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Purpose: This study aims to combine two theories, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the Norm Activation Model (NAM), to investigate the relationship between the awareness of reducing single-use plastic waste's environmental cost and the behaviour to limit the use of single-use plastic products (SUPPs) by FPT university students. Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative research methodologies were employed on a sample of 506 university students. The survey data was then examined using SPSS, SPSS AMOS and SmartPLS software. Findings: The overarching conclusion of the study is that awareness of reducing single-use plastic waste's environmental cost has a positive impact on FPT university students' behaviour to reduce their use of single-use plastic products. Another intriguing discovery is how socialisation of responsibility affects pro-environmental behaviour through the interplay between personal norms, subjective norms and behavioural intention. Originality/value: This study on the relationship between SUPP low-consumption awareness and behaviour and mediating factors is a necessary foundation for future studies related to changing the behaviour of students using SUPPs. That will also be a solid foundation for practical plans to change behaviour using SUPPs through communication campaigns to increase awareness. [The page range (199-216) shown on the website is incorrect. The correct page range is 220-237.]

Organizing effective instruction is a characteristic of classroom management, which minimizes time wasting and keeps students moving at a good pace. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the current practice of instruction-giving strategies being utilized in EFL classrooms in a Vietnamese public university. To achieve this goal, both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized to explore the critical characteristics of instruction-giving. Classroom observations were the primary data collection method. During 19 observations, 25 instructions were noted for analysis. The findings of this study present certain characteristics of instruction-giving, namely attention-grabbing skills, repetition, the use of mother tongue and language, demonstration, and checking understanding to support instruction delivery. Also, the study's findings propose weaknesses that EFL teachers can take into consideration for better instruction-giving.

Internationally, the trend of student-centered learning in higher education has emphasized the importance of aligning student learning outcomes with corresponding assessment methods. This study is conducted at a university in Vietnam by investigating 32 sets of syllabi and test specifications varied from English Language programs to English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) courses. The findings reveal that a lack of precision in verb usage within learning outcomes can introduce ambiguity, potentially hindering the effectiveness of both teaching and assessment. The study also highlights the significance of balancing the quantities of requirements within a single learning outcome to foster a positive and manageable learning experience. As a result, it is believed that a careful selection of verbs in writing learning outcomes, coupled with a balanced approach to requirements, can contribute to a more coherent and effective curriculum within linguistic programs.

A comprehensive educational framework is provided by the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) which is particularly relevant to engineering and applied sciences. This paper investigates the application of the CDIO approach in the field of chemistry pedagogy in Vietnam focusing on its adaptability to the current educational demands and its potential to enhance the competency of future teachers. The CDIO approach develops training curricula and outputstandards based on input from teachers,students, alumni and recruitment firms. This study uses the CDIO approach extensively with professional knowledge, social awareness and creative tendencies. The study involved a survey of 240 chemistry teachers and 242 students from various universities across Vietnam. Data were collected through online surveys using Google Forms and processed using SPSS software for statistical analysis. The research analyzed the alignment of practical teaching activities with CDIO standards and developed a framework for experimental practice competency. Findings indicated a robust implementation of the CDIO approach in chemistry pedagogy. In laboratory safety, experimental planning, execution and competence were high. The study shows that the CDIO strategy enhances professional competence and practical abilities in Vietnamese chemistry pedagogy students. It promotes collaboration and personal growth to meet changing educational needs. The CDIO approach could transform chemistry pedagogy in Vietnam suggesting science education reforms and capacity building.

