VNUHCM Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

Influencer marketing for tourism destinations

Hien Duong — 2022-09-30

The influencer marketing is a strategy that uses the influence of prominent individuals in a certain field to drive consumers’ brand awareness or their purchasing decisions. These individuals do not have to be celebrities and they just need to create contents on a certain topic as well as have a fanbase’s support on social media. Travel influencers are people who create and share travel-related contents in forms, including blogging, sharing photos and videos, giving reviews or making comments on a service, a product or a tourist destination. Although it has a short history, this form of marketing is showing the outstanding effectiveness, as evidenced by the data on tourism industry growth, statistics on the number of travel agencies or destination marketing agencies, which are increasingly choosing to partner with travel influencers for destination marketing campaigns. In addition, the tourism industry practice has witnessed some successful destination marketing campaigns in cooperation with social media influencers, further proving the effectiveness of this form. There are some reasons for the success of these campaigns, in which the reliability, objectivity, and proximity in the way the brand message is conveyed by favorable influencers are among the outstanding advantages. This topic is still quite new in the research community, so more elaborate works are needed to increasingly shape and be able to come up with appropriate application models.

Community participation in tourism development in Tan Chau - An Giang

Van TT Tran — 2022-09-30

Within the framework of development orientation and branding to strive to turn An Giang into a tourist center of the Mekong Delta and the whole country, Tan Chau town has been identified as one of the satellites of the key tourist area of Chau Doc City - Sam Mountain cultural-historical and tourist relic area. To create a highlight, Tan Chau exploits tourism activities based on unique and available local resources and pays special attention to the effectiveness of tourism for the community. The research on community participation helps Tan Chau town’s authorities be more aware of the economic, cultural, and social goals that need to be brought to the people in tourism development. The study uses ethnographic field methods, in-depth interviews, and distributing questionnaires to survey people's interest, understanding, and participation in tourism development, conducted in May 2020. The statistical results show the types of tourism services with the people's participation and the need as well as willingness to participate in tourism development in the locality. In addition, the study also measures the level of people's participation in tourism development, creating a premise for further studies in proposing solutions to enhance the level of people's participation in tourism development in Tan Chau town.

Online assessment in English language teaching in Vietnamese universities

Phuong Thi Minh Tran — 2022-09-30

Teaching and learning online has long been a popular mode in the world. However, for foreign language teaching and learning, which requires a lot of practice, online teaching and learning is not the best option. In recent years, with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, online teaching and learning is no longer an optional mode but an obligatory one. This requires all educational policymakers and school administrators to apply appropriate methods of online assessments so that they can meet such requirements. This paper reports the results of a survey study of 94 English lecturers who experienced online assessment in universities in the South of Vietnam. Based on the analyses of the advantages and disadvantages of using online assessment, this paper suggests ways of selecting suitable methods and appropriate tools for online assessment. The research findings may contribute to the application of technology in language teaching and learning and suggest practical criteria for selecting appropriate assessment tools for online teaching and learning.

The health Silk Road: China's vaccine diplomacy in Southeast Asia

Nguyễn Thành Trung — 2022-09-30

The paper aims to investigate the activities of China’s vaccine diplomacy towards Southeast Asian countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the concept of “nation branding,” the paper primarily attempts to evaluate China’s tactical and strategic motivations via COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy conducted by the Chinese government. In addition, the authors strive to examine China’s vaccine diplomacy activities against the backdrop of vibrant U.S. vaccine aids to the region. Based on data collected from official and reliable sources, the study analyses the implementation of “COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy,” vaccination programmes, as well as public reactions from regional countries towards Chinese-manufactured vaccine shots. Thereby, the authors also point out that the short-term motivation of the Chinese government aimed for the COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy campaign is to rebuild and revamp the national image that has been seriously dented since China is widely considered as the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Most importantly, the paper argue that the strategic motivations which drive Chinese government to implement its COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy in Southeast Asea are of economic and political benefits and enmeshments. The study also investigates challenges facing China’s vaccine diplomacy in the Southeast Asian region including costly price tags and sceptical attitudes towards the vaccine quality.

