Level II

Chapter 1
Reading

English | Vietnamese

IC3, IT, TOEFL, Best Answer
English | Vietnamese
Assessment

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Topic: Identity

Who in the World Am I?
Tôi là ai trong thế giới này?

English Language Lesson

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Introductory Motivation and Focus:

Learn to Read by Reading.

Anticipate and Form Predictions

Reading is an active skill. You bring knowledge and experience to a reading experience. A good reading skill is to think about the vocabulary, knowledge and experience you already have in relation to the topic of the reading. This enables you to anticipate and make predictions for what you will be reading.

Before you read: Look at two pictures of farms. Talk about them using these questions to guide you:

1. Name the places, things and people. In what countries are these farms located?

2. Describe the pictures.

3. Compare the pictures.

4. Make a list of vocabulary words needed to describe these pictures.

Look at these two pictures of families:

1. Describe the two families.

2. What members of each family are in the pictures?

3. Make a list of the vocabulary needed to describe these pictures.

 

Vocabulary:

-farming family -livelihood (n) -rice (n) - married (adj) - farmer (n) -land (n) -soil (n) -local (adj) -children (n)  -delta (n) -fruits (n) -neighboring (adj) -son (n) -farm (n)  -vegetables (n)  -to swell (v)  -season (n) -rainy (adj)

-difficult (adj) -daughter (n) -province (n) -crops (n) -early (adj) -ancestors (n)  -home  (n )-market (n) -hot (adj) -household (n) -school (n) -export (n) -fertile (adj) -means (n)  -income (n) -river (n) -dependence (n)

-labor (n) -population (n) -countryside (n) -to grow (v)  -to sell (v) -to supplement (v) -to give (v) -to rise (v) -to bend (v)  -to plant (v) -to harvest(v) -transportation (n) -cycles (n) -tide (n) -high (adj) -low (adj) -dry (adj)

Fill in the blank with a word from the lists below that best fits the definition or description.

farm ancestor rise

labor  delta harvest

fertile livelihood export

income fruits supplement

countryside  province local

a  _______________ the land and scenery of the country

b. _______________  a means of living, a source of maintenance

c. _______________rich in the materials needed to support  vegetation; fruitful

d. _______________  a person, usually more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended

e. _______________  the money received or due to be received from employment,  business or investments,  especially in the course of a year

f. _______________ reap and gather in (ripe grain or other produce)

g. _______________  produce from trees and bushes good for eating 

h. _______________  cultivate or till the soil

i. _______________ provide support

Explanation of Reading

Study Skill A (Academic Reading Skill):

The verb Be: Patterns for Statements in Present Tense
Subject + verb (to be)

I am a farmer.	Use am  for the subject I.
She/He is a farmer.	Use is for a singular noun and these singular
Life (it) is difficult.	Pronouns: she, he, it, this and that
You are a farmer.	Use are for you and plural nouns and these
You are farmers. We are farmers.	Pronouns: we, you, they, these and those

Contractions and Negatives of the contraction

Contractions (short forms)	Negative
I'm a farmer.	I'm not a farmer.
You're a farmer.	You're not a farmer.
She's/He's a farmer.	She's/He's not a farmer.
It's difficult.	It's not difficult.
We're farmers.	We're not farmers.
You're farmers.	You're not farmers.
They're farmers.	They're not farmers.

Simple Present Tense
The simple present tense uses the simple form of a verb.
When the subject is 3rd person singular, the verb ends in –s.

I, you and plural subjects	:singular subjects:
I work	he works
you work	she works
we work	it works
they work

Negative	Contractions (short forms)
I do not work.	I don't work.
You do not work.	You don't work.
He/She does not work.	He/She doesn't work.
It does not work.	It doesn't work.
We do not work.	We don't work.
You do not work.	You don't work.
They do not work.	They don't work.

Exercises and Activities for Skill A:

Put the verbs in the brackets into the simple present tense.

My uncle (be) an English teacher at a small high school in the countryside in An Giang province. Every morning, he (get) up at five-thirty.  He (do) morning exercises for about twenty minutes. He (have) breakfast at six and then he (leave) home at about six-thirty.  He (go) to school by bicycle.  It (take) him about fifteen minutes to get there.  His class (start) at seven o'clock in the morning.

My uncle also (have) a small garden. He (plant) many kinds of trees in it.  He often (work) in the garden at the weekends.  He (enjoy) working in the garden very much because he (think) that it is the best way for him to spend his free time. Teaching English at school and working with trees in the garden (keep) my uncle busy all the time, but he (love) them.  He (have) a busy but happy life.