Assessment of digital competence for citizens could support the Education Action plan at a national level, a regional level, or even at a global level to enhance the digital skills and competence gap for work and life for digital transformation. This study applies the DigComp framework through a self-administered online survey to 723 citizens in Vietnam, using a sequential exploratory mixed methods research design. Data were analysed using factor analysis, standard descriptive statistics, and simple regression methods, followed by qualitative content analysis from interviews with ten respondents and a focus group discussion with eight stakeholders on digital competence. The results confirmed the validity of the DigComp framework for measuring the digital competence of Vietnamese citizens. Overall, the proficiency level of the 723 surveyed Vietnamese citizens falls between basic and intermediate levels, being more advanced in areas in information and data literacy and communication and collaboration, compared to digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. The results further showed that male citizens with a higher education level, working in the public sector, or living in province with high provincial digital transformation index rankings perceived themselves to be more digital competent than females with a lower educational level, working in the private sector, or living in the province with low provincial digital transformation index rankings. To improve citizens' digital competence, training should be designed that considers not only citizens' digital competence profiles but also their individual characteristics.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been recognised as a promising technology for methodological progress and theoretical advancement in learning sciences. However, there remains few empirical investigations into how AI could be applied in learning sciences research. This study aims to utilize AI facial recognition to inform the learning regulation behaviors in synchronous online collaborative learning environments. By studying groups of university students (N = 36) who participated in their online classes under the COVID-19 social distancing mandates, we strive to understand the interrelation between individual affective states and their collaborative group members. Theoretically underpinned by the socially shared regulation of learning framework, our research features a cutting-edge insight into how learners socially shared regulation in group-based tasks. Findings accentuate fundamental added values of AI application in education, whilst indicating further interesting patterns about student self-regulation in the collaborative learning environment. Implications drawn from the study hold strong potential to provide theoretical and practical contributions to the exploration of AI supportive roles in designing and personalizing learning needs, as well as fathom the motion and multiplicity of collaborative learning modes in higher education.

Anxiety, an affective factor, is pivotal in language learners' success or failure. Findings pointed to its correlation with oral performance, test results, and language skills, namely listening and writing, but only a little with reading. At the current research site, a Vietnamese context, very little evaluation on reading anxiety in English foreign language learning could be found. Therefore, this investigation aimed to explore learners' English foreign language reading anxiety levels, reading techniques used, and the correlation between foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading strategies (RS). A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 324 university students (including 152 females and 172 males) in a private educational Vietnamese context with two main data-gathering instruments: the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) and Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS). Results revealed a moderate level of reading anxiety among 68.5% of respondents, while 31.4% had hi- and lo-anxiety levels with the same percentage of 15.7% each. Regarding reading techniques, Problem-Solving Strategies were found to be the most favorable, and those with lo-anxiety used strategic reading more regularly than the others (hi- and mid-anxiety level groups). When it comes to the correlation between FLRA and RS, a statistically negative correlation was found. It means FLRA could decrease when RS increases. Additionally, FLRA was negatively correlated with three RS subscales. Based on the findings, several pedagogical implications were also discussed.

Cyberbullying is a form of violence that has been present in schools for a long time and negatively impacts the mental health of students. Different countries have different strategies for avoiding cyberbullying. However, research on school-based cyberbullying prevention is limited in Southeast Asian developing countries. This study aims to explore the current implementation of school-based cyberbullying prevention in public schools in a developing country. The framework of prevention programs is based on three aspects: (1) Developing curricula on how to behave when being a victim of cyberbullying. (2) Strengthening the students' skills to deal with cyberbullying. (3) Promulgating specific provisions in the legal document on handling cyberbullying. School-based cyberbullying prevention among students in public schools is currently a research gap because of the limitations in the management of students using the internet and educational policies. This is a cross-sectional study that surveyed 400 participants who are Vietnamese teachers, administrators and school psychologists. The results show that the limitations ofschool-based cyberbullying prevention for Vietnamese students include professional knowledge, practical experience and personnel in charge of this work. This constraint has resulted in an upsurge in incidents of cyberbullying in Vietnam. The findings add to the important evidence on cyberbullying prevention in a developing country that is working to research and develop an appropriate school-based cyberbullying prevention strategy.

