The Vietnamese Government committed to closing all bear farms in the country by 2022. Some researchers have expressed concerns that ending the commercial farming of bears while demand for bear bile persists could lead to increased hunting pressure on wild bear populations. In this article, we use mixed methods of questionnaires, discrete choice experiments (DCEs), and interviews to investigate current consumer demand for bear bile in Vietnam, with a specific aim of understanding the potential for consumers to seek out wild bear bile. We sampled at seven areas across the country of Vietnam (total respondents = 2,463). We found that when directly estimated, the use of farmed bear bile in the past twelve months was over 20% in only one site; in all other study areas the use of farmed bear bile was lower than 5%. The same site had the highest level of wild bear bile use, at 5%; all other sites were lower. Despite widespread beliefs in farmed and wild bear bile’s efficacy, we found through qualitative interviews with bear bile consumers that there was general apathy about the continued use of bear bile, with respondents saying that they would use another product once bear bile farms were fully gone. Coupled with a strong preference for using synthetic bear bile over wild and farmed bear bile found in the DCEs, we posit that bear bile consumers in Vietnam will be willing to use non-animal-based products, including bear bile plant and Western medicine, to treat future ailments.

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Using collocation is a key part of second language ability (Granger, Sylviane. 2018. Formulaic sequences in learner corpora: Collocations and lexical bundles. In Anna Siyanova-Chanturia & Ana Pellicer-Sanchez (eds.),Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective, 228–247. New York: Routledge; Nattinger, James R. & Jeamette S. DeCarrico. 1992. Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2004. Collocations in a learner corpus. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.; Pawley, Andrew & Frances H. Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistics: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack Richards & Richard W. Schmidt (eds.), Language and communication, 191–228. London: Longman). Researchers often hypothesize that the influence of the first language is an important factor in the production and understanding of unconventional collocations (Huang, Li-Shi. 2001. Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners.Paper presented at the Texas Foreign Languguage Education Conference, Texas; Laufer, Bhatia & Tina Waldman. 2011. Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English. Language Learning 61(2). 647–672. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x; Phoocharoensil, Supakorn. 2013. Cross-linguistic influence: Its impact on L2 English collocation production. English Language Teaching 6(1). 1–10) but we are only now starting to understand this. The present study provides a robust investigation of cross-linguistic influences by exploring how Vietnamese influenced Vietnamese learners’ use of English language verb-noun and adjective noun collocations in 104 350-word argumentative essays, using a framework derived from Jarvis, Scott. 2012. The detection-based approach: An overview. In S. Jarvis & S. A. Crossley (eds.), Approaching language transfer through text classification: Explorations in the detection-based approach, 1st ed., Vol. 64, 1–33. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, drawing on homogeneity among speakers of Vietnamese; heterogeneity between users of Vietnamese and other language; and formal and conceptual congruity between collocations learners produce in English and equivalent terms in Vietnamese. The study found that less than 10% of the collocations learners produced were unconventional and of these, 40% of collocations were influenced by the first language (L1); errors associated with incorrect use of prepositions in verb-noun collocations (e.g. the addition, omission or misuse of prepositions) are strongly L1-motivated. Learners make errors with not only incongruent collocations (collocations with no direct L1 equivalents) but also with congruent collocations (collocations with direct L1 translation).

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This study examined how Vietnamese advanced language learners used and perceived the effectiveness of the Oxford online collocation dictionary as a supportive tool in their L2 writing. Eighty-one English major students were asked to do a writing task and were encouraged to use this dictionary to search for collocations that they want. Their use of the dictionary to look-up collocations while doing the writing was observed by using the recording sheets. Immediately after completing the writing, the participants were asked to do the questionnaires. Eight of the participants were then invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The results of the recording sheets showed that learners approach the dictionary for help with collocations of adjective-noun and verb-noun grammatical patterns most frequently. They made very limited use of the dictionary to look-up collocations of noun-noun and adverb-adjective pattern. The results of the questionnaires and thematic analysis revealed that learners are very positive towards the use of the dictionary. However, non-plentiful content, lack of pronunciation and suggestions of look-up words are drawbacks and are expected to be improved.