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Reading:

Reading 1:

I am a farmer in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. I farm the land of my ancestors. My name is Nguyen. I am 35 years old. I am married. I have two children. I began working this farm with my parents when I was very young. My wife is a few years younger than me. She also grew up in the countryside and comes from a neighboring province. My son and daughter go to the local school, but they, too, work on the farm. Someday my children and their families will farm this land.

The life of a farming family is very difficult. We rise early in the morning to work before the hottest part of the day. Our labor requires long hours of bending and lifting as we plant and harvest our c rops. Yet we love the fertile soil for it gives us life and our livelihood.  We grow rice to sell in the market and for export. We also grow some fruits and vegetables to use at home and to supplement our income. We are farmers like most of the Vietnamese population.

Our farm is near the river. The river gives us many things: the water for our crops and household, fish and our main means of transportation. We live by the cycles of the river—high tide and low tide each day, the swelling of the river during the rainy season, and the dependence on the river in the dry season.

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Exercises and Activities for Skill A:

Comprehension Questions:

Answer the following questions: (students can practice answering these questions in pairs)

1. What is Nguyen's job?

2. Where does he live?

3. When did he begin working on the farm with his parents?

4.  Is his wife his same age? If not, how old is she?

5. How many children do they have?

6. What school do their children go to?

7. Describe the life of a farming family.

8. What are some examples of the hard life of a farming family?

9. Although farming life is very hard, Nguyen still loves it.  Why?

10.  What kinds of products do Nguyen and his family produce on their farm?

11.  What is near their farm? What does it give them?

12.  What does Nguyen think about the place where he lives?

Discussion Questions

1. Is your home in the city or the countryside?

2. Perhaps Nguyen's story is familiar to you. How is Nguyen's life similar or different than your life?

3. Do you agree with Nguyen that a farmer's life is difficult? Explain your answer.

4. At the beginning of the chapter we see a Vietnamese farm and a farm in North America.  What similar difficulties would farmers face on these two farms?

5. What difficulties would the Vietnamese farmer have that the North American farmer would not and vice versa*?

6. Why are they farmers?

*”vice versa” is a Latin term meaning reversal of the order of terms:  the reversal of question 5 would be “what difficulties would the American farmer have . . .”

 Explanation of Reading Study Skill B:

Reading materials are divided into paragraphs. A paragraph is a group of sentences conveying ideas on one topic. A paragraph, if well written, has a topic sentence. The topic sentence tells the main idea of the paragraph. The sentence is often (but not always) the first sentence of the paragraph.

Thus the topic sentences of the paragraphs above are:

1. I am a farmer in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. (line 1)

2. The life of a farming family is very difficult. (line 8)

3. The river gives us many things. (the second sentence in the paragraph, line 15)

Exercises and Activities for Reading Study Skill B (comprehension):

Underline the topic sentences in the following paragraphs:

Teaching About the Culture in Vietnam
(excerpts from American Forum-Lessons, Teaching about Culture
http://www.globaled.org/curriculum/viet1.html)

Life in Vietnam centers around the family and the village. Perhaps the best-known saying of the Vietnamese is that “the rule of the emperor stops at the village gates.”

Paragraph 1

Houses are made from the graceful bamboo groves that surround the village and give shade during the hot siesta time. Thatch and palm leaves for the roof and walls come from the nearby marsh. Food is grown in the fields surrounding the village or caught in the nearby rivers and canals. Only a few necessities like salt and cotton cloth come from outside the village.

Paragraph 2

Year after year, life follows the rhythms of the seasons of planting and harvesting. The ancestors, the source of one's life, had planted and reaped on this land. Their grains stand in the rice fields and their spirits continue to watch over the family. Individual death does not mark an end.  Here past and present merge; between the people and the land, the living and their ancestors, exists in natural harmony.

Paragraph 3

Life in the village revolves around the growing of rice. Each family member's role is clearly defined. The young men plow the fields at the beginning of the rainy season and young women plant the young rice shoots that have sprouted in the tiny seedbeds. As they plant, the women sing centuries-old rice-planting songs. The children care for the buffalo and make sure they don't eat the rice plants. And often the children are sent to the irrigation ditches to catch a few fish for dinner. The grandparents take care of the babies. In the evening, the family gathers to preserve food and listen to the grandparents tell stories of when they were children.

Paragraph 4

At harvest time, the whole family goes to the field. The yellow stalks of rice are cut with sickles and tied into bundles. Then the bundles are brought to a hard threshing floor and beaten to knock the grain off stalks and the grain is carefully stored in large earthenware jugs to be eaten after the hulls have been milled off at the rice mill.

