As the university entrance exam is approaching, Mr. Tran Hinh (lecturer of the Faculty of Literature) shares his thoughts on the current way of teaching and learning Literature. He also gives some suggestions to help candidates do well on the university entrance exam in Literature. - Through many years of teaching and grading university entrance exams in Literature, what do you think are the most "serious" mistakes students make in the current way of learning Literature?To answer this question fully, I think it is difficult, because I am just a “small” individual, while there are many other teachers who may have different comments. However, if I am allowed to answer personally and frankly, I affirm that the “most serious” mistake in the way of teaching Literature for a long time is that students are turned into “models”, learning from “model essays”. Literature in particular and art in general, as writer Nam Cao said, “do not need skilled workers to follow a few pre-made samples. Literature only accepts those who know how to dig deep into their thoughts, explore untapped sources and create things that do not exist yet”. Even though Nam Cao's above concept focuses more on fictional literature, literature of creators, rather than student literature, I still think that the reason why students' literature learning today has so many "disasters" is because books, teachers, and literature teaching methods often tend to turn students into "machines". When writers are machines, of course emotions disappear, personality is gone, and literature becomes a "disaster". We cannot blame students.- So when grading university entrance exams, what mistakes in literature exams make teachers worry, sir?A common mistake that students often make is trying to follow model essays in their writing. Grading thousands of essays in an exam, they all seem to be similar. Meanwhile, learning from model essays is never possible. When they do not learn and remember model essays, students become disoriented and lose confidence in themselves. This leads to a series of essays that often have the following errors: essays lacking structure, arguments are often unclear, sentences are dry, "confused", naive, unconvincing, slogans... To be honest, in my nearly 40-year history of grading university entrance exams, since the appearance of exam questions and model essays, I have encountered many such essays. Of course, in an examination council, we occasionally come across a few good essays. Truly good, not good according to model essays. That is when students are themselves. They think and feel and write authentic sentences. I wish that one day we can bring back the way literature is taught and learned.- The annual university entrance exam for Literature often has questions about feelings about a poem or character, problem... in a prose work. With this type of question, what should candidates pay attention to when doing the test to get a high score?It is true that recently in university entrance exams, we often encounter questions asking for opinions about a poem, a paragraph or a certain issue in one or several prose works. Specifically, the university entrance exams for Literature from 2008 to now have a series of questions of this type: stating your feelings about two poems in Day thon Vi Da and Trang giang; stating your feelings about two poems in Tuong tu and Viet Bac; stating your feelings about two prose passages in the essay Nguoi lai do song da and Ai da nam cho dong song?... In general, with this "strange" type of exam, students need to pay attention, it is just a normal type of essay, do not consider it "strange". Of course, when people give questions to link two works or two issues together, they should think of it as a type of exam that requires comparison. Students must know how to find the similarities and differences between the two poems/paragraphs above. As for the exam questions asking for “perception”, it means that people want to emphasize the students’ perception. Therefore, with these types of exams, students can use the operations of analysis, commentary, proof or commentary, depending on the specific content requirements, as long as they can talk about the good, the beautiful, the similarities and differences in content and art of the poems and literary passages that need to be compared. Students should not worry too much about the word “perception” in this type of exam. However, I think that giving exams to high school students like this is actually not very “standard”. Because in the high school curriculum, there is no “perception” type of writing. It only has analysis, explanation, proof, commentary or commentary. It will be difficult for students.
- For many years now, the university entrance exam for Literature has included a question asking candidates to express their thoughts on a social issue. How do you evaluate this way of writing the questions? After many years of grading university entrance exams, what do you think about the way students do their work and what advice can you give to help candidates do best on this type of exam?This type of exam has actually been implemented for a number of years now. If I'm not mistaken, I remember starting from the 2009 exam. To be exact, this is a social argumentative essay format. When I took the university entrance exam [in 1970-1971], this type of exam was very popular. Now it is being used again, and many people think it is a terrible "innovation". Personally, I accept this direction of exam questions, but I don't make it absolute. It is true that by giving open-ended questions like this, people can test students' level of social awareness and know their daily thoughts. However, in reality, when grading exams of this type, I don't see that positive direction. Most of the students' work still falls into the state of "model essays", shouting slogans, repeating what teachers, books, and the media "feed" them, without expressing their own thoughts honestly. Even in the exam questions about “honesty, hypocrisy, lies”, in the students’ papers, I still see “dishonesty, falsehood and hypocrisy”. Therefore, in my opinion, to do well in this type of essay, students only need to sincerely present their thoughts and understanding and try to structure the essay following the following 4 steps: 1. Introduction, emphasizing the key word (such as honesty, falsehood, hypocrisy, belief, indifference...); 2. Explain the concept of the key word (what is honesty, belief, falsehood...); 3. Extensive discussion about the key word; relate yourself to the key word...- You have graded high-scoring Literature exams, so what is your impression of a good essay?In short, it is an essay that does not follow a model essay, is well-written, has sufficient ideas, has literary quality, and is different from other essays of the same type. If you are not afraid of being wordy, I am willing to provide an essay of a student who took the entrance exam for group D, Hanoi National University in 2006, you will fully understand my point of view on what a good essay means.- According to you, what is the most important thing in teaching and learning Literature?It is to teach students to see the beauty of literary works. But what is more important is to teach students to think independently, to read and understand a specific text, to express themselves in Vietnamese fluently, correctly, passionately and creatively. I remember, not sure if it is true, but the writer Nguyen Khai gave a very good advice to young writers: "When reading, try to remember. When writing, try to forget." I am against memorization in Literature.- What adjustments should be made to the annual university literature exam to suit the above goals, sir?We should return to the old way of making test questions. Just ask one question in the test. And we should not limit the content of the test to the curriculum. We should encourage the direction of making test questions as concise as possible while still testing students' knowledge of literature. There are 3 criteria that should be noted: understanding the problem and text in the test questions; expressing Vietnamese fluently and clearly; and writing creatively, not repeating textbooks.- Thank you for sharing the above..
Author:Thanh Ha
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