

Everyone in the world, not just Vietnamese, has the ability to learn a language. The difference is only in the conditions they find in the learning environment. If the motivation only comes from the surface, such as the need to pass an exam, it is not strong enough to push each learner to achieve greater results.

She said to let students come into the classroom with an interest and a desire to learn. If they see a purpose in learning English rather than passively receiving it, they will be more engaged and motivated.

To do that, teachers need to adjust their teaching methods. They need to actively communicate with students and find out what they are interested in so they can design the most suitable curriculum.

The innovation in English training is to develop learners' ability to use communicative language, according to Ms. Huu. According to the new general education program (2018), English is a compulsory subject from grades 3 to 12. Students are encouraged to listen more and then gradually improve their skills, naturally. The goal is to finish primary school, students will reach level 1 according to Vietnam's 6-level foreign language competency framework. Similarly, the goals for junior high school and high school are level 2 and level 3, respectively.

Ms. Huu said that the program was piloted, and students had fairly equal listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, especially good listening and speaking. Currently, the 2018 program has only been widely applied to grade 4, so it will take 6-8 years for a final evaluation.

From 2020 to present, the average English score in the high school graduation exam of candidates nationwide has fluctuated between 4.58-5.84/10 points. In 4 years, there have been two times when English was "at the bottom" in graduation exam scores.