Co-teaching university English language learners in the context of Internationalization of Higher Education

Michael Gormalley — 2022-09-30

The Prime Minister’s Decision No. 2448/QĐ-TTg on the approval of the Scheme for international integration with respect to education and vocational training by 2020 showed how important internationalization of higher education is in Vietnam’s strategy to enhance education and training. However, at its essence, internationalization has a reciprocal relationship with globalization, so it always serves as a changing dynamic, not a still agent. Therfore, policy makers should determine exactly which goals to be achieved. Countries in general and universities in particular should choose suitable approaches in their strategies of internationalization of higher education: internationalization at home or internationalization abroad. This study employed a mixed-methods design combining the quantitative and qualitative research methods with data from 2 sources: a Likert-scale opinionnaire survey including open-ended survey questions to analyze and evaluate the co-teaching approach between a native English speaking teacher and a Vietnamese teacher in an English class at a university as one of the features of internationalization at home. The language skill we taught was Listening-Speaking during semester 1 of the academic year 2017-2018 at a university in Ho Chi Minh City. The results of this research showed that this teaching approach had its considerable potentials as students acquired not only linguistic knowledge but also sociocultural and critical communicative competence. The paper then concluded that in our context, internationalization at home may be considered as a suitable choice and being fluent in a foreign language, which, in this case, is English, is one of the priorities to achieve goals set in the policy of internationalization of education.

Lecturers’ intercultural competence in scientific research activities: A case study of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Viet Nam National University Ho Chi Minh City

Bui Ha Phuong — 2022-09-30

In today’s multicultural context, intercultural competence is very important, contributing to improving the scientific research quality of lecturers. Lecturers’ intercultural competence in scientific research is the effective application of their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to conduct scientific research. The article employs the method of document research on lecturers’ intercultural competence at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Viet Nam National University Ho Chi Minh City (USSH, VNUHCM). The purpose of the paper is to make clear the theoretical underpinnings and characteristics of lecturers’ intercultural competence in scientific research activities. The research results show that the lecturers at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities have the basic elements to form intercultural competence, including lecturers with experience in studying and living abroad and being proficient in foreign languages, in which English is the most proficient compared to other languages, lecturers coming from different regions of the country and a few with dual and multicultural nationality, and lecturers with a capacity to develop and create relationships with colleagues, friends, and learners from various cultures. Based on the analysis of the factors forming lecturers’ intercultural competence, the paper also suggests measures to enhance lecturers’ intercultural competence, including measures to raise awareness of the significance of lecturers’ intercultural competence as well as to improve their language proficiency, and the feasible measures from USSH, VNUHCM.

Education administrators – The advancement path of Southern Vietnamese Confucian scholars during the Nguyen Dynasty

Toan Phuc Vo — 2022-09-30

Right from the early days of the Nguyen dynasty, the Southern Confucian scholars following Nguyen Anh from the Trung Hung period including Trinh Hoai Duc, Le Quang Dinh, Ngo Nhan Tinh, Pham Dang Hung, and etc. played a pivotal role in the new court in Hue. However, when the system of the Confucian scholar selection examination of the Nguyen Dynasty was more and more perfect, the Confucian scholar class in the South faced great competition from the Confucian scholars in the North and Central region, where the Confucian education was well organized and long-standing. The number of Confucian scholars from the South, who passed the Hoi exam, was quite low, and which made the political position of the mandarins coming from this region decline compared to when the dynasty was newly established. Therefore, the official education administrator system of the Nguyen Dynasty opened a door for the Southern Confucian scholars to participate in the politics of the Nguyen Dynasty. Confucian scholars only passing the Huong exam could be appointed to positions of education administrators in the localities and then be rotated to another position similar to those who passed the Hoi exam. Thanks to this regime, some scholars from the South had the opportunity to actively participate in the politics of the Nguyen Dynasty such as Truong Gia Hoi, Nguyen Thong, Nguyen Huu Huan, Le Hung Liem, and etc. This article aims to analyze the impact of the Nguyen dynasty's education administrator regime on the advancement path of the Southern Confucian scholars.

