Papers by Xuan Minh Ngo
Vietnam’s trillion-dong attempt to reform English education: A laudable reform or a costly failure?
English Today, 2020
(Extract) In Vietnam, English has been held in high regard since the country embarked on its econ... more (Extract) In Vietnam, English has been held in high regard since the country embarked on its economic reform known as Doi Moi (Renewal) in 1986 (Ngo, 2018a; Nguyen, 2016;). Yet, over the past decades, the country’s English teaching sector has consistently been underperforming (Le, in press; Ngo, 2018a, 2018b; Nguyen, 2016; Nguyen & Nguyen, 2019). As an indicator, a recent survey has found that most Vietnamese secondary school graduates cannot communicate in English for survival needs even after seven years of compulsory education (Le, 2015). Such poor English proficiency has been perceived by the Vietnamese government as a threat to the country’s successful integration into the regional and global market (Dudzik & Nguyen, 2015; Ngo, 2018a), prompting it to issue Decision 1400 (Vietnamese Government, 2008), thereby launching the National Foreign Language Project (often known as Project 2020, as it was anticipated to conclude in 2020).
System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, Nov 2018
Despite increased attention to social and historical dimensions in language teacher cognition res... more Despite increased attention to social and historical dimensions in language teacher cognition research, the second language writing teacher cognition literature remains dominated by the cognitivist tradition that separates teachers’ beliefs from their practices. To address this mismatch, this paper proposes to view second language writing teacher cognition through the lens of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, especially its genetic method and concept of mediation. Based on these frameworks, the study aims to reveal the major shifts in a Vietnamese English language teacher’s cognition about second language writing and the mediating resources involved. Following the narrative design, the participant’s professional life story was first constructed with data from a series of interviews and various national and institutional documents. Her narrative was then subject to thematic analysis guided by the sociocultural theory concepts. It was found that her cognition changes followed a complex, non-linear trajectory, and there were dialectical interrelationships between these shifts. Moreover, these shifts were mediated by humans, concepts, and artifacts, whose influence was simultaneous and dialectical. Via analytic generalization in case studies, the paper proposes two models to illustrate firstly the chronological developments and secondly the socially mediated and dialectical nature of second language writing teacher cognition.
Journal of World Languages, 2018
Many news publishers have integrated their news on Facebook to attract wider readership. On this ... more Many news publishers have integrated their news on Facebook to attract wider readership. On this popular social networking site, online news readers can contribute their comments to the news post and interact with their fellow readers. This form of user-generated contents has attracted increasing scholarship and raised concerns over the salient conflict and incivility in its language, the low quality of polarized argumentation, and the complex interaction among news commenters. To contribute to the current lack of in-depth qualitative description of such reader-reader interaction, the current study explores the types of communicative moves performed by Facebook users in their news comments, the patterning of those moves, and the attitudinal language used to realize such moves. Based on the two Systemic Functional linguistic (SFL) frameworks of speech functions and appraisal for a close analysis of the moves and attitudinal lexis in Facebook news readers’ comments to one news article, the research has shown that exchanges of Facebook news comments developed in different directions with varying levels and complex patterns of support and confrontation between interactants as well as different appraisal language use. Besides substantiating the existing description of online news readers’ interaction, the paper argues that the SFL frameworks of conversation analysis are helpful for understanding CMC but more updated descriptions and a more visual approach to presentation of findings are needed to make the frameworks more relevant for online interactive discourses.
The study was conducted in Vietnam, a developing Asian country where the Common European Framewor... more The study was conducted in Vietnam, a developing Asian country where the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR) has been designated as the official standard of its foreign language education sector. Despite the CEFR’s authoritative role, there has been a serious lack of research about this framework and how it is diffused among classroom teachers, the group of stakeholders that plays a decisive role in its successful implementation. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the current study aims to cast light on Vietnamese teachers’ perceptions and use of the CEFR as well as their related needs based on the diffusion of innovations model (Rogers, 2003) and its reinterpretation in Van den Branden (2009). Via the convergent parallel design, a type of mixed methods research which involves triangulating qualitative and quantitative data (Creswell, 2012), the study has found that Vietnamese teachers were generally positive about its impact, but adopted it at significantly different levels in their practice. Moreover, they demonstrated a serious need for learning further about the framework. In light of these findings, the study recommends that a formal peer support network for teachers should be established and the current assessment practice should be reformed in line with the CEFR to ensure the ultimate successful adoption of this innovative framework.
Conference Presentations by Xuan Minh Ngo
What do they really see when they observe? Novice teachers’ use of observation as formative assessment
Observation has been widely recognized as a legitimate instrument in formative assessment; howeve... more Observation has been widely recognized as a legitimate instrument in formative assessment; however, there is a serious lack of research about how this instrument is actually employed by classroom teachers especially by those in language education. To fill this lacuna, this presentation will examine novice English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers’ use of observation as a formative assessment tool, drawing on a broader qualitative multiple case study on teacher assessment literacy. The data for this paper comes from a series of semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and stimulated recall with six novice EFL teachers at a Vietnamese foreign language specializing university. Preliminary thematic analysis of the data suggests that while the participating teachers made frequent use of this valuable formative assessment instrument, their observation was predominantly incidental and often not intentionally aligned with expected learning outcomes. Drawing on these findings, the presentation ends with implications for developing teachers’ effective observation skills for formative assessment.
