Tran Hinh from Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said that he read too many soulless essays, which he thinks are the result of the backward method of literature instruction.

Marking exam papers

Students were asked to write about honesty, but they showed they were dishonest. For example, a student began his essay this way: “Yesterday evening, a friend of mine advised me to use cheat notes on the exam. However, after I read the letter written by Lincoln to his son…”. We could not help laughing. A teacher, who marked paper exams with me, joked: “The literature question had been leaked out, because the students knew about the letter by Lincoln before.”

Though the question is considered ‘open’, the question compilers dictated what students had to write about: honesty and the effects of book reading. Therefore, no student dared write the contrary thing. In other words, they were not brave enough to say the reverse thing. I mean, the question is actually closed.

There is a thing that can be easily seen, that students tend to praise the things they are asked about. Most of them wrote in a way like they were shouting slogans, while very few students expressed opinions from their hearts. For example, if they are asked about honesty, they will focus on praising honesty.

A student, when asked to write about Lincoln’s letter, wrote: “After reading Lincoln’s words, I supported the way of thinking of the US president. Though he was high up in the hierarchy, he did not allow himself and his son to do things that could afflict their consciences. A lot of students used a trite and hollow style to praise Lincoln: “The words showed the noble characteristic of a president…”. We met a lot of soulless essays like these. It is more ridiculous when the words later were discovered to not be Lincoln’s.

Are there many exam papers that got high marks?

Not many. I did not see many essays which showed special creativeness. Papers got high marks just because the students expressed themselves well, not because they showed anything special.

However, I think that what we get today is the result of the backward teaching method which has been existing for many years. No student dare write contrarily. They have been educated in the way that they can only say this thing, while they cannot say the other thing. They are not allowed to show opinions of their own.

So, what is your comment about the result of the exam?

I personally feel discouraged about the results of the literature exam. The quality of exam papers this year was even worse than last year.

I think that Vietnam has been following an old way in teaching literature. Teachers have to run against the time to fulfill the teaching volume, so they do not have time to teach students to be creative. One should not hope that the teaching method could be renovated with just a new way of setting exam questions.

VietNamNet/NLD