Educational Technology books should be widely applied if effective.

Computer engineer Nguyen Lung Danh read the article by Associate Professor Bui Manh Hung, Chairman of the National Council for Appraisal of the Vietnamese Grade 1 Textbook Educational Technology and had some discussions.

The book Educational Technology must be placed in the context of its birth - 1978

First of all, about the name of the book. The word “technology” in “educational technology” should not be understood in the common sense, associated with the digital age as it is today, but should be placed in the context of the book’s publication in 1978. For teachers, the two types of knowledge they need are professional theory and practical skills. When the country was newly unified, education was still in its infancy, were the teaching staff at that time equipped with advanced pedagogical methods like today?

And if the technical theory is not sufficient, the most effective way is certainly to create a teaching process, complete with steps, effective, so that teachers with normal technical theory can also become good teachers if they follow those steps. The word "technology" probably originally meant a process with carefully designed teaching steps, easy to use, and quick to train.

Whether students feel bored or monotonous when learning by a repetitive method can be easily surveyed. However, even when the method is repetitive, the lesson content is new (new sounds, new letters). In the scope of learning to spell and read in the first grade program, "imitation" and "repetition" are probably necessary. Moreover, the way we understand "boring" is not necessarily the same as the feeling of young children.

There are songs, games, and learning activities that teachers use over and over again, but students are still enthusiastic about participating. Therefore, I wonder if the Evaluation Council has surveyed the students' emotions when studying this program? I know that Professor Ho Ngoc Dai used to stand in front of the school gate every day, asking each student if they had fun going to school today.

In the field of foreign language teaching today, a popular trend is to teach “Phonics”, which means separating the sounds of words. For example, if students learn the word “cat” consisting of “c” and “at”, then when they encounter new words such as “bat, hat, rat…”, they will be able to read them easily. Thus, I do not think that the method of teaching syllable structure analysis is rarely used.

With the main goal of teaching reading, teaching reading unfamiliar words with the same sound structure (in the above example, teaching “mat, pat, vat...) but not focusing on understanding the meaning has also been applied in this way of teaching Phonics. Thus, “a vacuum of meaning” is not completely unreasonable, if considered from the perspective of teaching students to look at the letters and read.

Learning to spell does not require communication.

First of all is the “communicative language teaching” (CLT). This is a foreign language teaching method that appeared in the 1980s, emphasizing the role of interaction between students in the classroom in helping to develop foreign languages, as well as minimizing heavy grammar and translation lessons.

However, the context of teaching CLT to native speakers and foreign language learners is different. For example, when we learn English, we do not have much time to speak English outside the classroom, so it is necessary to focus on developing English communication in the classroom.

On the contrary, when students learn Vietnamese, outside the classroom they have many other environments to communicate: with parents, friends, neighbors... After all, they have communicated for six years before entering first grade, and I don't think Vietnamese lessons require much communication, for two reasons. First, besides Vietnamese lessons, there are many other lessons, with many other teaching activities where students can communicate. Second, when students learn to spell, it is difficult to think of any communication activity that goes with spelling.

And clearly, CLT is just one teaching method among many, not the only one. There are many teaching methods and we can choose one, or use many methods in combination, as long as we achieve optimal results.

For those reasons, I don't think that Vietnamese students learning Vietnamese should really focus on communication when learning spelling.

Next is the issue of “100% of the population going to school, we should teach everyday language”. Obviously, when we have a large number of students, different in many aspects (family culture, background, cognitive ability...), choosing everyday language as the teaching content is understandable. It is a common, familiar language that children can easily access. Choosing to teach languages ​​with many styles and diversity also has its good points, however, in the first grade program, it is probably not really necessary.

“Speech is the real thing, writing is its substitute.”

If we compare the two expressions, “sound is the representation of concepts in thinking, and writing is the conversion of spoken language into symbols” and “speech is the real thing, writing is the substitute”, I am afraid that for first graders, with their still-incipient cognitive level, the second expression is easier to absorb and understand. I do not think that it is complicating the problem, but simply simplifying it for students to understand. And if we are not sure which expression is easier to understand, we can completely survey students directly.

And perhaps for that reason, in the first lessons,Vietnamese 1 Educational TechnologyUse squares, circles, and triangles to represent sounds. If we don't consider the meaning but only count the number of sounds, then these geometric shapes are reasonable substitutes to help children understand the separation of words into individual sounds.

Need to verify learning outcomes, evaluate relapse rate

Regarding Professor Ho Ngoc Dai's assertion that "students following the Educational Technology program cannot relapse into blindness", it can be completely verified based on a survey of high school students, and comparing that rate with the rate of relapse into blindness and sitting in the wrong class of students following the current general education program. And we can support it.Vietnamese 1 Educational TechnologyIf the relapse rate is lower, it is not necessary to expect a figure of “0% relapse”.

If the teaching duration and number of periods are the same,Vietnamese 1 Educational TechnologyBeing able to teach students to read more words is clearly an advantage. It cannot be said that the effort students and teachers put in is a disadvantage, because there is no achievement without a lot of effort. However, if you can read well after only one year of first grade, instead of having to study until second or third grade to read well, then I think the second case will put more effort into reading.

And of course, we can’t expect a first grader to understand a novel. At that age, at that cognitive level, being able to read is an advantage. They have many years to develop, to understand what they read today.

Because of the above arguments, I do not think that the approach ofVietnamese 1 Educational Technologyis extreme. I think no book is perfect. If the Educational Technology book shows its advantages, the test results over the past 40 years are good, then licensing this textbook for widespread use is the right thing to do.

At the end of August, a video of a teacher teaching how to pronounce the letters c/k/q as /cờ/ caused a stir in public opinion because it was different from the method commonly taught to students. That spelling is according to the book.Vietnamese Grade 1 Educational TechnologyEdited by Professor Ho Ngoc Dai and published by the Ministry of Education.

Chairman of the National Council for Book AppraisalVietnamese Educational Technology- Associate Professor Bui Manh Hung said that the document is controversial, but in reality, the method of teaching spelling in it has helped students develop quite effectively the skills of reading aloud and writing correctly. Up to now, nearly 50 provinces and cities with about 800,000 first graders (accounting for nearly half of the total number of first graders) are using this book.

Professor Ho Ngoc Dai shared that the book is built on the principle of "if you want to learn something, you have to do it yourself". When applied, students will be the ones doing the work, while teachers will only assign tasks, observe, and guide methods. He is confident that the book will last forever, and that the education system he builds is correct because it has a theoretical foundation of philosophy, psychology, and is supported by educational technology.