Paragraph 5

Each village, enclosed behind its tall bamboo hedge, is a separate entity, with its own population, customs, even its own deity enshrined in the communal house. One's place and duties are exactly defined, even in the language. People do not address strangers with the same words they would use for a close friend, or a grandparent with the same terms as a brother or sister.

Exercises and Practice of Past Reading Skills:

In this section of the chapter, a Vietnamese graduate student in the U.S. attempts to explain differences between American styles of academic writing and Vietnamese styles of academic writing. Understanding such differences enables the reader to identify main and supporting ideas. The reader can make better predictions. This will also prepare the reader for reading skills to learn in later chapters.

Read and decide if you agree or disagree with this student and discuss your answers.

North American Styles of Writing vs. Vietnamese Styles of Writing

There are differences in the ways that North Americans write and the ways Vietnamese write. To understand reading in English written in a Western style, one must understand the rules and patterns that these writings follow.

To understand Vietnamese writing, one must understand the rules and patterns followed by the Vietnamese.

Regardless of patterns or forms of writing such as descriptive, commentary, reviewing books, critique and so on, there are several very noticeable differences between North American and Vietnamese writing style. 

A descriptive essay -- My Cat – will be analyzed to highlight the differences.  In general, both North Americans and Vietnamese styles have an introduction, main/body, and conclusion.  Vietnamese style of writing, however, follows a looser structure than the North American one.  This fact results in the following differences:

1. The Vietnamese introduction often provides a very general idea rather than stating specific ideas and arguments as we often see in the North American way.

North American way:  On my birthday my mom bought me a cat.  I love her so much because she is pretty, helpful and playful.

Vietnamese way:  On my birthday, my mom bought me a cat.  I love her very much and I'm going to tell you why. 

2. In the main/body part, the Vietnamese way of breaking paragraphs is often based on the awareness of the fact that this part is pretty long, so let's break it into smaller paragraphs.  Meanwhile, paragraphs in the American style are strictly structured to follow arguments or ideas that have been mentioned in the introduction.  How many ideas and arguments are mentioned determines the number of paragraphs in the essay. 

North American way:  The body part is comprised of three paragraphs: the first paragraph would be how pretty the cat is.  The second would be how helpful she is.  And the last would be how playful she is.  Each paragraph has a topic sentence. A sentence describing how pretty the cat is would be considered irrelevant.

Vietnamese way: The body part has a more loose structure in which all supportive descriptions of the cat being pretty, helpful and playful do not follow a clear order. As a result, it has all supporting sentences that do not seem to go along together in paragraphs.  Paragraphs thus oftentimes do not have topic sentences.

North American way (3 clear paragraphs):

My cat is really beautiful.  Her eyes are brown, which is very exotic.  I have never seen a cat that has brown eyes.  Also, she walks with charm. 

She is not only pretty, but also very helpful.  She can catch quite a lot of mice.  You know what? She even catches mice for my

neighbors.  Now, my village is no longer threatened by the mice eating rice. 

She is also very playful.  Usually, people say dogs are more playful than cats.  But I can play with my cat the whole day without feeling bored. 

Vietnamese way:

My cat is so pretty.  Her eyes are purely brown, which is very exotic. Last night, she caught a mouse.  Since I hate mice, this is helpful.  Not only does she catch mice, she is also very playful.  I  play with her the whole day without feeling bored.  She's really quick and seems to know how to entertain me. 

My friends love her too.  Whenever they come to see me, they often play with her as well. They told me that they have never seen a cat with brown eyes. Sometimes, I walk the cat to the park and people stop to say hello and tell me what a cute cat I have

3. In the conclusion part, North American students often conclude again all the characteristics of the cat that they've just described.  Vietnamese students do the same thing.  However, we often see in North American essays a very clear restatements of what they intend to convey to readers.

North American way:

I love my cat very much.  If I have to be out of town, I'm sure I always miss how pretty, helpful, and playful she is.

Vietnamese way:

I love my cat and want to play with her everyday.  I'm sure that if I have to be out of town, I will miss her .

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Discussion Questions

1. Do you agree with the writer that a “looser structure” is followed by the Vietnamese style of writing? Why or why not?

2. List the ways that North American academic writing styles and Vietnamese academic writing styles contrast. Are there ways that they are the same?

3. Why do you think such differences in styles exist?

4. When learning the English language, is it helpful to know such differences exist? If your answer is yes, why?

 

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