Reading the Daily News In Vietnam ra đời là kết quả của quá trình nghiên cứu cải tiến giáo trình phát triển kỹ năng đọc trong chương trình tiếng Anh tăng cường tại Khoa Đào tạo Đại cương (Trường Đại học Hà Nội - HANU). Với nguồn ngữ liệu phong phú từ các bài báo trên Vietnam News, gần gũi với sinh viên Việt Nam xét trên bình diện văn hóa (điều mà các sách nhập khẩu từ nước ngoài không làm được), kết cấu chủ đề, chủ điểm hợp lý, phương pháp trình bày khoa học, giáo trình này đã bước đầu gặt hái được những thành công.
Trong lời phi lộ, tác giả chủ biên cho hay: “Nếu như vào thời điểm năm 2007, Đọc là kỹ năng yếu nhất của sinh viên năm thứ nhất tại Khoa Đào tạo Đại cương thì giờ đây, Đọc là một trong những môn có nhiều sinh viên đạt điểm số cao nhất”.
Trans-Over
(theo www.vietnamnews.vnanet.vn)
Newspaper stories help students learn English
HA NOI — Stories from the Viet Nam News, the nation’s premier English-language newspaper, have been selected for a 147-page reading skills text book to guide intermediate-level students across the nation.
Titled Reading the Daily News In Vietnam, the publication is the result of two year long efforts to improve reading curriculum that follows an end of year evaluation of the Intensive English Programme in June 2007.
This found that most first-year students were unsatisfied with the reading curriculum accompanying the course and that the materials in use were culturally too distant from Vietnamese students.
The material consisted of imported text books with topics better suited for students living in foreign countries. This made it difficult and boring for students to comprehend.
One of the first decisions made was to choose the Viet Nam News to serve as the primary reading text for the Basic Reading Course.
This was because not only was it considered a quality publication, but that it was the best way for students to benefit from background knowledge - knowledge that they could easily relate to.
This means that the stories in the newspaper are the ones that Vietnamese students are most likely to know something about through a variety of local sources, including radio, Vietnamese newspapers and general conversations.
The Basic Reading Course pays special attention to vocabulary building skills. One of the methods was to make an inventory of all the words in the articles used to identify high-frequency, and thus strategic, academic words that students should know.
The inventories are supplemented by an assignment in which students select and thoroughly study words through a vocabulary journal at the back of the book.
The new Basic Reading Course has been compiled, and tested out, in draft form in the last two years. The final book, published this month, reflects a concerted effort by a team of instructors from the Foundation Studies Department (FSD) at Ha Noi University and William Cole-French, an expert from Resource Exchange International Vietnam, to develop a reading curriculum that students enjoy.
As the forward to the book says: "While the Basic Reading Course was among the lowest-rated skill subjects by first year FSD students in 2007, it has now become one of the highest rated subjects." — VNS
