Vietnamese EFL High School Teachers’ Self-assessment of their English Language Proficiency in Relation to the Official Assessment Test Results

The current study explored how Vietnamese EFL high school teachers self-assessed their current English proficiency. It also compared teachers’ self-ratings with the results they obtained in the Project 2010 test, which was  used to assess English level of EFL teachers across Vietnam as part of the implementation of the National Foreign Language Project 2020. The data were drawn from 15-item online questionnaire with 94 teacher participants. The findings revealed that teachers perceived themselves as being more proficient in skills of writing and reading, compared to listening, spoken production (e.g., making presentations) and spoken interaction (e.g., making conversations). Most of them rated their current English proficiency level lower than the level they achieved in the Project 2020 test.  The findings offer information  about the language aspects that teachers were least proficient, which can be used to specify what support they actually desire from in-service training courses.  Also, as teachers are at the centre of the Project 2020, their perceptions of their own English proficiency provide insightful input to enhance the effectiveness of this educational reform

Time-Frequency Nexus between Tourism Development, Economic Growth, Energy Consumption, and Ecological Footprint in Singapore

Singapore has been listed as one of the top-visited countries and has the highest ecological deficit. Despite the abundance of previous studies, the distinction between short, medium, and long term by decomposing tourism development, economic growth, energy consumption, and ecological footprint has been largely ignored. This study aims to investigate the lead-lag nexus structures between ecological footprint and Singapore's economic activities from 1978 to 2016. By adopting the wavelet analysis and scale-by-scale Granger causality test, the outcomes show that energy consumption positively impacts ecological footprint at high frequencies, while tourism and economic growth positively drive ecological footprint at high and medium frequencies. We also find that the positive impact of macroeconomic variables on ecological footprint has not been evident since 2003. Additionally, the wavelet-based Granger test confirms a bi-directional causal between economic growth and ecological footprint at all frequencies, whilst there is a bi-directional relationship between tourism, energy consumption, and ecological footprint at high frequency. Based on these findings, the research may further strengthen the belief of Singapore’s policy-makers on the promotion of tourism and suggests some helpful lessons for emerging countries

ONLINE SHOPPING TRENDS OF VIETNAMESE YOUNG PEOPLE

With the drastic development of the Internet and social media, online shopping gradually gains traction after being introduced to the market in the 1990s. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, this trend has become more popular on a global scale. There are numerous benefits including the wide range of products, sales, and saving consumers' time, which attract more and more people, especially the youth. As far as the increasing importance of online shopping is concerned, our research team has a deeper insight into it through articles and research on Vietnamese Generation Z, who were born from 1995 to 2012 to understand more about the demands, time usage, advantages, and disadvantages of online shopping. From the results of the research, we put forward some solutions that consumers could implement to purchase things online more effectively

Solving the Closed-End Fund Puzzle in Vietnam: An Examination of Investor Sentiment and Fund's Liquidity

This paper examines the impact of stock liquidity and investor sentiment on premiums/discounts of closed-end funds in Vietnam. There are currently five funds listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange. They were issued at premiums and later traded at discounts to their net asset values. The investor sentiment hypothesis proposes that discounts on various funds move together. Closed-end funds and small stocks tend to be held by individual investors, and thus there should be a correlation between discount and small stock. The liquidity theory implies that funds with higher liquidity have higher premiums (lower discounts) than funds with lower liquidity. Liquidity is measured as proxies for trading activity. To test the investor sentiment theory, I follow the methodology of Lee, Thaler and Shleifer (1991) and investigate co-movements in discounts and small stocks, using the Pearson product-moment correlation measure. I also follow the work of Bennett and Gronewoller (2002) and carry out a co-integration analysis to examine whether there is a long and stable relationship between discount and proxies for investor sentiment. Then I use the methodology of Datar (2001) and run cross-sectional regressions on discounts/premiums against various proxies for liquidity. Overall, I find mixed results, and discounts are partially, but not fully, explained by the investor sentiment and liquidity theories

Current status and behavior modeling on household solid-waste separation: a case study in Da Nang city, Vietnam

This study focused on household solid-waste recycling in Da Nang city, Vietnam to assess the existing separation behavior and clarify the factors influencing the separation behavior. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey for 150 households in 6 urban districts, which consisted of household attributes, separation behavior, and the household's attitude on recycling and the environment. The waste separation rates were determined for leftover food and 13 recyclable items and the recyclable disposal habit was also assessed. The separation rate of leftover food was 77.3%. Among 13 surveyed recyclable items, plastic bottles and metal cans were two popular items with higher separation rate (72.5% and 63.8%, respectively). To identify the conscious structure and determinants of separation behavior, the authors developed a predictive model on the separation behavior of leftover food and recyclables by logistic and multiple linear regression analyses. The positive factors included behavior intention, sympathy for the collector, incentive brought by recycling, goal intention, internal norm, and perception of responsibility and seriousness. The negative factor was evaluation of trouble. The authors also analyzed the differences in separation rates among attributes. Based on the significant influence factors and attributes, the authors suggested how to promote separation behavior

Overview of the VLSP 2022 -- Abmusu Shared Task: A Data Challenge for Vietnamese Abstractive Multi-document Summarization

This paper reports the overview of the VLSP 2022 - Vietnamese abstractive multi-document summarization (Abmusu) shared task for Vietnamese News. This task is hosted at the 9$^{th}$ annual workshop on Vietnamese Language and Speech Processing (VLSP 2022). The goal of Abmusu shared task is to develop summarization systems that could create abstractive summaries automatically for a set of documents on a topic. The model input is multiple news documents on the same topic, and the corresponding output is a related abstractive summary. In the scope of Abmusu shared task, we only focus on Vietnamese news summarization and build a human-annotated dataset of 1,839 documents in 600 clusters, collected from Vietnamese news in 8 categories. Participated models are evaluated and ranked in terms of \texttt{ROUGE2-F1} score, the most typical evaluation metric for document summarization problem.Comment: VLSP 202

Extraction of Polyphenols from Mentha aquatica Linn. var. crispa

Mentha aquatica Linn. var. crispa is commonly used as a spice in many Asian countries. Although its biological activities, such as its applications, antimicrobial properties, have been studied, its antioxidation properties have not been investigated. This study establishes the most suitable extraction conditions concerning the independent variables affecting the total polyphenol content (TPC) and antioxidant activity (AA) of M. aquatica extract (stem and leaf). Investigated factors include the type of solvent used; solvent concentration, the ratio of raw material to solvent, extraction time and extraction temperature. The efficiency of polyphenol extraction was evaluated by TPC and AA through the ability to neutralize the free radicals 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2\u27-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6- sulfonic acid) (ABTS), and the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) was used as the evaluation indicator. The results have shown that acetone at a concentration of 50%, at a ratio of 1:20 (w/v), extraction time of 2 h and a temperature of 40 °C give the highest values of TPC and AA, with values of 120.92 mg GAE g-1 dw for TPC, 169.36 μmol TE g-1 dw by DPPH assay, 264.03 μmol by ABTS assay, and 425.35 μmol Fe2+ g-1 dw by FRAP assay. This study demonstrates that extracts of M. aquatica can be used for research as food antioxidant