A GUIDE TO VIETNAMESE UNITS 3 & 4
2013 Version
Introduction: Should I Do Vietnamese In Year 12? What Should I Be Prepared For?It is important to be honest to yourself when you decide whether or not you want to do Vietnamese in Year 12. Like any of the other hard subjects (like Specialist Mathematics or, basically, any other LOTE), if you are willing to put in the hard yards, then the significant scaling as well as, more importantly, the immense self-satisfaction you get will be quite rewarding. Otherwise, if you want to bludge off and do Vietnamese just for the sake of doing so or for the sake of your parents, then you are honestly better off investing your precious time in Year 12 (or Year 11) in another subject.
If you do decide to do Year 12 Vietnamese, or frankly have no other choice, prepare for a fairly compact year, where most of the responsibility lies on
you. Most people learn Vietnamese through a Saturday or Sunday school, and this means that out of all of your subjects, Vietnamese will be the subject that you will spend least of your time learning with a teacher. Even if you are not, there is no doubt that there is always more material than the time required to learn them. This means that by choosing to do Vietnamese in Year 12, there will a significant sacrifice out of your own time to study for this subject.
Despite the apparent difficulty of Vietnamese, if you are naturally adept in using this language or believe that you can do really well by studying really hard for it, then Vietnamese is not a subject that is necessarily hard to score high in. Often, the hardest part of the whole course is writing a good essay, and with plenty of practise and consultation with your teacher, essays do become easier and easier to do well in.
Structure Of The Course There are two types of formal assessment in Vietnamese, like most other subjects: internal assessment and external assessment. The internal assessment is in the form of school-assessed coursework or, better known as, SACs. The external assessment is the end of the year exam.
SACsThere are six SACs:
A 250-word personal or imaginative written piece.
A listening comprehension task.
A 3-4 minute role play.
A reading comprehension task.
A 250300 word informative, persuasive or evaluative written response.
A 3-4 minute interview.
The SACs are marked by your classroom teacher and are quite easy to score high in because, usually, the teacher will tell you what they are looking for and will probably be quite lenient on you.
End of Year ExamThe end of year exams is divided into two parts: an oral component and a written component.
The oral component consists of a general conversation (~ 7 minutes) and then a discussion about a detailed study (~ 8 minutes). The conversation is quite like a talk with your parents and contains very random questions and are, thus, hard to predict. Prepare to talk about your personal life, you school life and your aspirations I was even asked about how I got to the examination venue. However, the questions for the discussion are quite predictable. Hopefully, your teacher will provide you with a list of questions and you can memorize the answers to these questions.
The written component is the easier to study for, as there are past exams available on the VCAA website. More importantly, the content of the written exam is very similar to the SACs that you should have completed throughout the year. There is:
A listening comprehension component (divided into two, one where you must answer in English and one where you must answer in Vietnamese)
A reading comprehension component (divided into two, one part where you must answer in English and one part where you must answer in Vietnamese)
An essay component (where you can choose from a list of topics of various essay formats)
| Component | Mark Allocation |
| A 250-word personal or imaginative written piece. | 10% |
| A listening comprehension task. | 5% |
| A 3-4 minute role play. | 10% |
| A reading comprehension task. | 5% |
| A 250300 word informative, persuasive or evaluative written response. | 10% |
| A 3-4 minute interview. | 10% |
| Oral examination | 12.5% |
| Written examination | 37.5% |
TipsGeneral TipsLearn to use Vietnamese in everyday life. It cannot be overstated that it is important to start, if you have not done so, interacting with other people, especially parents, in Vietnamese. This will allow you to develop confidence in communicating your ideas in this language and, also, this will prepare you for the oral component of your end of year exam, especially for the general conversation part. Do not expect it to be easy to be able to write or even just think about ideas in a language other than English (if English is your first language).
Your parents are also an immense resource when it comes to learning Vietnamese in Year 12. They not only can correct how you speak when you converse with them, but most parents are also happy to correct essays when you get to this part of the course. Use their knowledge of the language to your advantage.