The purpose of this study was to assess the validity of School-Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) in the Vietnam context. The study tested the nomological validity of the main measurement model and a competing model. The participants included 29 interviewees and 408 Vietnamese high-school teachers in Ho Chi Minh City. Interview data were used to seek preliminary support for the measurement model and indicators. Survey data were analyzed employing Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modelling. A 9-dimension SLEQ with 38 indicators was validated. The dimensions of school climate have various effects on teachers' job satisfaction.

Reading engagement is crucial to motivating EFL learners in reading classes. Recent research has attempted to explore the effect of affective engagement on reading comprehension, but there exists little empirical research regarding the effect of a text-driven approach to task design and development that draws on second language acquisition principles including both emotional and cognitive engagement. The current quasi-experimental study was conducted to investigate its effect on EFL learners' reading comprehension. The study involved 62 Vietnamese EFL teenage learners (aged from 14 to 16) from two intact classes at an English language center in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. One class with 31 learners was assigned to the experimental group whose reading lessons employed a text-driven framework for adapting tasks from a textbook used by the center. The other class, who followed reading activities provided in the textbook, was treated as the control group. Two reading comprehension tests, a pretest and a posttest, were administered before and after a 13-week intervention. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the reading comprehension posttest. In interviews with selected learners, they also reported feeling more engaged and motivated to read.

In response to the global expansion in English-medium instruction (EMI) within business education, this study investigates its impact on self-efficacy among Vietnamese business students over 2 years. Drawing on Bourdieu's capital theory, data from 105 students were analyzed to explore the influence of socio-demographic factors. Surprisingly, EMI participation was associated with a negative change in self-efficacy, with no significant impact observed from social, economic, or cultural backgrounds. The findings suggest a mismatch between students' expectations and academic performance, emphasizing the need for tailored interventions to support self-efficacy development in EMI programmes.

The present study explored the comparability in performance scores between the computer-delivered and face-to-face modes for the two speaking tests in the Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency (VSTEP) (the VSTEP.2 and VSTEP.3-5 Speaking tests) according to Vietnam's Six-Level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework (VNFLPF) and test takers' experiences. Data were collected from 75 and 82 VSTEP.2 and VSTEP.3-5 university English-majored test takers respectively in both computer-delivered and face-to-face conditions. A counterbalanced research design was adopted to minimise mode order effects. After test completion, 30 of the test takers, 15 from each proficiency test, were interviewed in the focus group format of 3-4 members per group. The results indicated mixed, selective effects of the testing mode. Overall, test scores were comparable in the VSTEP.2 Speaking test but significantly higher in favour of the face-to-face mode for the VSTEP.3-5 Speaking test. However, the statistically significant difference was observed in only one measure of the many analytical criteria (content development in the former test, and pronunciation in the latter test) with mixed mode advantages. The interview data has provided rich refreshing insights into how test takers viewed each testing mode against real-life communication. Their experiences further revealed a wide range of affective preferences involved in the inherent affordances or constraints of each testing mode and their communication and performance/outcome orientation. The findings offer important implications for extrapolation, test preparation and administration, and test taker/rater training in the particular context of the two English speaking proficiency tests in Vietnam and perhaps beyond.

Worldwide, the majority of youth reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). School-based mental health (SBMH) services are particularly important in LMIC, in part because of LMIC's limited mental health infrastructure. Among the challenges to developing SBMH in LMIC are limited implementation science (IS) capacity, critical for identifying barriers to evidence-based intervention (EBI) use and dissemination, etc., specific to the local country context. A key step in IS capacity development is conducting a needs assessment, to identify barriers (and their solutions) to IS development itself within the local context. The present study conducted an IS needs assessment focused on SBMH in the Southeast Asian LMIC of Vietnam. Seventy-five Vietnamese mental health professionals in SBMH-related fields participated in a mixed-methods study. Vietnamese SBMH researchers and practitioners most likely to have experience and/or interest in IS were selected for study recruitment. Professionals' formal understanding of and experience with IS as a scientific field was highly limited. However, after reading a brief but detailed description of IS, participants' interest in IS training was high, and their mean rating of its potential utility for Vietnam to develop SBMH was 4.7 on a 1-5 scale. Participants also reported on barriers and potential solutions for EBI use in SBMH in Vietnam. Contrary to expectations, the most frequent and severe barriers were not financial but related to limited stakeholder engagement. Overall, these and other study results provide some suggestions how IS capacity to support SBMH may be most efficiently developed in settings such as Vietnam.

