Different from the students in the plains and urban areas, the learning of foreign languages in general and English in particular by students in the mountainous district of Mu Cang Chai - where over 90% of the population belong to the Mong ethnic minority group - faces a lot of difficulties, as there are no foreign language centres, the district lacks English langaue teachers, and students' academic competitiveness remains modest. 

Both Tuan and Hieu have never gone to any preparatory class for the exam, nor had lessons with a foreign teacher. Their knowledge has been acquired from lessons at school, along with their self-study on the Internet.

They had intentions to prepare for the IELTS exam about a month before that. Hieu said: "At first, when I learned of this exam, I was quite confused, because my knowledge was only learned in high school and was grammar-oriented. Meanwhile, the IELTS exam requires all the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and requires candidates to have a fairly rich amount of social knowledge.”

"We also recognised our own weaknesses and started looking for online lectures or Youtube channels on how to study IELTS. Then, to practice the listening skill, I started listening to online lessons. After listening repeatedly, I began to practice speaking according to instructions. We also studied and signed up for a short online IELTS preparation course,” said Hieu.

To practice speaking skills, Hieu said he speaks English language everyday. In addition, the two often go to homestays in the district at weekends to seek opportunities to communicate with foreign tourists to introduce the locality’s tourist attractions, thereby improving their vocabulary and pronunciation.

At school, both students have outstanding learning achievements. Tuan won the title of excellent student in English language at the provincial level for two consecutive years, and Hieu also won the excellent student title at school for many years in a row.

In the exam on April 8, 2023, at TDL IELTS Centre, Tuan and Hieu were the only two mountainous students from Yen Bai province to take the exam and achieved high results with the average score band of 7.0. With this achievement, Hieu and Tuan become the first two in Mu Cang Chai district to have the IELTS certificate.

By conquering the IELTS certificate, the two students have helped eliminate the prejudices of "IELTS race is not for students in difficult areas" or "The entrance to the top universities is getting narrower for students in difficult areas due to IELTS certificate". They represent a generation of young people in mountainous Mu Cang Chai who dare to dream, and dare to act to achieve their dreams./.

T.B