VNUHCM Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

Agricultural tourism activities in the Mekong Delta from the perspectives of domestic tourists

Hoang Ngoc Minh Chau — 2023-02-28

The article aims to learn about agritourism activities from the perspectives of domestic tourists, thereby discussing this issue from the perspectives of the tourism studies (combining other specialized sciences) and from the practical requirements of the rural development today (tourism activities, new rural construction policies, and etc.) in Vietnam in general and in the Mekong Delta in particular. The agritourism is currently being deployed quite popularly in the Mekong Delta, using the materials from the rural and agricultural life of farmers to bring experiences to tourists. The objective of the article is to learn about the agritourism from the domestic tourists’ perspectives. The survey data set includes 650 questionnaires collected by the norm sampling method (quota sample) and processed by the descriptive statistical method with tourists at agricultural tourist destinations in 13 provinces and cities in the Mekong Delta, conducted in 2020. The research results have shown that tourists were highly satisfied with the agritourism activities of the Mekong Delta. Tourists usually took short tours (1-2 days) and most of them were from neighboring provinces/regions (provinces in the Mekong Delta and the Southeast region of Vietnam). Besides, the study results have also found that the village sightseeing activities, learning about the rural life, and enjoying the local food were the most interested and responded by tourists. In addition, in order to further improve the agritourism quality and tourists’ satisfaction, the research results highlight the points that need to be paid more attention in terms of aspects, including developing tourism programs and agritourism routes combined with visiting beautiful landscapes and cultural and historical relics of the locality, building agricultural accommodation, and establishing local tour guide clubs as well as raising farmers’ awareness and training skills to them on providing agricultural tourism products and services.

The aspect meaning of đang marker in Vietnamese (contrastive study to Mandarin Chinese)

Cẩm Thu Thị Lưu — 2023-01-07

Đang is a marker that denotes the typical imperfective meaning in Vietnamese. Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese languages belong to the same isolating language typology, but the đang marker is not always translated into 在 or 着 marker in Mandarin Chinese. The results of the study shows that the đang marker can interact with individual level state situation, stage level state situation, activity situation, accomplishment situation, achievement situation and semelfactive situation. Based on the attributes of the situation, the đang marker possible to convey different aspect meanings. With each situation type, we also need to pay attention to their extended attributes. Accordingly, the aspect meaning of a situation is the summation of the meaning of the verb, the aspect marker, the situation type, and the surrounding arguments. In this article, to clarify the aspect meaning of the đang marker as well as equivalent means of translation in Mandarin Chinese, we proceed to collect corpus, describe, analyze and contrast this marker into Mandarin Chinese based on the semantic - syntax level. The contrastive study of aspectual markers has an important role in helping learners better understand the connection between the source language and the target language. Seeing the differences between the markers will help learners limit the negative transfer process in learning a foreign language.

Factors affecting PhD delays of domestic doctoral candidates

Loan Thi To Pham — 2022-12-31

PhD delays occur frequently in higher education in the world and Vietnam is not an exception. This problem results in a waste of time, effort and finance of doctoral candidates, higher education institutions and society. Thus, this study is an attempt to explore factors affecting delays of domestic doctoral candidates, thereby puts forth some recommendations for PhD students, PhD supervisors and universities. To achieve this aim, the research adopted mixed method with two research instruments namely questionnaires with 50 PhD students and in-depth interview with six of them. The results indicated that factors regarding heavy workload, family responsibilities, limited research capacity, and limited English competence affected PhD completion. There also existed psychology factor which was not sufficiently accommodated by supervisors, research community and institutions. The study will offer some sollutions to lower the delay rate which eventually enhance the training effectiveness and acquire universities’ prestige in post-graduate sector.

Current status of sustainable tourism development in Con Chim – Tra Vinh

Bao Tieu Ho — 2023-02-10

From 2019, the Con Chim tourist site will exploit various types of tourism such as agricultural tourism, “thuan thien” tourism, eco-tourism, community-based tourism... There have been many advantages over other tourist destinations of similar nature in terms of how to organize to serve tourists, and how to plan and orient for sustainable development. After studying and analyzing the principles of sustainable tourism development such as economy, culture - society, environment at a tourist destination emerging as Con Chim - Tra Vinh, the research results confirm that Con Chim is currently developing in a sustainable direction in the field of tourism based on compliance with ensuring the combination of requirements of tourism development principles. The methods of an in-depth interview with many stakeholders, including fifteen households living in Con Chim, the methods of analyzing secondary - primary data related to the topic, and the field survey method in Con Chim were used to achieve the research results. The new study stops at analyzing the principles of sustainable tourism development, to have a more detailed analysis of the stakeholders involved in sustainable tourism development in Con Chim, further studies are required.

