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It is widely acknowledged that language learning strategies (LLSs) are beneficial to learners’ academic achievements, learner autonomy and motivation; however, it is indicated that Vietnamese students, particularly high school students have found it hard to employ LLSs. This paper aims at exploring language learning strategies used by high school students and underlying reasons at a high school located in Ho Chi Minh City. The study involved 238 EFL high school students in responding to a closed-ended questionnaire and twenty of them in answering the semi-structured interview questions. The quantitative data collected from the questionnaire were processed by SPSS version 25.0 in terms of descriptive statistics, and the qualitative data were analyzed by the content-based approach. The results of the study indicated the EFL high school students’ moderate use of LLSs. Remarkably, metacognitive strategies were the most commonly used category, compared to memory strategies – the least employed category. The findings may serve as a guideline for EFL teachers on facilitating high school students’ English language learning. It is also hoped that the results of this study may contribute to the literature about English language learning strategies in EFL contexts.

Endophytic fungi are great resources for the identification of useful natural products such as antimicrobial agents. In this study, we performed the antifungal screening of various plant endophytic fungi against the dollar spot pathogen Sclerotinia homoeocarpa and finally selected Humicola sp. JS-0112 as a potential biocontrol agent. The bioactive compound produced by the strain JS-0112 was identified as monorden known as an inhibitor of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90). Monorden exhibited strong antagonistic activity against most tested plant pathogenic fungi particularly against tree pathogens and oomycetes with the minimum inhibitory concentration values less than 2.5 μg mL–1. Extensive in planta assays revealed that monorden effectively suppressed the development of several important plant diseases such as rice blast, rice sheath blight, wheat leaf rust, creeping bentgrass dollar spot, and cucumber damping-off. Especially, it showed much stronger disease control efficacy against cucumber damping-off than a synthetic fungicide chlorothalonil. Subsequent molecular genetic analysis of fission yeast and Fusarium graminearum suggested that Hsp90 is a major inhibitory target of monorden, and sequence variation among fungal Hsp90 is a determinant for the dissimilar monorden sensitivity of fungi. This is the first report dealing with the disease control efficacy and antifungal mechanism of monorden against fungal plant diseases and we believe that monorden can be used as a lead molecule for developing novel fungicides with new action mechanism for the control of plant diseases caused by fungi and oomycetes.

In this study, we adopted the solution combustion method to synthesize magnesium ferrite (MgFe2O4) using urea as the fuel. Various techniques including TGA, XRD, SEM, TEM, FTIR, UV-Vis DRS, and EDS were employed to characterize the synthesized MgFe2O4 nanoparticles. The XRD analysis revealed that single-phase MgFe2O4 was formed at a calcination temperature of at 500–600°C for 3 hours in the absence of an intermediate phase. TEM analysis also revealed the formation of monodisperse magnesium ferrite nanoparticles, averaged at 30 nm in size. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized MgFe2O4 nanoparticles against methylene blue dye under visible light was investigated, showing the efficiency of 89.73% after 240 minutes of light irradiation with the presence of H2O2.