The Vietnamese Buddhist revival movement in the first half of the twentieth century: comparing three associations the Cochinchina Buddhist Association, the Annam Buddhist Association, the Tonkin Buddhist Association

Ninh Thị Sinh — 2022-09-30

The Buddhist revival movement in the first half of the twentieth century took place in all 3 regions in the territory of Vietnam today. The Buddhist revival movement in each region has the same purpose, even though it has some different features. The Buddhist revival movement in Southern Vietnam was characterized by divergence, otherwise, it in Central and Northern Vietnam was characterized by convergence. In this article, we choose to compare the typical associations of the three regions are The Cochinchina Buddhist Association, The Annam Buddhist Association, The Tonkin Buddhist Association. Despite establishing in the same period of time, these three associations have many fundamental differences besides some similarities. Based on the exploitation of Buddhist archives and press materials during the period of revival, this article will research the similarities and differences between associations. Comparing the three associations not only shows us the unique characteristics of each other and explains the performance of the societies, the depth of the revival activity but also helps us to understand some of the Vietnamese society in the French period. Because this is a big problem, within a small article we cannot present all the characteristics. So in this article, we only focus on analyzing the typical characteristics, these characteristics will govern the performance of the associations. Besides, the article also limited the time to research from 1930 to 1945, when Vietnam gained independence.

The relevance to the reality of some key aspects of the Neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony

Hào Chánh Ngũ — 2022-09-30

The Neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony in international relations has been a remarkable theoretical framework to scholarly evaluate hegemonic phenomena. In practical terms, in the past 20th century, the world-level hegemonic phenomena have remained the dominant feature in the history of international relations with far-reaching effects on individual countries, regions, and continents. In the 21st century, the rise of China with the prospect of replacing the leadership of the United States remains one of the most important features of the times. However, Gramsci originally worked out the hegemonic theory and its related concepts nearly a hundred years ago and the Neo-Gramscianism more than half a century. To qualify as a proper theoretical basis to evaluate such phenomena, it is thus necessary to re-evaluate the above theory’s practical relevance to ensure its coherence to the contemporary world. By utilising the logical and historical methods to look closely at the aspects of the hegemonic theory, namely (i) the national and international scopes of the hegemonic theory, (ii) radical socio-economic revolution, (iii) inside-out development, (iv) mechanism of consensus and international institutions, and (v) historic bloc, the article argues that the Neo-Gramscian perspective of hegemony still has the highly practical relevance to the contemporary international relations.

Tôn giáo The Cham beliefs and religions in Vietnam: Issues need to be clarified

Món Văn Trương — 2022-09-30

The purpose of this article is to contribute to clarifying the original names of Cham religious groups and beliefs. Specifically, what are the Cham Jat, Cham Ahiér, Cham Bani/Cham Awal, and Cham Islam? Simultaneously, this article also points out the relationship among the above Cham religious groups and these Cham groups with other religions. The research results show that through the process of exchange, when absorbing Brahmanism, Hinduism or Islam from outside, the Cham people always consciously localize them, so Cham Ahier is not completely similar to Brahmanism of India and Cham Bani/Awal is not also completely similar to Islam of Arab. In conclusion, the article suggests that in order not to deviate from the content while analyzing and explaining these issues, researchers should use the original terminologies and self-names of Cham beliefs and religious groups such as “Cham Jat” for the Chams practicing indigenous beliefs, “Cham Ahíer” for the Chams were influenced by Hinduism and Islam; “Cham Bani/Awal” for the Chams influenced by Islam, and “Cham Islam” for the Chams practicing the orthodox Islam. To achieve these results, this article uses the ethnographic/anthropological research methods including mainly the fieldwork, the participatory observation, the document collection, and the manuscripts analysis and comparison, combined with the theory of historical particularism developed by Franz Boas and the theory of cultural exchange - acculturation of American anthropologists to analyze and explain the above-mentioned issues.