Articles

The transition from traditional (face-to-face) to online learning mode presents challenges and barriers to students globally. Reports on this issue during the pandemic show the various effects of barriers to online learning on their academic achievement. Some researchers have been interested in this issue. However, specific research on the group of students majoring in social sciences is still limited. To fill this research gap, this paper aims to build a theoretical framework on barriers to students’ learning in the online environment through a review of research papers, thereby examining the relationship between barriers and students’ academic achievement. The barriers identified in this study are Social Interaction, Academic Skills, Technical Skills, Learner Motivation, Time and Support for Studies. The Snowball sampling method was used, and the Google Forms application designed the questionnaire for data collection. The analytical data set included 482 records collected over 32 days from April 5th to May 6th, 2021. The results show the difference in demographic conditions in terms of the academic year, learning conditions, gender and region with the identified barriers. The study results show that most female students are guaranteed to fully meet the requirements of online learning in the context of COVID-19. However, the results of online learning are still affected, and the main reason is the time and support for learning activities. Through the findings, the research has contributed to strengthening the knowledge about the relationship between barriers and academic performance among students majoring in social sciences in the online learning environment. The research results can be a reference source so that educational administrators, teachers and related stakeholders such as parents, enterprises and the community will propose solutions to issues affecting the students’ learning effectiveness and outcomes.

In the era of globalization, one of the ultimate goals in English language education is to equip learners with intercultural sensitivity (InS) to effectively communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds; however, EFL learners in rural contexts are supposed to encounter difficulties in achieving InS. Therefore, this mixed-methods study aims at exploring EFL students’ InS in a rural high school where students have few opportunities to interact with foreigners in person. The study involved 185 EFL high school students in Lam Dong province, Vietnam, in answering the questionnaire, and 18 students in responding to the focus group interview questions. The results indicated that participants possessed a high level of InS. Among the five constructs of InS (e.g. interaction engagement, respect for cultural differences, interaction enjoyment, interaction attentiveness, & intercultural confidence), the participants were most aware of respect for cultural differences, had interaction enjoyment and attentiveness, and showed their intercultural confidence. Nevertheless, they were likely to have difficulties in interaction engagement. It can be implied that the EFL high school students could, to some extent, gain their InS except socially intercultural interactions.

This research mainly aims at investigating non-English majored students’ awareness of autonomous English learning. To obtain the data for this research, one hundred non-English majors, from The Saigon International University, were surveyed. The objectives were to explore the students’ perceptions of their responsibility in learning English as well as the main factors affecting students’ autonomy. In addition to the survey, five students were also interviewed to discover the roles of autonomous English learning in students’ view. The findings indicate that the majority of students perceive themselves as autonomous learners who are willing to take responsibility for their English learning inside and outside the classroom. Besides, according to the results, there are various factors influencing autonomous English learning which includes laziness, a lack of learning strategies, and a lack of motivation. Moreover, the results show that autonomy does play an integral part in English learning. This study concludes by suggesting various methods to promote non-English majors’ autonomy in their English language learning process.

This paper presents the results of a study exploring the English as a foreign language (EFL) high school students’ perceptions of the factors that affect their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) development. This mixed-methods study was conducted in the context of a high school in Lam Dong Province, and it involved 140 EFL high school students in answering the questionnaires and 12 of them in semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data were processed using the software SPSS, while the qualitative data were analyzed by the content analysis approach. The findings unraveled that participants believed that learner-related factors played an important role in shaping their ICC. Learners’ psychology (e.g., confidence, calmness, risking-taking) and motivation (e.g., importance, necessity and usefulness of culture) were two major factors in contributing to their ICC development. Nevertheless, it was found out that participants were unsure of the effects of teacherrelated factors (e.g., teaching methods/approaches, enthusiasm, assistance) and learning material-related factors (e.g., cultural issues, textbook contents, effectiveness) on their ICC enhancement. Such preliminary findings may imply that learners play an important role in shaping their ICC, while the teachers and learning materials are not clearly significant in developing students’ ICC.