Vietnamese school and academic writing (vi-VN)

Vietnamese education writing fails by flattening a rigidly hierarchical, legally codified system into one generic voice. A teacher writing to a 9-year-old, a school broadcasting to parents, and a university registrar addressing an adult student are three different registers with three different pronouns — and two of the genres here (report-card language, diploma reissuance) use wording set by a Ministry circular, not by house style.

This skill covers instructional and administrative writing only. E-learning product UI, gamification, and subtitles belong to

vietnamese-tech-writing

; tutoring-centre, test-prep, and study-abroad advertising belong to

vietnamese-business-comms

— both are genuinely different registers (software microcopy, regulated advertising) wearing an education topic.

Step 1 — Identify the writer, the reader, and the schooling stage

Writer → Reader	Register	Notes
Teacher → secondary student (THCS/THPT)	`edu-k12` ( `em` )	The default K-12 classroom register
Teacher → primary student (tiểu học)	`edu-k12-primary` ( `con` )	Set by schooling stage, not the student's actual age
School/teacher → parents (collective)	`edu-parent` ( `quý phụ huynh` )	sổ liên lạc, Zalo broadcasts, report-card notices
University → student (administrative prose)	`edu-uni` (no direct address)	Transcripts, syllabi, registration — third-person `sinh viên`

bạn

addressed to a student in a teacher's voice is the single most common machine-translation tell in this domain — it strips the hierarchical respect the relationship requires. Full matrix, including how these four rows sit alongside every other Vietnamese skill's registers: references/register-matrix.md. The education-specific detail — the primary/secondary

con

em

line,

quý phụ huynh

versus a known parent's own register, and a teacher's self-reference (

thầy

cô

, never

tôi

) — is in references/doc-registers.md.

Step 2 — Use the statutory grading terms, not the ones that sound right

Grading and credential terminology in Vietnam is set by Bộ GD&ĐT circulars, and they changed recently enough that an LLM's training data still defaults to the abolished terms:

Secondary (THCS/THPT), Thông tư 22/2021/TT-BGDĐT: overall classification is
```
Tốt
```
/
```
Khá
```
/
```
Đạt
```
/
```
Chưa đạt
```
.
```
Học sinh Tiên tiến
```
and an overall
```
Giỏi
```
/
```
Trung bình
```
label are abolished — generating them is the clearest tell that a report card is machine-written.
Primary (tiểu học), Thông tư 27/2020/TT-BGDĐT: routine assessment is qualitative, not numeric —
```
Hoàn thành tốt
```
/
```
Hoàn thành
```
/
```
Cần cố gắng
```
.
```
Cần cải thiện
```
is the calque; the statutory phrase is
```
Cần cố gắng
```
.
Higher education, Thông tư 08/2021/TT-BGDĐT: credit is
```
tín chỉ
```
, never
```
tín dụng
```
(that is financial credit). GPA is written with a Vietnamese decimal comma (
```
3,6/4,0
```
), and maps to
```
Xuất sắc
```
/
```
Giỏi
```
/
```
Khá
```
— an untranslated
```
3.6/4.0
```
is a locale bug, not a style choice.
Diplomas, Thông tư 21/2019/TT-BGDĐT: an original diploma is issued once. A lost diploma is never "reissued as an original" — the correct, and only legal, output is
```
cấp bản sao từ sổ gốc
```
(a copy from the master register).

Full tables, article citations, and effective dates: references/grading-terminology.md.

Step 3 — Look up the term before inventing one

giáo trình

(textbook/course material) is not

đề cương

(syllabus/course outline);

đăng ký khóa học

is the EdTech phrase,

đăng ký học phần

is the university-registration one;

ăn cắp ý tưởng

is not the formal

đạo văn

(plagiarism). The calque table, with severities: references/glossary.md.

Step 4 — Check compliance and formatting

quý phụ huynh

for parent-facing notices is close to a legal expectation, not just house style — Điều 89 Luật Giáo dục 2019 frames school-home communication as formal coordination, and a casual or literal

các bậc cha mẹ

reads as a failure to take that seriously. A K-12 app or portal that reports a child's grades to a parent is processing a minor's data and needs the consent language in references/compliance.md (Nghị định 13/2023/NĐ-CP). Number, date, and currency formatting (tuition fees, GPA decimals) follows references/locale-formatting.md; regulated superlatives in school-branding language follow references/banned-phrases.md.

Step 5 — Validate, fix, then ship

Run the validator immediately after writing. If it reports errors, fix them and run again. Only present the copy once it passes.

bash

python scripts/validate_copy.py hoc-ba.md --doctype secondary-report-card
python scripts/validate_copy.py so-lien-lac.md --doctype primary-report-card --register edu-parent
python scripts/validate_copy.py nhan-xet.md --doctype teacher-to-student --register edu-k12
python scripts/validate_copy.py bang-diem.md --doctype transcript
python scripts/validate_copy.py cap-lai-bang.md --doctype diploma
python scripts/validate_copy.py de-cuong.md --doctype higher-ed --register edu-uni

--register edu-k12|edu-k12-primary|edu-parent|edu-uni

enables

PRO002

--doctype
turns on the statutory and structural rules — they stay silent otherwise, because
```
Cần cải thiện
```
is only wrong on a primary report card:
```
primary-report-card
```
,
```
secondary-report-card
```
,
```
teacher-to-student
```
,
```
transcript
```
,
```
diploma
```
,
```
higher-ed
```
.
Exit
```
0
```
= clean or warnings only. Exit
```
1
```
= errors that must be fixed.
```
--json
```
for machine-readable findings;
```
--strict
```
to fail on warnings too;
```
--fix
```
repairs NFC in place.

Step 6 — Learn from the worked pairs, then hand it to a human

references/examples.md — bad→good pairs, each with the circular or article it fixes. Then run the checklist: the linter catches statutory terms, calques, and encoding; it cannot tell you whether a report-card remark is actually encouraging, or whether a parent notice reads as sincere. Those need a native speaker who has taught or parented inside this system: references/qa-checklist.md

vietnamese-education-copy

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content