VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of university students cannot finish school and obtain the university degree, though they are very good at their majors, because they cannot meet the required standards in English.

The HCM City Law University requires its students to acquire TOEIC 450-600 English level. However, only 634 out of the 1,099 students, or 57.68 percent of the 2008-2012 students met the required English standards to receive the law school degree in the first phase, while the other 456 students did not get the degrees they expected and they needed further training in English.

Ngo Duc Tuan, Head of the Training Division, said the students of the school must have 450-600 points at least, depending on their training majors, in TOEIC to be able to graduate the school. However, the students’ English skills are at different levels, and many of them still cannot meet the standards.

Tuan said that 10 percent more students have got degrees after they attended extra training to improve their English skills. However, he admitted that 30 percent of students have not graduated is a relatively high and worrying figure.

The HCM City Economics University also requires its students to obtain TOEIC 450. Meanwhile, according to Vo Dinh Phuoc, Head of the Foreign Language Division, only 70 percent of students can meet the requirements.

At the HCM City Food Industry University, two kinds of certificates are required, including TOEIC 400-450 and C-class English level. The school’s deputy head of the training division Pham Thai Son admitted that a lot of students still have not got university degrees because of the “English problem.”

The school has granted temporary certificates of finishing schools to the students who still have not submitted English certificates. The official degrees would be granted only when the students prove they can meet the required standards.

The required English levels set up by schools are different. Most of the schools require TOEIC 450, while some schools only required TOEIC 300 or 400. A linguistic expert said that a university graduate who gets TOEIC 450 only has intermediate English level, because TOEIC’s maximum point is 990.

“450 points prove to be a low requirement for the students who spend four years following higher education. I think that university graduates need to have 600 or 700 points to be able to satisfy the businesses’ requirements at medium level,” the expert said.

Tuan of the law school said, though the required English standards are not high, it’s still a difficult task for students to meet the standards.

The problem lies in the different English levels of the input students. Some students got only 80/990 TOEIC when they enter the school. Therefore, it’s really very difficult to train them in English.

Son said that university students don’t think learning English is a necessity. This explains why only 25 percent of students register to attend extra English classes. Many students believe that English skills are not really necessary for their future jobs. Meanwhile, in fact, businesses keep complaining that it’s very difficult to find the workers with sufficient English skills.

In fact, university students don’t have much time to learn English. On average, a university student has 150-180 periods of English during the four years at universities. Meanwhile, it needs some 400 periods to train students to obtain TOEIC 450.

NLD