ABSTRACT

Reading plays vital role in society; however, it is a serious problem among students in
Vietnam nowadays. Particularly, reading culture among pupils has decreased sharply
owing to many reasons, which come from both students and society. To cope with that
situation, many measures have been taken. This paper, based on second research,
discusses three questions of what current situation of reading among students nowadays,
why students are lazy to read book and what have been done to improve reading habit.
All in all, the paper illustrates the conclusion that inspite of the fall of reading culture,
many efforts are made to address that issue and there is actually hopeful that reading
will become popular habit of Vietnamese again.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ·······················································································2

1. Introduction···········································································4
2. Discussion of findings································································4
2.1. What current situation of reading among students··················4
2.2. Why students are lazy to read book······································5
2.3. What have been done to improve reading habit·······················6
3. Conclusion ..............................................................................................…...7

References.................................................................................................................8

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1.Introduction

Reading is a good routine of many people all over the world as it is the shortest
way to approach enormous knowledge of human. Although books readers’soul a
lot of benefits such as relaxing, gaining understanding and nourish soul,
Vietnamese students are gradually far away from reading culture. According to a
survey conducted by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2013, each
Vietnamese only reads 0.8 books on an average and merely 0.38 book are read at
public liberaries. Compared with other countries in the region, the percentage of
people reading Vietnam rather low for example Malaysian read 10-20 books per
year and this figure continues rising (Tran Trong Thanh, cited in Ho 2013). These
figures related to Vietnamese reading culture are alarming. The circumstances are
so complicated that it needs time and scheme of many aspects to overcome.
Therefore, this paper, with main purpose to inspirit reading habit among students,
presents current situation, causes and solutions to tackle this serious trouble.

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2. Discussion of findings

2.1. What current situation of reading among students

Before showing current situation, it is worth to understand what reading culture

is? Reading culture is reading behavior, values and norms read of each individual,
the society and the community of regulators and state authorities. Conduct, values
and standards also include three components: reading habits, hobby reading and
reading skills (Nguyen). From above explaination, reading is a process, so how
students read today.

It is worth mentioning here that Vietnamese people in general and Vietnam in

particular students less and less reading. Vietnamese read less than one book/ year
while French read 15 books / year; Americans read 12 books / year or more
recently Malaysia, according to the statistics of 2012, every citizen of this country
read 10-20 books / year ... A survey of recent Labour newspaper, books read the
most widely by Vietnamese is manga (60%), followed by short stories (50%),
communications services (35%), domestic fiction (30%) and poetry (20%), Tran
said. Most Vietnamese readers like books for entertainment purpose only, rather
than reading books for additional knowledge and skills because it is hard to read
these books, which force them to think more, Director of Alpha Books Nguyen
Canh Binh pointed out. In abroad, people can easily catch sight of students read
books with concentration on the subway in the morning, even on the way to class,
in the hallway corner waiting on more classroom time, in canteen school at recess,
and of course in the library - where book lovers often look for book. Yet
Vietnamese people, especially young people do not like reading, mostly using
computers, mobile phones to search for information, play games, chat,…

In addition, the reduction of reading culture also expresses through the number of
people go to the library. In the study, carried out in College of Natural Science,
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asked 100 students about reading book. Only 30% of students access information
from the book, and the rest mainly use the internet. Similarly in Hanoi Pedagogical
University is only about 25% of students regularly read. However, the time for
reading only represents between 10-15% of student learning time. Meanwhile, the
training requirements of the credit, the majority of the time, students must be
reserved for self-study. Nguyen Thi Thuy, Deputy Head Serves readers, library
information center of Hanoi National University, said: "Libraries are about 11
million cases of books. Total turns reading material more than 309,000 in 2014 was
down 15% from last year. The humanities books are read more often than natural
books. Students only spend the most hard-to library focusing on the final exam
seasons in December and January 6. But other times, weekdays, the libraries
largely fall in sparse situation”.

2.2. Why students are lazy to read book

Books give people many advantages but many students rarely read books. Why?

Firstly, it causes by external factors. The distribution of reading materials

between urban and rural is imbalanced: the public library systems cover new
provinces and districts whereas vast rural communes and villages only develop
very few and poor in content; books, newspapers and magazines published
primarily consumed only in big cities, provincial capitals and districts. Publishers
tend to release the thick books in various fields, in fact, just aim at high-income
readers in society ... No matter what the figure of books has reached about 26,000
names annual, 80% is the textbook curriculum ( Nguyen).

Besides, many people believe that the current price of books is much higher than
the income of almost Vietnamese ( Song 2015). Cost of a novel, collection of
short stories or commentaries in VN is approximately 350000 dong or more so
book lovers can not afford to buy a couple of books each month.
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 A very important reason is that learning from high school to university students
are not given the habit of reading. Formed, stereotyped, rigid, restrictive teaching
method has eliminated needs and reading skills of students. Students depend on
knowledge provided by teachers and forget that what we become depends on what
we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of
all is a collection of books (Phuong Chi, cited in “Kinh nghiệm đọc sách và tự học
hiểu quả”).

Apart from those reasons, audio-visual media has overwhelmed paper books so
students are more attractive by that. Students can spend much time on surfing web,
joining social networks as opposed to read book.