Interactive meaning of visual images in Da Nang city tourism discourses on some Vietnamese websites

Thu Huong Thi Ngo — 2023-03-04

This article studies the interactive meaning of visual images in Danang tourism discourse from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis. This research direction assumes that images, language, music... are all sources of meaning. The analytical data are images collected from a number of Vietnamese websites by three media subjects, including the local tourism management agency, the central media agency, and the travel agency. The content of this study is based on the image analysis framework of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. The results show that there is an imaginary interaction between the participants in the visual image and the viewers through the image research criteria such as the gaze, the size of frame and shooting angle of the participants (human, animal, place… etc.). These criteria show not only the connection, social distance and attitude of the participants in the images towards the viewers, but also the different intentions of the media subjects: The offer images in the tourism discourse invite not only viewers to participate in tourism activities but also expect viewers to witness the activities of the participants in the visual images; the shooting distance (size of frame) represents not only the social distance, but also the purpose of emphasizing the details of the participants or providing the entire context of the participants' appearance in the visual image; the shooting angle (horizontal and vertical) not only shows the attitude or power of the participants in the images to the viewers, but also to emphasize the special details of the participants in these images. Therefore, depending on their purposes, media subjects need to enhance visual images with different criteria about the gaze, the size of frame and shooting angle of participants in the images in the tourism discourses in Da Nang city on Vietnamese websites in order to improve communicational efficiency of these visual images about tourism in this city on those websites in the future.

Factors affecting the perception of students at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, on the issue of personal information security

Le Nhu Y — 2023-02-28

Thanks to the trend of digital transformation and the promotion of people’s legitimate rights and interests, personal information security has grown in importance in the society. Against such context, everyone, especially students, who are a valuable human resource in the age of science and technology, should be aware of the issues related to personal information security. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that influence students’ perceptions at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, on personal information security. Data were gathered through a questionnaire survey of 392 students and interviews with four students from various faculties and academic years at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. The study identified 12 factors that influence students’ perceptions of personal information security namely (1) information technology skills, (2) personality traits, (3) attitude, (4) experience, (5) knowledge, (6) work environment, (7) friends, (8) social networks, (9) habits, (10) environment life, (11) education level, and (12) types of personal information in possession. From the findings, some recommendations regarding students’ perception of personal information security are presented.

Training secondary school teachers in the South of Vietnam under the Saigon regimes (1955-1975)

Nguyen Kim Dung — 2023-02-10

The article focuses on analyzing the secondary teacher school training in the South of Vietnam under the Saigon regimes (1955-1975) in the two aspects: training in pedagogical universities and retraining in professional activities. This is an important aspect to study secondary school teachers in particular and teachers in general - a part of the Southern intelligentsia. The article consists of the three main contents. Based on the original documents stored at the National Archives Center II and the statistics and memoirs from interviews with historical witnesses, the article outlines the current situation of the secondary school teacher training and their professional improvement in the South of Vietnam from training objectives, processes, programs, and activities to training results. Secondly, the article points out the advantages and disadvantages of the secondary school teacher training. The outstanding advantage is the strict training process and preferential treatment. As a result, the secondary school teacher gains an important position in the classroom and is highly respected by society. The secondary school teacher also has many disadvantages. Typically, private secondary school teachers are almost untrained and not improved their professional knowledge. These disadvantages stem from inequalities between public and private secondary schools and policy constraints on secondary school teachers. Finally, the study evaluates the impact of the secondary school teacher training and their professional improvement on the movement of the secondary school system and the development of education in the South of Vietnam during this period.

Supplement the information disorder identification framework

Huỳnh Văn Thông — 2023-02-10

The framework for identifying information disorders by Claire and Hossein based on two references: 'falness' and 'intent to harm' helps to distinguish three types of disinformation: misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. This framework mainly considers information disorder to be a problem of press news, but does not place it in the common vision of loss of control over the entire process of information production – information distribution – information consumption in the landscape of the modern information society. The article proposes to use a third reference to identify information disorder. It is reference 'spreading', an important agent that amplifies false information in the community, especially when it is combined with intent to harm. Whether information spreads on the information environment or not will determine the extent of its impact on the community. If not spread, it seems that information will become harmless even if it is malicious or false. The results of applying 3 references to identify information disorder help distinguish 8 types, including: Terrorist information, Menace information, Confusing information, Dormant information, Disaster information, High-risk information, Admitted information, Ignored information. Only some of these 8 types are capable of disrupting information.

Virtual tourism: A literature review

Trần Tuyên — 2023-02-10

Humans have spent their lives in a technological era where every aspect of society and every economic activities depends on technological factors. Among the recent cutting-edge technologies, virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a new consideration in tourism development. Virtual tourism researching has appeared since the late 90s of the 20th century, but up to now, scholars have continuously discussed this topic in the context of technology application in tourism. In addition, the research on virtual tourism has still had many disagreements because there have been various definitions of virtual technology. This study employed a descriptive review method to explore some popular and growing themes in virtual tourism research and analyze different perspectives of scholars. Research results shown a number of different points of view on virtual tourism including: Technology context and the formation of virtual tourism; concept; role, advantages, limitations, relationship with traditional tourism, future development trends. At the end, some suggestions for future research are presented.