Who am I?

Currently, an English Major student in CA1 (Chuyên Anh 1) of Le Hong Phong, will become a CS major, in hunting for financial grants and scholarships. I’ve enjoyed both English and CS, explored what the world could offer in the school’s Science Club, participated in standardized English contests and casual Arduino projects alike, but both will be small parts of my life in the long term.

In 2019 I created this blog (and invited my junior Duc Huy, forming Team ChuyenAnh) as part of my prepping process for a prestigious high school in HCMC. Here I share study materials which, I emphasize, are for self-studying purposes. They are all pirated from a range of online sources, the most influential of which has been from blogchuyenanh.wordpress.com. With the same spirit and growing up financially challenged, I want to pass on the burning desire to change the landscape of Vietnamese education as a whole, to clear up misconceptions and open doors for a new generation of Vietnamese.

How do English majors deviate from majors of other fields?

The answer, I’m afraid, is largely subjective even for us insiders. I’ll give you my version, so try to savage whatever you can.

I’d like to start with a rule in our major. In speaking, be confident, and clever. When you’ve obtained a good command of English or any language, trying to show off is close to an instinct. But it is vital to keep your act under control. A common piece of advice which I initially gathered from my time studying in some English centers is to lie, a sacrifice of Platonic values to keep the momentum in such scenarios as a speaking test. Yet, surely we never do the same in casual conversations. In fact, the goal is to be as comfortable and natural as possible in speech, at the same time acknowledging potential flaws. In no way am I cracking down on this strategy (and certainly I am not in the position to) as tried and tested as it has been. It is in my belief that Vietnamese English majors are clever students, as in those understanding what certain concepts imply. Knowing this, these majors can ace these tests without such knowledge.

As a member of CA1, I can attest to it that not everyone is a major as defined by our instructors. But there remains one common attribute that helps us land here, and it is that we, or at least the majority of us, are clever. Do differentiate it from being knowledgeable. While few are found carrying hard-cover dictionaries to class, except two decades ago perhaps, and fewer enter the National Gifted Team, fundamentally we are endowed upon the foreign cultures, languages, and their philosophies not found in outsiders, and the number of scholarship hunters and pursuers of the American dream does number in double digits.

To put it in another way, we are the embodiment of Americanism, for good or ill. Our class is just as American as America welcomes diversity but is still politically divisive. Clever, in the sense that we adopt such features as critical thinking earlier than our peers do. Being knowledgeable is simply a requirement when you’ve dedicated yourself to a field of study, which is not a supplement but an unspoken major until you leave the confines of LHP. In contrast, the version of English we study and may be known for is the least academic in our school. Here in CA1, you find not only a novel writer since childhood, or a future English teacher, but also a debater, a social activist who could double as a Literature major, a mobile gamer, a weeb (Japanese fanatic), a future Wall Streeter, a child doctor, and me an uncertified full-stack developer. Quite frankly, it is the study of cleverness. We do not study Conan Doyle here, at least not all of us.

Should I apply for the English major?

Before delving into the English Major, answer the following: what do you seek as a teenager? Are you obsessed with knowledge and ready to dedicate your life to becoming the next Stephen Hawking or Shakespeare? Or do you desire a relaxed but risky approach towards learning and preparing yourself for the future? What do you choose, between a researcher and an entrepreneur, and to you, who will succeed or survive better?

Don’t expect yourself to learn more about the language as you sign up for this title. Instead, expect a melting pot of extroversion and expression. Entering CA requires as many skills as with any major: in this case, they are social ones, but some could make an excuse by simply sharing ambitions, or an innate desire to think big and outside the box. It is neither academic nor human but practical.

Among those reasons, relationships also play a pivotal role in forming your decision. Studying with like-minded classmates strengthens your identity: are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you prefer an academic or after-class curriculum? And if you are locked on a class by your expertise despite your aversive personality, are you willing to turn over a new leaf, and how will you go about it?

Then, there are the more controversial topics. Up to this point, CA is the epitome of early academic specialization in Vietnam, and through which, flaws are exposed. Many argue that the creation of this major is but an artifact of Vietnam’s development plan where adopting English – the eminent international language – is incentivized by the government; but as a side effect, when a large proportion of the population is still immature and ignorant of foreign values, the execution remains awkward. International students catch up sooner with the state of the world and begin to believe that scientific subjects are all the rage instead. When the entrance exams are around the corner, opinion articles pop up from dissatisfied alumni or undergraduates, criticizing how erroneous it is to introduce the major model as early as high school education.