Intellectual development means the growth of a child's ability to think and reason. It's about how they organize their minds, ideas and thoughts to make sense of the world they live in. The government of Vietnam requests the education sector to develop hidden competencies of students, particular young learners. This study therefore analyses associated literature to propose a framework to assess the intellectual development and competence of Vietnamese students based on Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence. The paper discusses the theory of multiple intelligences and types of intelligence; the development of assessment framework, development path and tools to measure students' intelligence and capacity; and test results on intellectual ability and capacity development of students.

This study aims to assess high school students' learning outcomes, their achievement of goals and fulfilling academic requirements and how the entire teaching and learning process takes place. The study, consisting of an experimental group and a control group was conducted for pre-test and post-test comparisons of the academic performance of 88 10th grade students. 44 students were selected as the experimental group that underwent a specific teaching strategy to monitor their development of qualities and competencies in one semester, and the remaining 44 students acted as the control group. The data collected after the tests were analyzed using SPSS software (V20). The results showed that the students in the experimental group had better academic results than those in the control group. The findings of this study have implications for policy, further research as well as approaches for the assessment of students' development of qualities and competencies in Vietnam.

This exploratory study investigated Vietnamese secondary students' engagement in a sequence of detecting, correcting, and rewriting tasks, and examined the factors affecting their engagement and/or disengagement in the process. The study draws on the principles of task-based instruction, involving eight mixed-ability groups (n = 31), and was designed to address student engagement with feedback-correction practices that has rarely been discussed in previous research and has therefore remained largely underexplored, especially in the context of Vietnam. Theoretical concepts of behavioral, cognitive, and social engagement were used to analyze data from audio recordings of students' interactions and their written responses to open-ended questions. The analysis of data showed that the eight groups engaged behaviorally, socially, and cognitively in the process, although their engagement varied according to the learning tasks, the teacher's intervention, peer support, English ability, and types of gaps. Findings from the eight-week intervention suggest teachers should consider factors which determine student engagement with feedback-correction practices. By offering students opportunities to act on specific language issues in their writing through detecting and correcting gaps and rewriting the corrected texts, engagement with feedback-correction practices can be useful in fostering accuracy development. This qualitative multiple-case study contributes new insights to the field by operationalizing the sequence of feedback-correction through collaborative learning to deeply understand students' multidimensional engagement in the process from which implications for L2 writing and further research are discussed.

The rapid developments of Science and Technology call for individuals to have strong academic knowledge and creativity. Research shows that students acquire creativity after either curricular or extracurricular activities in subject matters. However, there is not much research examining students' creativity through integrative learning activities, such as STEM activities. In this current study, we examine the potential of STEM clubs in terms of fostering students' creativity. We used the survey method to assess students' creativity in engineering design. We collected the data from 244 Vietnamese students, including members and non-members in STEM clubs. The quantitative analysis was performed to examine the differences between members' creativity and non-members' creativity. The results show that STEM club members have significantly more creativity than non-members. The results also show that STEM club members have significantly more creativity than non-members. Based on the results, STEM clubs demonstrate a significant impact on students' creativity. Consequently, STEM clubs should be implemented in high school to enhance students' creativity.

This study aimed to investigate essential employability skills for English as a foreign language (EFL) students in the Mekong Delta for the context of the 21st century. It was also to determine the similarities and differences between the important employability skills from the perspectives of the employers and EFL students. In this study, a questionnaire was delivered to EFL students who were juniors and seniors at a university in the South of Vietnam, majoring in English Education and English Studies (English Interpreter). At the same time, interviews were realized on both EFL students and employers. The findings showed that both EFL students and employers highlighted the attributes of self-confidence, receptiveness to feedback, and the use of body language in communication. The types of employability skills are similarly recognized among employers and EFL students in the same fields of employment. However, a significant difference was also found among employers on different job-specific skills. The results also indicated that EFL undergraduates were all highly aware of preparing the employability skills for their future professions.

