Vietnam’s 2020 national high school exam is a successful exam for some of students are learning English with eJOY, including Vo Le Phuc Thien. He achieved 9.2 points in English. What is the secret to Thien to achieve such high scores in English? Now he’s willing to share all of his secrets with us through an interview.
Hi Thien, I am happy to talk with you today. First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your excellent English result. How was your feeling after receiving your result?
Before the exam, I set the bar high for my result. English was my strong subject at school. Still, getting 9.2 was quite a surprise for me. In high school, my score used to range between 8 and 9. It wasn’t until 3 months before the exam that I started taking extra classes and downloading the Ejoy app to study seriously for the exam. Probably one reason I was quite relaxed was that I knew my school transcript alone was enough to get me straight admission.
Could you share how you study English and prepare for the national high school exam?
To study for the exam, I will divide my study session into 2 parts. Usually, I would wake up early in the morning to start reviewing vocabulary. When I came home from school at night, I would review the exercises my teacher corrected and make notes to review tomorrow.
I got to know Ejoy when I was in 11th grade. At that time, I was looking for a movie website with English subtitles. Meanwhile, I have also tried games to learn vocabulary. I find it quite effective. Therefore, I signed up for the Pro package later to further amp up my vocabulary for the high school semester.
I learn vocabulary with eJOY games and using eJOY Gojo watch Ted Talk. It was a great way for me. It’s not only supplement my vocabulary but also make studying more fun and motivating for me.
Many people feel it hard to study English vocabulary and grammar. Why can you overcome it and achieve a high score on the national high school exam? Could you share some productivity tips you’ve learned for yourself?
To get a high score in the national exam, you have to master all the grammar. It is often the easy part and there are almost only a few repetitive question forms. Just note down some of the main grammar topics and do the related exercises regularly. You’ll definitely earn some points.do the homework regularly.
To get from 8 score up, you need to focus more on vocabulary. I will use eJOY to memorize everything. I don’t feel like learning but rather playing. You can use eJOY to take note of new words to review them anytime, learn them from real, entertaining context that interests you and play little. Awesome vocabulary games that help with vocabulary retention. Thanks to this app, I did both the reading sections without a mistake.
Another secret when it comes to doing the real exam is to not invest too much time in challenging questions. If I struggle with a question, I would skip it temporarily and mark it to come back to later. The same goes for the reading section. As usually, I would do its easier part first and only touch the harder part when I have finished the easier one.
Do you regret anything after the test? And if you do it again, you will do better and get better scores?
Whether it’s taking exams or doing anything, I always set the highest goal and work hard to achieve it. There is an English quote that I really like: ” Always shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars”. So for my favorite subjects like English, I always aim for the maximum point.
That’s why my regret is not learning English until it was too late. I didn’t learn all the vocabulary I saved to eJOY before the exam. If only I had spent more time on it or bought the Pro account sooner. I wouldn’t have answered those 4 vocabulary questions all wrong.
After studying for 12 years at school, many students are very good at English grammar but they can’t communicate in English. Then they feel bewildered. Have you had these feelings?
I don’t get that feeling. l though my school do provide English class with native teachers, the number of time I actually had a chance to talk to them was sadly low, which didn’t do much for my communication skill .But in the end I have eJOY with me, which I often use to practice listening and speaking by myself. This helps me build my confidence and get used to the natural speaking speech of native speakers.
The national high school exam will test your English grammar, vocabulary, and reading and we have to focus these skills. How can you study English listening and speaking?
Usually I listen to podcasts every day, and while doing homework I would read the sentence out loud to get used to speaking. And at night before sleeping,I often listen to TED Talk.
Which university will you study?
I’m going to Ton Duc Thang university, majoring in Mechatronics .
In the future, what kind of job do you want to do and what kind of person do you want to be?
I want to graduate in Mechatronics to work in the electric-vehicle or artificial intelligence industry and create revolutionary products like what Elon Musk has been doing in the United States.
How do you plan to study English to achieve that dream?
For now, I will focus on listening and speaking skills in order to get a high score in the upcoming IELTS exam. Besides, I also use eJOY extension to get myself familiar with reading foreign newspapers so I can catch up with the trends in the science and technology world.
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