The Ministry of Education and Training on August 27 announced the results of this year's national final exams or high school graduation exams. This is considered the most important exams as many local universities and colleges will enrol students based on these results.

Of the nine subjects which students did in the exams, English continued to report the lowest marks.

According to the ministry's report, nearly 750,000 students took part in the English test and approximately 473,000 of them, or 63.13%, scored below the average mark of 5 out of 10. As many as 543 students got zero.

The average mark for English was 4.58 this year which is 0.2 higher than last year's score," the ministry said. "However, English was still the subject with lowest scores this year compared to other eight subjects of maths, literature, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology and civic education."

Explaining the poor English results, Tran Phuong Mai who had more than nine years of teaching English at schools in Hanoi said that many students had chosen universities that don't look at English results.

"Students in big cities are also doing better in English than those in the countryside or mountainous areas," the teacher said.

Another teacher, Phan Dung, who used to teach English at some African countries said that one of the main causes of the poor performance of Vietnamese students in English was a lack of good textbooks that are designed for Vietnamese people.

"For many years Vietnamese schools have used textbooks published by foreign publishing houses who don't understand the difficulties Vietnamese people have in learning English," he explained.

Teaching quality is also a problem at many schools according to former headmaster of Hanoi-based Vietnam Germany High School, Nguyen Quoc Binh.

"The poor examination results of students at some schools and areas meant that there's substandard teaching," he said. "Teachers should improve their teaching methods to meet the current requirements." Dtinews

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