International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scores have been widely used as the language entry requirements for international students in many English-medium universities. However, research on the predictive validity of IELTS on subsequent academic performance has been inconclusive. Additionally, despite the proliferation of IELTS preparation courses, very few attempts have been made to explore the extent to which these courses support course takers' development of knowledge and skills needed for their subsequent university study. This paper investigated (a) the predictive validity of IELTS results on the subsequent academic performance of Vietnamese international students at UK universities, and (b) the extent to which an IELTS preparation course in Vietnam supported its course takers in their subsequent academic study in the UK. Questionnaires with 80 Vietnamese international students from 31 universities across the UK showed that there was a positive significant correlation between these students' IELTS scores and their academic results. Follow-up interviews with two undergraduates and two postgraduates who had previously studied in the same IELTS preparation course, but were studying different academic disciplines at different institutions in the UK, and analysis of the materials used in their IELTS preparation course and university courses revealed that the course positively supported these students' subsequent academic study, but certain skills and knowledge needed in their academic study were not effectively covered in the IELTS preparation course.

STEM education in Vietnam is prioritized, yet effective learning may be difficult for students attending transnational universities. The purpose of this study is to examine the self-regulated learning experiences of STEM undergraduate students attending a collaborative transnational university in Vietnam. Challenges included English language instruction and STEM-specific terminology. Despite barriers to their learning, students describe strategies for navigating their learning process. Strategies included extensive rereading of the material, using Google to look up new terms/ideas or to translate words, asking instructors for translation, and reviewing online resources. Implications for practice include instructors providing more detailed feedback and guidance and leveraging technology use for learning.

This study draws on mediated learning experience (MLE) theory to contextualize the correcting process within the sociocultural dimension of the teacher's intervention and collaborative learning to facilitate student engagement with discovering, correcting, and rewriting practices. This correcting process was administered to eight mixed-ability groups of Vietnamese secondary students (n = 31) to investigate students' perceptions of their engagement in the process from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives that have been under-researched so far. The statistical analysis of a closed-ended questionnaire shows that students strongly agreed with the practices and effectiveness of the process, accuracy improvement, approach preferences, and learning motivation. Eight students' responses to semi-structured interviews elaborated on the benefits and disadvantages of group-correction and the significance of targeting errors, and on each correcting phase. While students' responses satisfied MLE's criteria, their perceptions of the limitations of group-correction somewhat qualified the way reciprocity occurred. The findings suggest offering students opportunities to act on language issues in their writing and confirm the usefulness of engagement with correction-feedback practices from which implications for L2 writing and further research are discussed.

This study applies a Variance-Based Structural Equation Modelling, to preliminarily assess the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) in the context of high school education in Vietnam. The paper then identified school climate factors affecting teacher self-efficacy and stress. Also, the study was conducted to test the relationship between stress and teacher self-efficacy. Data were collected from 628 high school teachers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Of school climate factors, the study shows that affiliation, innovation, and professional interest had a positive direct impact on teacher self-efficacy and that student conduct and staff autonomy had a negative direct impact on their perceived stress. This study also confirms that work pressure of school climate had a positive direct impact on teacher stress beliefs. Surprisingly, staff autonomy had a positive direct impact on teacher self-efficacy and a negative direct impact on teacher stress. Practically, these findings suggest that to improve teachers' sense of efficacy, high school leaders in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam can take action to improve a supportive school climate by focussing on affiliation. This study also reflects the efforts of Vietnam in its education reform which also requires teacher efforts in changing teaching methods through continuous professional development. In addition to the development of a supportive school climate, staff autonomy is also a concern requiring consideration to reduce stress for teachers, which was not reported elsewhere. Theoretically, this study contributes to the inconclusive relation between the three constructs: school climate, teacher stress, and self-efficacy.