Dont be scared to answer questions in class. When the teacher corrects you, this is where you will be able to improve both your interpretations of texts for reading comprehension and improve your expression for the oral component of the exam.
When going into the exam, bring a big dictionary that is likely going to contain all the vocabulary you need. However, do not get caught up trying to find the definition of every word and remember the task at hand. A dictionary is only required for a general understanding of the texts.
EssaysWrite a lot of essays. Don't be scared of it not sounding good because this is the primary way of how you are going to learn and improve your written communication. Show it to your teachers and/or your parents so they can be corrected.
Consolidate the structure of different essays. When examiners mark your essays, there are generally three criteria under which they mark them: structure, vocabulary and ideas. Ideas should be easy as essays, in terms of the content they are asking, are not very hard. Where people have the most difficulty is the vocabulary, and some will never be able to improve their vocabulary to be able to beat the competition. But, this does not mean that your essays will be inevitably worse than others as, if your ideas
and structure is good enough, then you will still be marked highly.
Read a lot of essays. Fortunately, there is no criteria for originality. While it is not recommended to memorize entire essays, incorporating ideas or certain words from other high-level essays wont hurt.
Develop a vocabulary list. Include definition as well as examples of its use in sentences as well, in order to be able to use it in your essays.
Reading ComprehensionUnderstand what the passage is saying. While it is easy to just simply match up the phrase of the question with a phrase in the passage, aim to understand what the question is trying to ask and answer it accordingly
When answering questions, write as much as you can. Vietnamese examiners are lenient in that they read every word that you submit and literally try to give you as many points as possible.
When answering in English, use more sophisticated language. Typically, the examiners won't be able to understand this, and they reward you anyway.
Oral examinationTry to be calm and collected when doing the oral examination. It is generally easy to score well, so do not panic when you enter your allocated room.
Explain your answers to the examiners' questions in detail. Try to elaborate on what you are trying to say to show off you ideas and vocabulary.
Most importantly, smile and try to make them laugh. This is what the examiners want the most and if you can make them laugh (with you, not at you), you will surely score highly.
Links To Some ResourcesCourse Outline and ExamsVCAA Study DesignPast ExamsSample EssaysLetter - Persuading Your Friend To Go To UniversityNewspaper Article - Advantages of SportNewspaper Article - My Study HabitsSpeech - Contributions by Vietnamese PeopleSpeech - The Success of Vietnamese People in AustraliaSpeech - The Success of Vietnamese People in Australia (2)Different Essay FormatsContent Required for Various Essay FormatsStructure for Various Essay FormatsOral Examination ResourcesVietnamese Oral Examination - General DiscussionVietnamese Oral Examination - FamilyScalingThough I do not recommend doing this subject purely for the scaling, below are figures of raw and corresponding scaled study scores from previous years.
| Raw Study Scores | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 45 | 50 |
| 2010 | 23 | 29 | 35 | 39 | 44 | 47 | 50 |
| 2011 | 22 | 28 | 34 | 39 | 44 | 48 | 50 |
| 2012 | 23 | 29 | 35 | 39 | 44 | 47 | 50 |
| 2013 | 22 | 28 | 34 | 39 | 44 | 47 | 50 |
Final NoteMost importantly, do not underestimate the exams even if you have got perfect scores in all of your SACs. While, it seems that the exam and SACs are weighted evenly (both contribute 50% to your overall mark), the exam can pull your SAC marks up, if you do well, or down, if you do not do so well.
Try to use your advantages to do better than the rest of the competition. Do well in tasks that require the use of English and use (appropriate) language that the examiners might not know.
Last of all, good luck! The year will be an interesting one, and when you are done, you will know that you will never have to touch a Vietnamese textbook ever again!
By Hong Ky Ho, MHS Class of '13If you want to inform me of fixes and edits to this guide, please message me.
It you want to ask a big question about Vietnamese, please make a new topic about it.
If you just want to ask small, clarifying questions, please post it in this topic.
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