Vietnam: What are the effects of personification? What is the grade at which students will learn personification?

What are the effects of personification?

Personification is one of the most common and effective rhetorical devices in language. When using personification, qualities, actions, or emotions that only humans possess are attributed to objects or phenomena. This makes sentences much more lively, engaging, and evocative.

*Below are some of the main effects of personification:

Enhancing imagery and emotional appeal:

Creating vivid, lively, and easy-to-imagine images.

Leaving a deep impression on readers and listeners.

Stimulating the reader's imagination, helping them deeply perceive the world around them.

Making the text more captivating:

Introducing novelty and surprise, preventing the text from becoming monotonous.

Naturally connecting the reader or listener with the text.

Expressing the subtlety and talent of the writer.

Increasing expressiveness:

Emphasizing characteristics and properties of objects or phenomena.

Showing the writer’s feelings and attitudes towards those objects or phenomena.

Creating emotionally rich sentences that touch the reader's heart.

*Example:

Original: The almond tree stood firmly in front of the school gate.

Using personification: The old almond tree stood pensively watching the children play.

The sentence becomes much more vivid after using personification. The almond tree is no longer an inanimate object but has emotions and thoughts like a human.

*Some other examples of personification:

The village road twists like a soft ribbon.

The sun rises with a radiant smile.

Raindrops dance on the roof.

*Conclusion:

Personification is an effective tool that makes language more lively, expressive, and appealing. Mastering this device will make your writing or speech more impressive and resonate more deeply with readers and listeners.

*Note: The information about the effects of personification is for reference only./.

What are the effects of personification? In Vietnam, what is the grade at which students will learn personification? (Image from the Internet)

In Vietnam, what is the grade at which students will learn personification?

According to Clause 2, Section 4 of the General Education Program in Literature issued with Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDDT:

2. Required Competencies

2.1. Requirements at Primary Level

a) Language competence

...

b) Literary competence

Distinguish between story and poetry texts (prose and verse); recognize the content of the text and the writer's attitude and emotions; initially understand the effects of some formal elements of literary texts (language, characters, plot, rhymes, comparison, personification). Learn to associate, imagine, and express literature in writing and speaking.*

For students in grades 1 and 2: recognize who and what the text is about; recognize characters in stories, rhymes in poetry; distinguish between stories and poems.

For students in grades 3, 4, and 5: learn to read literary texts expressively; retell, summarize the main content of stories or poems; evaluate characters, events, and the writer’s attitudes and feelings in the text; recognize time and place, some types of rhymes, rhythm, vocabulary, beautiful, unique images, and the effects of rhetorical devices such as personification and comparison. Understand the meaning or lessons from the text. Write narratives, descriptive essays expressing emotions and associative, imaginative capabilities.

...

Under the above regulations:

- Students in grades 3, 4, and 5: master the effects of rhetorical devices like personification and comparison.

- Students in grades 6 and 7: master rhetorical devices such as metaphor, metonymy, exaggeration, and understatement.

- For students in grades 8 and 9: understand devices like repetition, wordplay, irony, and paradox.

Thus, the personification device will be taught at the primary education level specifically in grades 3, 4, and 5.

What are the requirements for selecting text corpus used in the 5th-grade Vietnamese Language curriculum?

Vietnamese Language subject for grades 1-5 will be Literature at lower secondary and upper secondary levels.

Under Section 8 of the Appendix of the General Education Program in Literature issued with Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDDT, the requirements for selecting text corpus used in the 5th-grade Vietnamese Language curriculum are as follows:

In addition to ensuring the criteria outlined in section V, the text corpus used in the 5th-grade Vietnamese Language curriculum must meet the following requirements:

- Ensure a reasonable ratio between literary texts and argumentative and informational texts. Within literary texts, ensure a relative balance among the main genres (story, poetry, diary, drama), between medieval and modern literature, between folk and written literature, between Kinh ethnic literature and minority ethnic literature, between Vietnamese and foreign literature, and between East and West. "Balance" is understood as an appropriate ratio, not necessarily equal. Text corpus for all grades must include story and poetry texts.

Apart from stories and poems, each educational level must have either diary or drama texts. Primary school and early secondary school levels prioritize modern and contemporary Vietnamese literature. Minimize the repetition of texts across different grades and levels.

- Ensure the suitability of texts with the developmental needs and study time of the program. The difficulty of reading texts increases with each academic year. The time allocated for teaching a text must correspond to its length and complexity, enabling teachers to fully and thoughtfully guide students through the text, giving them direct and complete access to the works selected for study. Limiting excerpt-based teaching unless dealing with large-scale literary works such as novels, memoirs, and epics, for example: "Truyện Kiều" by Nguyen Du.

- Inherit and develop existing Literature curriculum. The curriculum is based on 9 authors and the literary works studied in the current curriculum and textbooks, selecting and supplementing several significant authors and works representing national literary achievements across periods for school education with three levels: mandatory work (textbook authors and teachers must follow curriculum regulations); mandatory choice work (textbook authors must select works of authors listed in the curriculum regulations); suggested choice work (textbook authors freely select works from the curriculum's suggested list).