In this day and age, critical thinking is, as it should be, no exclusive for any group of people. The waves of new technologies transcend our lives just as we transcend the norm, the conventional values. English majors are certified testimonies to this, but as the years progress, certainly English learners are not bound to the confines of CA classes.

My Verdict.

This is sensitive, and I am no expert or SJW to share my sentiment. Yet, not to shirk responsibility as a 17-year-old Vietnamese citizen, I’d say that concentrating on the above explanation might be useful. Again, I am not in the position to judge. It is necessary to recognize some flaws in our education system, as with others around the world, but not to become oversentimental. In reality, no system is perfect, but it depends on how you leverage the knowledge throughout high school for your own ambition. For me, I had resorted to English – my strength – to find my way to LHP, from which I came into contact with those either in a similar situation or with the prodigies from whom I learned.

The English major experience has been a drastic departure from what I had thought of, and a unique one for me and perhaps even more enlightening to some others. Had not I been given the chance to interact with such idiosyncratic yet fascinating and ambitious individuals here, I would not be now sitting through the summer prepping for SAT and applying for higher education abroad. Granted, personalities play a major role in determining whether you could make the best use of your time here: in my case, it is undoubted that I squandered much time and resource on self-discovery but also procrastination and self-doubt, yet during which I had come to know many valuable connections: friends, juniors, and seniors that inspired me, taught and pushed me forward.

In the face of a brave new world, it is often better to embrace your shortcomings, whether or not personality-wise, through learning from others. And while no such law exists that bestows such prestige on one major, I do find the personalities of CA to be more intriguing, risk-taking, and confident in their ability to deliver goals and promises and fulfill aspirations. Most of my classmates, for instance, are known presidents, leaders, or at least avid participants at not only school clubs but NPOs. The furthest I have got is working as a staff technician in the Science Club (I forwent a promotion, but that is a story for another time), but still my point is clear. Their skills and talents, drives and devotions transcend beyond the confines of school curricula, into those closer to reality, to their career path. At such early age, accomplishing those means prospects for society.

These concepts may not be apparent until you’ve investigated all the potentials there are to offer in a community.

Afterthoughts.

In my opinion, at the age of 15, you should grow out of such obstacles as the fear of change or embarrassment. Once, I went on a trip with my class to Da Lat; we went to a zipline game where we climbed and swung across pine trees, with grappling gears reminiscent of Attack on Titans as we dangled through tight ropes and bare-bone bridges; it was thrilling and the map was riven with steep cliffs and bumps, and each maneuver was exhausting particularly to me, a couch potato, so I lost my grip mid-section and a patrol-man must come to grapple me down. While landing, another man on the ground picked me. He immediately warned me of the cliff, rotated my body to a safe angle, and told me to step forward, not backward. Out of nowhere he just spelled out a life lesson from it: “Remember kid, in life, you never know what is behind you, so you can only step forward.”

I have been hesitant on countless occasions, after which I either regretted because I’d never gone ahead with them or breathed a sigh of relief because someone had managed to convince me at the last minute. You may take issues with them initially, but if your bad decision-making has been proven numerous times then it stands to reason to go against your intuition and take your chances. On a related note, I once had an embarrassing story about me deciding on LHP, from which I learned that there should be no excuse for not going and thinking big. Issues could crop up, and some of us may not feel entitled to, but it is better to live while trying. And I hope it is the same for you.

Seeing that it is mid-July now, I hope that you are all well.

Bonus Books.

I’ve heard that reading more helps develop your writing skills. In my parlance, reading is a validating experience. Read as much as you can, though here are a few that pertains more to the skills in question, as in writing:

• Andrea A. Lunsford – Everything’s An Argument (Learn how to craft an argument and avoid fallacies)
• Strunk & White – The Elements of Style (A study of English at the fundamental level)
• Joseph M. Williams – Style, Toward Clarity And Grace (Practice brevity in your writings)

These are recommended by some college students on Reddit. None I have finished, but they have high ratings so perhaps three reviews are due.

Unless you’re as broke as I am, I recommend that you pay for them if possible. Otherwise, look into the SOURCE section where I list a few pirated sources and tools that give you free access to them, with trade-offs in choice, quality, and legality, of course.