Vietnamese debate over teaching new compulsory foreign langu

HANOI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A lively debate is being carried out across Vietnam as the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) recently proposed that the languages of Russian, Japanese and Chinese will be taught as the first foreign language to local students from grade three to grade 12 from 2017.

According to the MoET, in Vietnam, the "first foreign language" means a compulsory foreign language. Students can choose one of five languages of English, Russian, French, Chinese and Japanese to be the first foreign language.

Meanwhile, the MoET explained the "second foreign language" as an optional one which will be learned on demand of students and conditions of schools.

Students can make a choice out of the above-mentioned five languages together with German and Korean to be their second language.

The ministry said in its proposal on foreign language teaching and studying during 2016-2020 period that 10-year-long curriculums for Russian and Chinese will be built, as that of English, French and Japanese.

The proposal triggered discussions nationwide among teachers, students and parents. Some welcome the inclusion of new foreign languages to curriculum while others remain skeptical.

Nguyen Thi Linh Tu, deputy head of Chinese language faculty in Vietnam's central Hue University of Foreign Language, told local media on Friday that "Teaching Chinese as the first language at schools is good for Vietnamese students to better understand China."

"As a Chinese language teacher, I think that it will offer a great opportunity for local students to seek jobs in the future as there is need of Chinese-speaking employees currently in Vietnam," said Tu.

Despite agreeing that English is popular and considered as an official language in many countries, the teacher said "Chinese is spoken by the most people worldwide. China is the world's second largest economy. Learning Chinese, Vietnamese people can access a huge market in China and Chinese communities in other countries."

Besides, Tu said "We should also pay attention to Japanese and Russian. However, Chinese has most competitive advantage as China is a neighboring country to Vietnam."

Sharing the same view, Vu The Khoi, former dean of Russian, English, French, Chinese translation faculty under Vietnam's capital Hanoi University said on Friday that "I am happy to see that after a time of interruption, the studying of Chinese and Russian will be resumed. This is a good policy."

Nevertheless, the teacher proposed three to five years of preparation before officially teaching the languages.

"It takes time to train good teachers and good curriculums," said Khoi, adding that good preparation will ensure good results.

The proposal drew great attention by local netizens. It seems that most of them hold differents viewpoint with the language teachers and the ministry.

A reader called Truong Chung wrote on local VNExpress online newspaper on Friday that "The current curriculum of Vietnamese primary and secondary school is very heavy. The inclusion of more languages will put more burdens into the kids' shoulders. We should not pursue language-learning quantity while the quality goes down."

Echoing Chung, another reader called Tran Quang commented "I think we should focus on improving English teaching and learning quality. English has been taught for many years in Vietnam, but the quality has not met up with demand."