This paper focuses on the role of classroom observation in the development and assessment of schoolteachers in Vietnam through a narrative review of current policy and cognate research literature. The overall aim of this review was twofold. Firstly, to contribute to a growing bank of Vietnam-based studies to maximise the value of the insights from this scholarly work into recent policy reforms on teachers' professional development in Vietnam. Secondly, to widen access and exposure to published work on the topic in Vietnamese that is not readily accessible to English-speaking scholars. This review revealed a long history and engrained culture of using observation as a teacher performance evaluation tool. In recent years, there have been policy reforms and research studies that have repositioned observation as a tool for teacher learning and development. However, the implementation of these reforms has been inconsistent across Vietnam, along with recent reform having encountered resistance from a culture of compliance in schools. This paper identifies some of the key issues that policy makers and educational leaders need to address in practice in order to ensure the effective and meaningful implementation of the reforms relating to the use of observation for learning and developmental purposes.

This paper presents an experimental design aimed at enhancing creativity in mathematics among secondary school students. The quasi-experimental research was conducted at two urban secondary schools and one rural school in Hanoi and Nam Dinh provinces, Vietnam, involving 229 grade 6 students and three teachers. The study found that creativity-enriched mathematics instruction, grounded in the principles of realistic mathematics education, such as the use of practical contexts, cultivation of students' experiences, provision of self-initiated and collaborative learning opportunities, and didactic orientation, can foster the development of creative competencies in mathematics. Moreover, the research demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing creativity-enriched instruction in various school settings. These findings can help raise awareness among educators and inspire them to modify their teaching methods to promote the development of students' creative competencies, which are increasingly critical in the era of the fourth industrial revolution.

The strong development of information and communication technology and the in-depth impact of the COVID-19 pandemic promote faster digital transformation and provoke online teaching modes at Vietnamese universities. To flexibly adapt to the above changes, university lecturers need to be in-service trained in online teaching competence. The aim of this study is to develop an Online Teaching Competence Framework for University Lecturers in Vietnam that will serve as a scientific basis for building an online teaching competence training program for both lecturers and teacher education. The Online Teaching Competence Framework for University Lecturers was created through (1) a systematic literature review on the online teaching competence of lecturers and (2) exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha coefficient of its component competencies and items based on data from 311 lecturers at two public universities of technology and education in Vietnam. The Online Teaching Competence Framework for Lecturers was established with 25 items under five component competencies, namely "Technology", "Understanding Student Learning", "Digital Content Development and Learning Facilitation", "Online Learning Outcomes Assessment" and "Online Session Administration". The limitations and practical recommendations for further research are also addressed in this study.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the opportunities and challenges to the application of portfolios as an assessment tool in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms at different educational levels in Vietnam, as explicitly and implicitly reported in the literature. Design: This study is a combination of a narrative review, synthesising educational documents during 2014-2021, and a systematic review, resulting in 26 empirical studies during 1999-2021 to be included. The adopted approach to data analysis was inductive, deductive and thematic. Data extracting and coding were conducted manually with the aid of Microsoft Word tools. Findings: The results indicate that enabling factors for the use of assessment portfolios included governmental documents; teachers' and/or students' awareness, attitudes and beliefs; available application of assessment portfolios and their benefits. However, practicality, reliability, validity and accuracy might pose certain challenges to this use. Value: This study adds further insights into our current understandings of the opportunities and challenges to the use of assessment portfolios in international EFL contexts.