Other reason is that many students are very busy. In modern life, racing against
time everybody tries his/her best to make money, to compete for a job, and even
race against time to play ... so reading and digesting the works is really hard.
opposed to read book. Futhermore, there are too many kinds of books so that
students do not know what are interesting and valuable books for specific demands.
Espcecially, students are lack of habits to study and explore knowlegle actively.
All of these cause student are much father away from reading (Tran 2015).

2.3. What have been done to improve reading habit

Lenin once wrote: "There is no book, no knowledge", awareness of the

significance of books, therefore, some efforts have been done to relieve that
dispute.

Firstly, government, particularly in the cultural and educational sectors should

pay more attention and support, better investment for the library system, reducing
the cost of books; choosing and adding types of books match with cognition and
psychology of students. Fully aware of the importance of reading culture towards to

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a learning society, the Prime Minister issued decision 284 / QD-TTg of taking the
annual 21/4 Vietnam Book Day on 02.24.2014.

Parallel to the activities of the campaign committee, the school needs to further
promote the role of the management staff, teachers in the reading. They must be the
pioneers, then as a model to build habits, arouse passion of student reading.
Officials and teachers should guide students choose to read the book to read
concerning the lecture; teachers force students to read documents and books to
make the essay, dissertation; instruct students how to choose books to read and
manipulate the reading proficiency different for each type of reading material;
know how to navigate the necessary resources for itself in the directory and the
library catalog, especially to know how to apply in practice what has been read ... is
indispensable reading habits of students will gradually created ( Do 2016 ).

However , joining hands of students is necessary to develop reading culture.

Students need to understand that “literacy is the door to knowledge, essential to
individual self-esteem and empowerment. Books, in all forms, play an essential
role here” (Irina Bokova) to create interest when reading. Choosing right way to
read book is key to read book effectively. Thus, Dr Mortimer J. Adler & Dr.
Charles Van Doren suggest four main questions about any book while reading:

1. What is the book about as a whole?

2. What is being said in detail, and how?
3. Is the book true, in whole or part?
4. What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its
significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things?
Is it important to you to know them?

This solution brings hope to raise awareness about the great significance and the
importance of reading for the development of knowledge, skills, thinking,

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personality; encouragement and development reading movement in the community,
contributing to building Vietnam culture advanced, bold ethnic identity.

3.Conclusion

The above exploration shows that lack of reading culture is massive impact and has
negative effects on futurable generations of country. Both external and interal
factors affect reading habits of students dealing with this issues need close
combination from individuals, families, shools and society. Then, hopefully,
reading book soon becomes the most popular habit of all Vietnamese for The more
that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more
places you'll go (Dr. Seuss)

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 REFERENCES

Do, N.T. 2016, “Sa sút văn hóa đọc”, viewed 25 December 2015
http://giaoduc.net.vn/Giao-duc-24h/Thay-giao-do-luong-muc-do-sa-sut-van-hoa-
doc-o-gioi-tre-post164835.gd

MSc. Tran, N.H. 2015, “Văn hóa đọc trong sinh viên hiện nay”, viewed 25
December 2015

http://viettronics.edu.vn/trangchu/index.php/vi/cac-khoa/Tin-bai-cua-khoa-48/Van-
hoa-doc-trong-sinh-vien-hien-nay-318/
Ha, A. 2013, “Sinh viên “quên” đọc sách”, viewed 25 December 2015
http://thanhnien.vn/giao-duc/sinh-vien-quen-doc-sach-30967.html

Ho, H.G.2013, “Giật mình! người Việt không đọc nổi 1 cuốn sách/năm” viewed 25
December 2015

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/giai-tri/116946/giat-minh-nguoi-viet-khong-doc-noi-1-
cuon-sach-nam.html

Quang, H. 2015, “Sinh viên ngày càng lười đọc sách”, viewed 25 December 2015
http://thanhnien.vn/gioi-tre/chia-se/sinh-vien-ngay-cang-luoi-doc-sach-
611396.html

Song, C. 2015, “Giới trẻ Việt Nam và tình trạng văn hóa đọc đang xuống cấp”,
viewed 29 December 2015

http://www.chungta.com/nd/tu-lieu-tra-cuu/gioi-tre-va-tinh-trang-van-hoa-doc-
dang-xuong-cap.html

Nguyen, H.V, “Văn hoá đọc và phát triển văn hoá đọc ở Việt Nam”, viewed 29
December 2015
http://nlv.gov.vn/van-hoa-doc/van-hoa-doc-va-phat-trien-van-hoa-doc-o-viet-
nam.html

Mortimer J. A & Charles V.D. 1972, How to read a book [online] Available at
URL: http://crap.sceleris.net/HowtoReadABook.pdf ( Accessed January 5, 2016)

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“Kinh nghiệm đọc sách và tự học hiểu quả” [online] Available at URL:
http://tvtth.hcmussh.edu.vn/Resources/Docs/SubDomain/tvtth/Kinh%20nghiem
%20doc%20sach%20va%20tu%20hoc%20hieu%20qua_HCMUTE%202015.pdf
( Accessed January 5, 2016)

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