VietNamnet Bridge – Miss Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen cannot speak French well even though she has studied the language for seven years shows that foreign language teaching in Vietnam has serioua weaknesses, according to analysts.

Miss Vietnam 2014 Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen

A video clip of Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, who was crowned Miss Vietnam 2014, has gone viral on the internet.

The beautiful girl, a student at Hanoi Foreign Trade University, has disappointed many people with her poor French speaking skills that she showed at a meeting with university students after she returned from the beauty pageant.

“I cannot imagine that a French language majort would speak French so badly,” a student commented on an education forum. “It is necessary to reconsider the foreign language teaching method being applied in Vietnam."

Another student wrote on the same forum that Duyen’s bad intonation should be blamed on the unreasonable teaching method, rather than  bad skills.

“At general school, we spend most of our time on learning grammar and reading, while we don’t have time to practice listening and speaking,” the student wrote.

“And we also did not have speaking lessons over the last three years at university,” she continued. “To practice speaking, we try to make friends with foreign friends via Yahoo chat or talk with foreign travelers we meet at tourist sites.”

A teacher of English at a high school in Hanoi noted that it is not a surprise that foreign language major students cannot speak English well.

“Most students focus on practicing grammar exercises, because grammar questions will be raised at the university entrance exams,” she commented, adding that passing the exams to follow university education is the most important aim of general school students.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has recently also admitted that there are problems in the foreign language methodology, which explains why many high school graduates cannot meet the national standards set by MOET.

However, the teacher of English said that it will be an “impossible mission” to prepare students well with all the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking at the same time.

“Students need to have good pronunciation, strictly follow principles to construct sentences and have good vocabulary to be able to communicate well,” said Pham Toan, a renowned educator.

Meanwhile, some argue that Toan’s requirements are overly high for foreign language learners.

“English is now spoken all over the world and it has become an international language. You just need to speak clearly to make people understand you,” a reader, who introduced himself as a student in the UK, wrote in a mail to VietNamNet.

Vuong Chi