The COVID-19 epidemic is affecting all areas of life, including the training activities of universities around the world. Therefore, the online learning method is an effective method in the present time and is used by many universities. However, not all training institutions have sufficient conditions, resources, and experience to carry out online learning, especially in under-resourced developing countries. Therefore, the construction of traditional courses (face to face), e-learning, or blended learning in limited conditions that still meet the needs of students is a problem faced by many universities today. To solve this problem, we propose a method of evaluating the influence of these factors on the e-learning system. From there, it is a matter of clarifying the importance and prioritizing construction investment for each factor based on the K-means clustering algorithm, using the data of students who have been participating in the system. At the same time, we propose a model to support students to choose one of the learning methods, such as traditional, e-learning or blended learning, which is suitable for their skills and abilities. The data classification method with the algorithms multilayer perceptron (MP), random forest (RF), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM) and naïve bayes (NB) is applied to find the model fit. The experiment was conducted on 679 data samples collected from 303 students studying at the Academy of Journalism and Communication (AJC), Vietnam. With our proposed method, the results are obtained from experimentation for the different effects of infrastructure, teachers, and courses, also as features of these factors. At the same time, the accuracy of the prediction results which help students to choose an appropriate learning method is up to 81.52%.

With a number of word lists available for teachers to choose from, teachers and students need to know which list provides the best return for learning? Four well-established lists were compared and it was found that BNC/COCA2000 (British National Corpus / Corpus of Contemporary American English 2000) and the New General Service List (New-GSL) provided the greatest lexical coverage in spoken and written corpora. The present study further compared these two lists using teacher perceptions of word usefulness and learner vocabulary knowledge as the criteria. First, 78 experienced teachers of English as a second language / English as a foreign language (ESL/EFL) rated the usefulness of 973 non-overlapping items between the two lists for their learners. Second, 135 Vietnamese EFL learners completed 15 yes/no tests which measured their knowledge of the same 973 words. Teachers perceived that the BNC/COCA2000 had more useful words. Items in this list were also better known by the learners. This suggests that the BNC/COCA2000 is the more useful high-frequency wordlist for second language (L2) learners.

Background: Non-invasive multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests have shown promise in enhancing early cancer detection. However, their clinical utility across diverse populations remains underexplored, limiting their routine implementation. This study aims to validate the clinical utility of a multimodal non-invasive circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based MCED test, SPOT-MAS (Screening for the Presence Of Tumor by DNA Methylation And Size). Methods: We conducted a multicenter prospective study, K-DETEK (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT05227261), involving 9057 asymptomatic individuals aged 40 years or older across 75 major hospitals and one research institute in Vietnam. Participants were followed for 12 months. Results: Of the 9024 eligible participants, 43 (0.48%) tested positive for ctDNA. Among these, 17 were confirmed with malignant lesions in various primary organs through standard-of-care (SOC) imaging and biopsy, with 9 cases matching our tissue of origin (TOO) predictions. This resulted in a positive predictive value of 39.53% (95%CI 26.37–54.42) and a TOO accuracy of 52.94% (95%CI 30.96–73.83). Among the 8981 participants (99.52%) who tested negative, 8974 were confirmed cancer-free during a 12-month period after testing, yielding a negative predictive value of 99.92% (95% CI 99.84–99.96). The test demonstrated an overall sensitivity of 70.83% (95%CI 50.83–85.09) and a specificity of 99.71% (95% CI 99.58–99.80) for detecting various cancer types, including those without SOC screening options. Conclusions: This study presents a prospective validation of a multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test conducted in a lower middle-income country, demonstrating the potential of SPOT-MAS for early cancer detection. Our findings indicate that MCED tests could be valuable additions to national cancer screening programs, particularly in regions where such initiatives are currently limited. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT05227261. Date of registration: 07/02/2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the importance of research communities and research mentoring activities in developing research skills, universities around the world have paid special attention to improving these two dimensions. However, developing research communities and research mentoring culture in Vietnamese universities largely remain at a nascent stage because these universities often have a short history of conducting research and limited research capacity. Drawing on a sociocultural perspective, this qualitative case study explores the experience of Vietnamese scholars in developing their research skills via their research communities and their perspectives towards domestic and international research communities. Interview data show that participants were active in establishing their own networks and tended to look outward, searching for support from international communities and mentors, since their institutes lacked collegiality and research collaborations. To develop institutional research communities and positive research culture, universities' managers should consider factors including collective values, researcher individualism, and research traditions.