EFL writing assessment in Vietnam: From national policy to institutional practice
Test impact has been a prominent research line in the field of language assessment in recent deca... more Test impact has been a prominent research line in the field of language assessment in recent decades; however, there have been few studies that investigate the impact of an assessment policy, especially one at the national level on institutional practice. To bridge this gap, the current paper will explore how three Vietnamese tertiary institutions translated the assessment guidelines of Project 2020, arguably the most expensive and ambitious language policy in Vietnam’s modern history. Unlike previous studies that examine the impact of Project 2020 on English teaching and learning, this presentation will focus specifically on the assessment of writing, one crucial, yet often neglected macro skill in the country. Moreover, by adopting narrative inquiry, a method widely used in humanities but rarely adopted in language assessment, the study has uncovered insightful findings that cannot be obtained from traditional large-scale surveys. To be specific, the stories of two participating teachers have revealed questionable assessment practices of their institutions, including the borrowing of test items, rating scales, the lack of rater training, and the use of indirect items to boost students’ pass rates. Drawing on these findings, the paper problematizes the existing policy that strongly advocates summative standardized assessment based on a borrowed language proficiency framework and instead calls for a more expansive policy that also incorporates assessment for learning and as learning.
What's changed and What hasn't? Project 2020 & Writing Assessment
The 3rd Viettesol Conference, 2017
As stated in Decision 1400, the National Foreign Languages Project (Project 2020) aims to impleme... more As stated in Decision 1400, the National Foreign Languages Project (Project 2020) aims to implement radical reforms in testing and assessment; however, little is known about its actual impact on how writing, one of the most crucial macro skills, is assessed. To bridge the gap, this paper presents findings from a narrative study revolving around the professional lives of two early-career lecturers and illustrates how the national strategies were adopted and adapted by their institutions and the teachers themselves. It reveals that despite the project’s reform discourse, little difference could be observed in the restricted range of assessment instruments employed especially where English was taught as a minor subject. Moreover, the attention paid to feedback on student writing remained limited and even declined as more teaching was geared to preparing students for the mandatory graduation test, which was possibly the most noticeable change introduced by the project. Nevertheless, this exit test received rather negative perception of teachers for a range of reasons. The paper ends with practical recommendations with the input from second language writing and test washback literature, highlighting the need to adopt a more balanced and cautious view of testing as a tool for policy implementation.
It is generally agreed in the language testing literature that item writing, though integral to t... more It is generally agreed in the language testing literature that item writing, though integral to the quality of standardised tests, is seriously under-studied. Even in the rare cases of Salisbury (2005), Kim et al. (2010) and Green and Hawkey (2011), which focus on this particular process, there is still a lack of a coherent framework to fully portray its complexity. In an attempt to bridge this gap, this paper demonstrates how item writing can be investigated through the lens of the cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), a well-established theoretical perspective in education. As this framework is still relatively under-utilised in language testing, it will first be briefly introduced together with the relevant literature on item writing. Following this part, empirical data from a case study of a Vietnamese listening item writer will be provided to illustrate how CHAT could be employed to study the crafting of test items. To conclude, the presentation will discuss the potential of CHAT for future studies into demystifying and improving the item writing process. Since the paper deals with an issue at the heart of the test production process, it will be of great interest to the audience from the countries, including those in East Asia, where local language testing professionals are struggling to meet the growing demand for home-grown standardised language tests. It is also expected to make a theoretical contribution by showing how a prominent framework from psychology and education could be applied to the field of language testing and assessment.
Recent time has witnessed a growing interest in the role of ethics in language testing with two s... more Recent time has witnessed a growing interest in the role of ethics in language testing with two special issues of Language Testing in 1997, Language Assessment Quarterly in 2004, the publication of ILTA Code of Ethics (2000) and two book-length treatments by Shohamy (2001) and McNamara and Roever (2006). However, this issue is still relatively underexplored in Vietnam despite the boom of the ELT industry and the frequent use of language tests in the country. To bridge this critical gap, the presentation will first introduce a working definition of ethics in language testing and then argue why this issue should be regarded as a major item on every language testing agenda. This will be followed by a critical review of practical approaches to ensuring ethical language testing as adopted by prestigious examination boards. Finally, the presentation will examine how such international practices fit in the Vietnamese context, and provide some implications for various stakeholders including but not limited to classroom teachers, teacher trainers, and policy makers.
Book chapters by Xuan Minh Ngo
Sociopolitical contexts of EFL writing in Vietnam: Impact of a national project
The politics of English second language writing assessment in global contexts, 2018
This chapter turns the spotlight on Vietnam, where English learning is booming due to globalizati... more This chapter turns the spotlight on Vietnam, where English learning is booming due to globalization and now further accelerated by the central government’s 2020 National Foreign Languages Project. Despite its significance, little is known about the project’s actual effects on EFL writing assessment. To bridge this gap, the current study tracks the professional life history of two Vietnamese instructors as they progressed through different positions and illustrates how the national strategies were adopted and adapted by their institutions and the teachers themselves.
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Papers by Xuan Minh Ngo
Conference Presentations by Xuan Minh Ngo
Book chapters by Xuan Minh Ngo