English language proficiency is crucial for academic and professional success, with effective communication skills playing a pivotal role. Collaborative teaching methods, particularly group work, can significantly enhance students' creativity, evaluation, synthesis, analysis, and comparison, as well as problem-solving, essential for developing collaborative abilities. Furthermore, non-English major students often struggle to develop their speaking skills due to limited practice opportunities. This study addresses this challenge by implementing group-work activities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. A mixed-methods approach was used to gather data including quantitative data collected through a questionnaire administered to 71 non-major students at Dong Nai Technology University and qualitative data came from semi-structured interviews. The results showed that group work significantly improved students' fluency, coherence, and confidence. Students reported increased motivation and engagement in speaking activities. These findings suggest that group-work activities effectively enhance speaking skills for non-English major students.
The article explores the influence of the mother tongue (Vietnamese) on practicing to develop first-year students’ English writing skills at Thu Dau Mot University. Analytical data was collected from 100 first-year students majoring in English Language at the Faculty of Foreign Languages - Thu Dau Mot University. Research results show that students are still greatly influenced by Vietnamese (first language) in the process of practicing English writing skills. Among the students surveyed, up to 58.4% said they were still influenced by the way of thinking in Vietnamese, and then switched to English to follow the writing style of Vietnamese. … The remaining % said they had practiced writing in English through many writing activities at English centers and had practiced writing through thinking in English. The rest of the article proposes some solutions to help students overcome the above barriers to develop effective writing skills.
This research examines the scholarly literature on technology-based language learning published in the Computer Assisted Language Learning journal-one of the key journals in the field from 1990 to 2019. The researcher randomly selected 30 articles from 257 articles found in this journal during a thirty-year period (one article each year) to analyze the research method trends and the learner types focused in those studies. Results showed that mixed-method research has been more popular in recent years, and this may help academics better understand the connections between classroom environments and technology-enhanced language acquisition. For quantitative analysis, tests and Liker-scale questionnaires are the most used instruments, whereas interviews are the most common approach for qualitative analysis in mixed-method publications. Additionally, when it came to learning levels, researchers focused their attention on college and university students, but they paid no attention to pre-schoolers.
This study aims to investigate students’ common errors in Vietnamese-English translation. For the objectives, 70 first-year students at Foreign Trade University – Ho Chi Minh campus, were invited to participate in this study. To identify students’ errors in Vietnamese-English translation, the participants were asked to complete five weekly assignments. The results revealed that students made grammatical, lexical, and spelling errors. The causes of these observed errors were also indicated, which included the difference between English and Vietnamese, inadequate culture background, students’ insufficient linguistic competence in English language and Vietnamese language, lack of cultural background knowledge, students’ inappropriate translation strategies, interference of Vietnamese, misunderstanding, and students’ carelessness. In addition, some suggestions were offered in the light of the findings identified in the study to help students improve their translation ability.
This study only deals with the range of functions of speech acts that the English language may serve all with a view to raise teachers’ and students’ awareness of the roles that the communicative intentions, the utterance functions and the interactive context play in the acquisition of language in general and in develoing students’ communicative competence in particular. With the aims beforehand, the study tries to analyse and present speech acts and implications for teaching and learning these aspects effectively. With reference to speech acts and their linguistic functions in the English language, this study can serve as a reference material for those who are interested in carrying out more research in this field.
The relationship between language and gender is an interesting topic which has been under discussion over the last few centuries. Throughout the history of language study, lots of studies have been conducted and different linguists have been looking at this issue from different angles. As a socially constructed notion of what is feminine and what is masculine, gender is considered to be closely interrelated to different aspects of our life, especially to our language. From interdisciplinary perspectives with the corpus being the language used in daily communication, the study pointed out various differences between genders both in language use and in aspects of the language used to talk about each gender. From these differences, the study can help us understand a great deal of American culture which, in turns, makes it easy for us to use the language effectively.
In this study, we examine students at Thu Dau Mot University specializing in Food Technology’s speaking and listening skills in English. We conducted a survey on 59 students majoring in Food Technology using the questionnaire approach. Students struggle to develop macro-English abilities like speaking and listening, as seen by their responses. mastering English grammar, vocabulary, and other micro-skills might be challenging. The findings indicate that significant obstacles to learning listening and speaking skills include a lousy sound system, a lack of a communicative context, a limited vocabulary, a lack of cultural understanding, and a fear of making mistakes in communication. The findings also demonstrate that students’ limited exposure to English and weak phonological skills are to blame for their difficulty acquiring pronunciation. Many words are long and complicated, making learning and recalling word parts like verbs, nouns, and adjectives challenging. Many words are also difficult to pronounce. Learning the grammar of verbs and articles is challenging for students. When the challenges are solved, this research aims to effective foreign language learning.
This article presents the results of a study on the current application of Project-based learning (PBL) in the teaching of English productive skills to students at the Foreign Trade University - Ho Chi Minh City Campus and how students can improve them. The research also provides insights into the expectations of students and entrepreneurs on that matter. The research group used the 5-point Likert scale in a questionnaire to collect data from students and interviewed FTU - HCMC’s English teachers and entrepreneurs to give further suggestions. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to analyze whether or not there is a significant difference in students’ English productive skills before and after using PBL in English language learning. This study found a significant difference in speaking skills of FTU - HCMC students before and after participating in PBL activities. The students improved their comprehension, range and the ability to deliver their ideas to the target reader for writing skills. However, no difference was found in their content, cohesion, and accuracy. Interviewed teachers and entrepreneurs supported the implementation of PBL in schools. Overall, PBL is encouraged in the settings of higher education institutions.
Summary:
Context: In the period of Vietnam, gradually developing industrialization and modernization.
Purpose: To research the needs of English language learning among office workers in Hanoi during the aforementioned period.
Methods: Using questionnaires on 120 employees at companies in Hanoi.
Results: Most respondents rarely use English at work. However, they still need to learn foreign languages to improve their professional English or satisfy their self-satisfaction.
Conclusion: Survey is an essential suggestion in English lessons for working people.
This paper explores the pros and cons of using online setting for teaching and learning English comparing with in-class setting. Online setting is undergoing a fast transformation and becomes a widely promoted platform due to COVID-19 pandemic. By reviewing different studies on online teaching, this paper aims to provide readers a better understanding about online setting. These information would be useful in Vietnam where online class just has a medium used and short history comparing with other developed and developing countries, so online class in Vietnam may need adjust and consideration based on different culture and learner’s experience. This paper also give some suggestions in design of online learning for English languages to increase the learning effectiveness.
An effective teacher plays a crucial role in the process of learning English as a foreign language (EFL) when students’ opportunities to English exposure outside the classroom are limited. The aim of this study was to examine professional characteristics that an effective EFL teacher should have as perceived by Taiwanese university students. A four-section questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument, and the study sample included responses from 68 senior students majoring in EFL. The results show that the three most significant characteristics of an effective teacher of English in the eyes of Taiwanese university students are not related specifically to the teacher’s knowledge of the subject or English proficiency level. Those characteristics can be attributed to any teacher, and they include providing clear grading guidelines, giving clear explanations, and preparing each lesson well. The findings may contribute valid information on college students’ expectations of EFL teachers in the Asian educational context and help make the language learning process more effective.
Across the world, the first accounting course provides serious challenges for teaching. These arise from powerful negative perceptions which include the anxiety associated with tertiary-level study and the differing backgrounds or majors of students required to take the course. This paper outlines some examples of nontraditional teaching techniques and highlights how the course could be best structured to overcome such negative views while at the same time responding to the changes in the industry. The design and content of the proposed course emphasizes the USER approach and is directed to English as second language learners. This is a case study in an Australian offshore campus and is the end result of the progressive improvement in the structure and delivery of the course.
This research aims to describe English language errors in the scientific papers. The research data consists of 104 scientific articles that authors sent to Journal of Thu Dau Mot University. The quantitative method was applied in the form of frequency charts for each category of surface strategy taxonomy and comparative analysis. Based on the analysis theory of grammatical errors, all of the errors in these articles were identified and classified into different categorizations. The findings of the study showed that the authors’ writings were committed three main error groups: Lexical errors are the highest with 281 (49%); the number of Syntactic errors are ranked the second with 222 (39%); Morphological errors are the lowest with 69 (12%). On the basis of these results it is figured out that the authors still have difficulties in writing a research papers in English because they are not English major. Moreover the grammar of English is known as their foreign language. Another reason that the writer made errors is uninterested in organization of their papers. From the study findings above, the researcher suggests some implications to help authors improve their academic writing and meet English international standard.