Since 1988, Vietnam's private higher education sector has developed into an integral part of the higher education system. Nevertheless, we know very little about who owns private universities, or what their management models look like. Interviews with institutional leaders, policy-makers, and the analysis of archived policy documents reveal that ownership models of Vietnamese private universities are considerably diverse. In general, almost all ownership models that exist in worldwide private higher education sectors--i.e., venture, enterprise, shareholder, and foreign--are reflected in the case of Vietnam. However, we highlight that business corporations own and manage many of Vietnam's private universities. Our data also finds a parallel between the development of higher education privatization and the state's persistent efforts to keep collective ownership--a Communist ideology signature--in practice. We conclude the article with a discussion on how ownership diversity in private higher education reflects the remarkable changes--more specifically the growing pluralism--in Vietnam's political economy.

Recently researchers have proposed using information from teachers and learners to supplement the information from corpora in the selection of the most useful words for foreign language learners. Yet the extent to which these data sets correlate to one another is unclear. This study explicitly investigated the relationships between (a) the lexical coverage in 18 corpora, (b) the knowledge of 275 Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, and (c) the perceptions of 78 EFL teachers of the usefulness of 973 high-frequency words. The correlations between lexical coverage and the other two factors were significant but small, and the correlations between learner vocabulary knowledge and teacher perceptions were large. Teacher perceptions better-predicted learner knowledge than lexical coverage. This study confirms the value of lexical coverage as a key criterion to select words for foreign language learners, and also highlights the importance of teachers' perceptions of usefulness on ultimate vocabulary learning in EFL contexts.

Although the effect of teacher and peer feedback on writing improvement in the field of second language teaching has been discussed in scholarly research for several decades, student engagement with both forms of feedback integrated into a sequence of discovery, correction and revision remains under-researched. This study investigates the impact of feedback during a teaching sequence to support students' writing development, along with students' engagement in each phase of the teaching design. Drawing on Vygotsky's concept of guided learning, the teaching sequence was developed to prioritise collaborative group work and address students' limited engagement with feedback-correction and revision practices. The sequence was administered to 31 Vietnamese secondary students over eight weeks, from which an exploratory method was adopted. The analysis of data from audio recordings and groups' rewritten texts exhibited varied levels of student engagement. Importantly, the findings demonstrate the potential for integrating forms of feedback into the correcting sequence through group-based tasks to maximise students' learning.

Transnational education and English medium instruction (EMI) has grown in Asia in response to rapid globalisation. As a result, Vietnam has invested in creating new model universities that partner with international institutions as a way to supply the demand for quality higher education. Yet, few studies examine the influence of EMI on student learning, particularly within the Vietnamese context. The purpose of this grounded theory study is to examine the influence of EMI on the learning experiences of students attending three transnational universities in Vietnam. Based on participants' experiences, a model was created that highlighted specific areas that affected student learning: speaking and writing English in classes, limitations of instructors speaking English, and the 'double barrier' of English language, and discipline-based concepts learning at transnational universities. Recommendations for practice include creating intentional out-of-class learning opportunities and promoting active learning strategies as ways to facilitate student learning at transnational universities who use EMI.

The present study investigates collocational profiles that appear in the English textbook series for Vietnamese students from elementary to high school grades by identifying how the series covers collocations in terms of frequency and how the mode of collocation presentation aligns with recommendations in the existing literature. A total of 30,005 collocations of both verb-noun and adjective-noun patterns were identified, of which 1,078 are targeted collocations. The study found that the frequencies of occurrences of collocation tokens increase steadily alongside the three grade levels, while the frequencies of collocation types are not distributed proportionately. As for the mode of collocation presentation, targeted collocations and collocation exercises follow the best practices recommended in the literature to a certain extent and in some criteria; inconsistency, however, was found to be one of the shortcomings across those evaluation criteria. Pedagogical implications for teachers and textbook authors are discussed.