“Bộ tiêu chuẩn đánh giá năng lực tiếng Việt của học viên quốc tế/Criteria for assessing the Vietnamese competencies for international students” (by Nguyễn Chí Hòa, Vũ Đức Nghiệu, VNU-Publishing House, Hanoi, 2015)

“Bộ tiêu chuẩn đánh giá năng lực tiếng Việt của học viên quốc tế/Criteria for assessing the Vietnamese competencies for international students” (by Nguyễn Chí Hòa, Vũ Đức Nghiệu, VNU-Publishing House, Hanoi, 2015)

Phan Van Kien
If someone looks for a sole and comprehensive professional book on linguistics written by both well-known scholars, Prof.Dr Vu Duc Nghieu and Associate Prof.Dr Nguyen Chi Hoa, it is not a suitable choice to select the new title published in 2015 of "Bộ tiêu chuẩn đánh giá năng lực tiếng Việt của học viên quốc tế/Criteria for assessing the Vietnamese competencies for international students". Its title shows for the readers that this book is an interdisciplinary and inter-category and a reference book for teachers in Vietnamese language.
Presented in 437 pages, size 17 x 24 cm, this book is a manual for the learners of the Vietnamese as a foreign language. It is equipped with criteria for assessing the Vietnamese usage's competencies. However, in terms of evaluative criteria or the voice of learners and teachers, this book is also regarded as a research work on educational examination and assessment. It also presents the significant position on the academic work researching the background of linguistics and pedagogy and assessing the Vietnamese usages for foreigners.
It has prominent "dual" characteristic of content and category, so its structure clearly covers the overall and details, the system and the specification. It opens with the backgrounds for assessment and examination in general and for the Vietnamese language competencies in particular. This book proposes the assessment standards of Vietnamese language for international students, including 10 criteria, 51 indicators in 6 levels, from A1 to C2 as the Common European Framework for Reference (CEFR).
From the perspective of teaching and assessing the Vietnamese as the foreign language, this book is the first criterion collection of Vietnamese competent assessment. It has been acknowledged and highly appreciated by scholars, such as the "basic, scientific and standard book as presented in the acknowledgement by Prof Nguyen Van Khang. This work has “the applicability and pioneering in the applied linguistic following the linguistic education in the field of evaluation, quality assurance of learner competencies on Vietnamese usage as a foreign language. This is a necessary work as we did teach Vietnamese as a foreign language for more than a half of a century, and there is still lack of such criteria for the assessment as in other foreign language”.
The pioneer and applied characteristics of this work showed that the book itself contains the high value. Furthermore, it also provides the readers with a glimpse on the overall history of assessment and the history of linguistic as a communicational tool. As it aims at constructing the criteria and indicators for assessing the language competencies, this book presents its clear, simple and understandable style. All standards and criteria are presented in tables logically and accessibly.
However, it is a pity that this work does not provide any sample of the test based on the CEFR, for the foreign learners in Vietnamese. Such addition would increase the applicability of the book as the “handbook” for this comprehensive work.
Vietnamese has been considered to be the specific language and unlike to the others, especially in the linguistic approach and other European perspectives. The authors also make the gap between the Vietnamese and European languages narrowly by including the examination and assessment of Vietnamese in references to the CEFR. In our opinion, that is the compatible way to make the integration of Vietnamese into the world under the views of examination and assessment of language competency.
So, this book is an essential handbook for lecturers who involve in the teaching, examining and assessing the Vietnamese competencies. It is also an indispensable book for international students who wish to take a competency assessment on Vietnamese language as a foreign language.


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