The purpose of this assignment is to discuss various social aspects of power relation between teachers and learners in Vietnamese culture.
I. How is that power relation like in Vietnam?
First, we need to understand what power relation is. According to Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, 8th edition, “power” is “the ability to control people or things”. Power relation is the division of power between the two groups of people, who have more power over the others. In this assignment, it is the power relation between teacher and students that matters.
In this part, I am going to give some examples in response to the first question above. Take a video on YouTube as an example: This video is about a class in a primary school in Vietnam, where teacher and students are taking part in a science class.
There is something worth mentioning:
First, we can see that Vietnamese students never call their teacher by his/her first name because they find it disrespectful. Instead, it is advisable for the students to call their teacher by title only, like those students in the first video: they always stand up and say “Thưa cô” before giving answer for every question and use some honorifics likes "ạ”, “vâng”, “dạ”, “thưa”, etc. We can see that the atmosphere in class is relatively serious.
Second, the structure of that class (and almost classes all over Vietnam) is also noticeable: High standing base for teacher and the lower part is the place containing desks at which students sit. The