For three authors Nguyen Trai, Nguyen Du, and Ho Chi Minh in the upper secondary level, an overview introducing the literary author is included.

Based on the required outcomes for each class and the list of mandatory works, textbook authors select and include suitable texts recommended within or outside the program's suggested list. Teachers and students can select to read additional expanded texts suitable for program requirements and age to discuss in groups or class.

What are the regulations on selecting text corpus used in the 5th-grade Vietnamese Language curriculum?

Under Section 9 of the Appendix of the General Education Program in Literature issued with Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDDT suggestions for selecting text corpus used in the 5th-grade Vietnamese Language curriculum are:

- Based on the criteria for choosing texts (stated in section V) and the requirements for text selection (stated in section VIII), the curriculum builds a list of suggested texts (text corpus) at various grades.

This list is not exhaustive for all text corpora of grades but serves as an illustrative example of genre, type, theme, and suitability for age and psychological understanding; meeting reading, writing, speaking, and listening requirements at each grade.

To facilitate flexible text corpus selection, texts are suggested according to class groups: grades 1, 2, and 3; grades 4 and 5; grades 6 and 7; grades 8 and 9; grades 10, 11, and 12 (Text titles in all classes are organized alphabetically).

Textbook authors may utilize this list for selection and seek additional similar texts in genre and difficulty, as long as they meet the criteria (stated in section V) and requirements for text selection (stated in section VIII).

- Suggested text corpus in this list are sorted by type and text genre (story, poem, drama, diary, argumentation, information).

The number of texts in each type and genre varies according to the curriculum's requirements.

The list includes new texts and ones that have been used in current textbooks (reallocated to suit each class's requirements), ensuring harmony between inheritance and innovation. For informational texts, the list does not specify particular titles but only topics and text types, allowing textbook authors to select accordingly.

Authors appearing in this list only appear once throughout the educational levels, except for some mandatory authors and works as stated in the curriculum.

To guide textbook authors in selecting suitable texts for class groups, this list provides recommendations even for mandatory works.

GRADE 4 AND GRADE 5

*Stories, Prose

- The Story of the Agricultural God (Vietnamese Fairy Tales)

- How Much Do I Love You, Dad (Picture Story - Sam McBratney, A. Jeram)

- The Earthworm (Vietnamese Folk Tale)

- The Wish of King Midas (Greek Mythology)

- Marvelous Green Forest (Nguyen Phan Hach)

- A Righteous Man (Quynh Cu, Do Duc Hung)

- Buying Glasses (Vietnamese Folk Tale)

- Childhood Days (Nguyen Hong)

- Hearts (E.Amicis)

- Wise Judgement (Vietnamese Fairy Tales)

- Home Village (Vo Quang)

- The Legend of the New Year Tree (Vietnamese Fairy Tales)

- Grand Chancellor Tran Thu Do (Ngo Si Lien)

- Letter to Students (Ho Chi Minh)

- The Elegance of Fingers (Excerpt from Vua Nham Mat Vua Mo Cua So - Nguyen Ngoc Thuan)

- Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window (K. Tetsuko)

- In the Jungle (Excerpt from The Jungle Book - R. Kipling)

- ...

*Poetry, Folk Songs, Riddles

- Song of the Earth (Dinh Hai)

- Boat Down La River (Vu Duy Thong)

- Sea (Khanh Chi)

- Hai Phong Port (Nguyen Hong Kien)

- Folk Songs about Family Love

- Cao Bang (Truc Thong)

- Folk Riddles about Objects and Phenomena

- Tet Market (Doan Van Cu)

- The River Puts on a Dress (Nguyen Trong Tao)

- I Think about the Earth (Nguyen Lam Thang)

- Lượm (To Huu)

- Favorite Colors (Pham Dinh An)

- Balalaika on the Da River (Quang Huy)

- Children Today, the World Tomorrow (Phung Ngoc Hung)

- The Tale of Kieu (Nguyen Du)

- Our Country's Fairy Tales (Lam Thi My Da)

- At the Gate of Heaven (Nguyen Dinh Anh)

- ...

*Drama

- The Fox Fell into the Well (Aesop)

- The Blue Bird (M. Maeterlinck)

- Prince - Princess and the Nine Gods... Captured (Minh Phuong)

- People's Heart (Nguyen Van Xe)

- Citizen Number One (Ha Van Cau - Vu Dinh Phong)

- ...

*Informational Texts

- Book or film introductions.

- Simple step-by-step instructions for performing a task or using a product.

- Letters of thanks or apologies, inquiry letters; applications (for school leave, for admission); invitations, work reports, activity programs.

- Explanation of a natural phenomenon.

- Introduction to a process.

- Advertisements (flyers, posters,...).

- ...

>>> DOWNLOAD The General Education Program in Literature issued with Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDDT.