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Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Development

IELTS has been one of the most reliable and widely selected test formats worldwide. In Vietnam, this test has been increasingly popular and used as a criterion for university admission. For its increasing significance, the question about how to improve the test scores has attracted attention from the publicity, and there came an agreement that improvements in language competence or proficiency work. There have been thousands of books published and millions of websites created to provide hints, tactics, and strategies for potential test takers. In this paper, the researcher would like to present her study, which delved into the effects of developing discourse competence for IELTS test takers. Sixty university students were randomly chosen and divided into two groups: the control group and the experimental one. They participated in a 12-week action research project. A survey questionnaire was assigned to get their opinions about the teaching approach. Findings indicate that students in the experimental group got better overall IELTS scores than those in the control group. Writing and speaking tests scored higher than the reading and listening ones. Mastery of discourse features affected reading and listening task types at varying degrees. Most agreed that improvements in discourse competence enabled them to satisfy the marking criteria of the writing and speaking test papers. For receptive skills, which are reading and listening, recognizing discourse patterns empowered them to control the time better and increase the accuracy of their answers. However, there were disagreements about incorporating discourse components into the existing syllabus. The difference in student competence, learning time, and motivation did affect the effectiveness of this pedagogy.

ltf.2024.10.04.pdf

Original Research 

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Discourse competence: A key to enhancing IELTS scores for Vietnamese students

The statement of NCES on its website that "extracurricular activities (ECAs) provide a channel for reinforcing the lessons learned in the classroom, offering students the opportunity to apply academic skills in a real-world context, and are thus considered part of a well-rounded education" has further consolidated the significance of this component in a school's curriculum development. No matter how important these activities are, they have seemingly not received due attention and investment from universities in Vietnam. This study was conducted at four universities in Vietnam to examine the perceptions of three stakeholders, namely administrators, teachers, and students about ECAs. Survey questionnaires and informal interviews were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse quantitative data while qualitative data were approached by deductive content analysis. Major findings reveal both matches and mismatches in the perceptions of the participants, and there was an association between the encouragement of extracurricular activities and students' engagement as well as improvement in their academic performance; however, an unwelcome fact remained regarding students' participation rate, teachers’ belief, and administrators' engagement.&nbsp;

sem.2024.15.03.pdf

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Stakeholder Perception of Extracurricular Activities at the Tertiary Level in Vietnam

Learner autonomy has long been a matter of great interest in the world of EFL pedagogy and practice. It is one of the qualities that teachers want to cultivate as they know that developing this core value is synonymous with training an independent, confident, and effective learner. There have been numerous studies on this subject in the educational setting; however, those conducted to examine learners’ ability to self-control their learning in the online context are still far from sufficient. This research was conducted with the exploratory survey to examine learner autonomy in EFL classes in Vietnam, where e-learning has recently been made mandatory due to the Covid 19 pandemic. It involved the total participation of 20 teachers and 100 students randomly selected from five Vietnamese tertiary institutions. Results showed a good understanding of the course instructors about the importance of learner autonomy in the online courses and the need to promote it. The students, however, were not well aware of their self-regulated learning tasks. From the study results, we could realize some problems regarding the students’ behavior in the virtual learning environment and differences in teachers’ and students’ perceptions of this notion. The research findings also supported the researcher in making recommendations to motivate self-controlled learners.

E-Learning and Learner Autonomy in an EFL Class in Vietnam

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