The secret to self-study to get IELTS 8.0 and SAT 1,500 points of a male student from a district school in Nghe An

The first person to achieve IELTS 8.0 in a district school

Nguyen Xuan On High School is located in the central area and has the best quality in Dien Chau district. However, because of low starting points and difficult conditions for learning English, taking exams and getting a high school diploma is difficult.IELTS certificatestill quite a luxury.

The whole school has more than 1,600 students and more than 500 grade 12 students, but in the 2022 High School Graduation Exam, the school only had 19 students with foreign language certificates. This year, despite high expectations, the school only had 17 students with certificates that qualified them to be exempted from the English exam, but their IELTS scores were not high compared to the general level. The only person who achieved IELTS 8.0 was Hoang Huu Quang, and he was also the first student in the school to achieve this score.

Hoang Huu Quang was born into a family with a mother who was a secondary school teacher and a father who was a worker. However, during his studies, he was greatly influenced by his father, who also guided Quang to take part in international certification exams. Photo: My Ha

“I have never had any English lessons with a foreign teacher,” Quang said when talking about his English studies.

Quang calculated that the cost of IELTS preparation was only about 18 million and he only studied with one teacher in Gia Lai online from grade 10 to near the end of grade 11. During that time, the program was interrupted for more than 6 months because the teacher gave birth to a small child. For the rest of the IELTS study and test, Quang mainly self-studied.

Quang's IELTS test results are quite convincing after more than 1 year of preparation.

English is one of the subjects that Quang liked since his primary school days, even though Quang only studied at a village school. When he first got acquainted with English, like many students in the commune, Quang studied quite emotionally because he was not taught and invested in a systematic way.

In grade 5, despite his ability surpassing many of his classmates and being selected to participate in the IOE - Internet English Olympiad in the province, Quang failed as a matter of course. Quang said he remembered this failure until the end of grade 9 and waited for an opportunity to prove himself. However, the provincial excellent student exam in grade 9 was postponed due to the Covid-19 epidemic.

To have a solid foundation in English, Quang said that he is grateful to his teachers from middle school to high school because in reality, as a student living far from big cities like Quang, the basic knowledge he has is mainly thanks to the teachers in class. However, to be able to have an international English certificate, Quang also said that just studying in class is not enough because these exams require all 4 skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Of these 4 skills, the most difficult for Quang at first were listening and speaking.

"Since I started to like learning English, I often watch foreign clips and cartoons. But, in the first years of secondary school, I could only understand 30-50% of each clip. After that, I learned by myself by practicing listening a lot, listening and guessing words, if I didn't understand, I could look up the dictionary" - Quang recounted.

Compared to schools in the center, Quang and many of his classmates still face many difficulties in studying, especially in foreign languages. Photo: My Ha

Quang also admitted that his speaking skills were very bad, partly due to psychological reasons because "before I was afraid to communicate, I couldn't speak in front of a crowd. So there were situations where even though I had already formed a picture in my mind, I couldn't pronounce it."

Quang’s problem is common to many students, especially when the place where he lives and studies does not have many environments for regular communication. To overcome this limitation, Quang set a goal of self-studying by practicing speaking with clips of native speakers.

In the general education program, there are often exercises to find words that are pronounced differently from the rest, and finding the phonetics and reading them correctly also helps me improve my reading skills. Quang also shared that, although there are many clips on the internet, when deciding to learn English online, you need to have a choice, you should watch clips of English teachers to pronounce correctly and not get lost in social networks.

With a solid foundation in grammar and perseverance, Quang achieved 8.0 the first time he took the IELTS mid-grade 11 exam. During the review and official exam, Quang had a special secret: not preparing essays in advance to avoid feeling unnatural and too dependent on pre-written essays. Instead, he allowed himself to relax and develop his thinking and other skills.

Multi-talented male student

“The impact of short-form videos on social media platforms and its relationship with “Short attention span” on students of Nguyen Xuan On High School” is a project by Hoang Huu Quang and Vo Thanh Dat selected by the school to participate in the Science and Technology Innovation Competition for the 2022-2023 school year and awarded the Second Prize by the Department of Education and Training.

Hoang Huu Quang and his classmates participated in the provincial Science and Technology Innovation Competition and won second prize with the project “The impact of short-form videos on social media platforms and its relationship with “Short attention span” for students of Nguyen Xuan On High School”. Photo: NTCC

This is a topic that both of them have been nurturing for a relatively short time, stemming from the problems that students often encounter in modern life. Quang himself is also a frequent user of social networks and loves “short videos”.

However, what Quang and his classmates are concerned about is that besides the positive effects, watching and abusing social networks will bring negative effects. Through this project, Quang hopes that the analysis and comments of the group of authors will contribute to helping students have a healthy development environment, balancing life, between studying and time outside of studying.

During his studies, in addition to the support of teachers in class, self-studying helped Quang overcome many of his own limitations. Photo: My Ha

During his 3 years studying at Nguyen Xuan On High School, Hoang Huu Quang had many similar experiences to the Science and Technology Innovation Competition. Although he was a quiet and not very active student, Quang said that these were practical playgrounds that helped students in a district school like Quang have many opportunities to show their abilities and renew themselves. Quang himself, since being trusted by teachers and assigned responsibility for major competitions, he always tried his best to bring the highest achievements to the school. Also in grade 12, he won second prize, excellent student of the province in English.

On the journey to complete high school, a memorable milestone for Quang was that he had just completed the SAT exam - a standardized university entrance exam in the US with a fairly high score of 1,500 points. This score is in the top 2% of the highest scores in the world, and in the top 10% of the highest scores in Vietnam.

At Nguyen Xuan On High School, Quang was also the first student to participate in this contest and achieved quite impressive results. Before that, Quang also shared that he came to this contest without any review session. The luggage to participate in the contest was the knowledge of Math that he learned at school and the basic English skills that he was equipped with in the Provincial Excellent Student Contest in English, preparing for the High School Graduation Exam and the IELTS Certificate Exam. In this exam, Quang scored 790/800 points in Math and 710/800 points in Reading and Writing. This score also corresponds to the two times he took the test himself one day before the exam to self-assess his own ability.

Quang's academic achievements have motivated students at Nguyen Xuan On High School. Photo: My Ha

With a solid record, Quang currently has many opportunities to be admitted to universities. However, this male student is still not satisfied with himself and he is still trying to achieve high scores in the High School Graduation Exam and once again bring achievements to the school.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Ha - Principal of Nguyen Xuan On High School said: Maybe in many favorable schools, Quang's achievements are still modest. But in a district school, Quang's efforts and especially his desire to conquer international certificates are worth recognizing. That not only creates a solid foundation for Quang in the future but also adds motivation and confidence to the students of the whole school in the journey of integration and reaching out to the world.