Thanks for the Vietnamese mother

Teaching Vietnamese: A new profession for many young people

About a decade ago, when the diplomatic relationship between Korea and Vietnam warmed up, many Korean experts and businessmen wanted to learn Vietnamese to seek investment and development opportunities in Vietnam. As an international student in Seoul at that time, I was lucky to have a close friend introduce me to a job teaching Vietnamese to Korean experts and businessmen who would come to work in Vietnam. While my American friend who studied with me tutored Koreans in English for about 30 USD/hour, my Vietnamese teaching fee was double. The reason was simple because at that time, finding Vietnamese teachers in Korea was much harder than finding English teachers. Thanks to that steady Vietnamese teaching job, I was able to overcome the difficult years of studying because my scholarship was not enough to cover the basic needs of a family with young children in Seoul. Mentally, Vietnamese helped me feel more confident in a foreign land. I deeply feel that many wealthy Korean businessmen are struggling every day to conquer a market that is almost twice the population of their country, by diligently learning my Vietnamese. Vietnamese is not only beautiful and sacred in my subconscious, but for me, it is also a lifeline.

Teaching Vietnamese to foreigners is becoming an attractive profession for young people because of the good income.

Recently, teaching Vietnamese to foreigners has become increasingly popular in its homeland, following the footsteps of foreigners flocking to invest. Hoai said: “Before, I worked as an accountant for a private company in Hanoi. My salary was not enough to make ends meet, so in the evenings I had to go to the sidewalk by West Lake to sell iced tea and grilled squid to earn extra money. There were some foreigners living nearby who were regular customers and they often talked to me. Through the conversation, some of them confided that they wanted to learn Vietnamese. So I tried to help them, and gradually it became a profession without me realizing it.” People told each other, and now she teaches 5 classes a week, with 1 to 5 students in each class, helping her earn about 20 million VND from Vietnamese classes each month. She quit her job as an accountant and enrolled in a formal course on “Methods of Teaching Vietnamese to Foreigners” at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (S&H) under the Vietnam National University, Hanoi to gain more knowledge and skills. She also learned to make videos on her own to post on Youtube so that students can practice, as well as to promote her Vietnamese teaching service.

Like Hoai, in our class of nearly 30 people, many young people have been and are teaching Vietnamese to foreigners and are making a living from this profession. The wave of investment from many countries, especially from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, into Vietnam has caused the demand for learning Vietnamese among foreigners working in Vietnam to increase rapidly. However, it seems that supply cannot meet demand. In addition to Vietnamese classes for foreigners opened by universities during business hours, and classes under contracts between schools and large companies that need to train Vietnamese for foreign employees, foreigners who want to learn the language only have a few centers to choose from in big cities. They often have to find classes by asking and telling each other. Normally, the tuition fee for one-on-one classes is around 200,000 to 300,000 VND/hour. If the student is a senior manager and the lecturer can teach in Korean or Japanese, the tuition fee is up to 500,000 VND/hour/person. Teaching Vietnamese to foreigners brings many young people a fairly stable source of income, so everyone is conscious of improving their knowledge and skills to do better in each of their lectures. Therefore, the classes teaching Vietnamese teaching methods to foreigners at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities are always full of students. Many students "start a business" by teaching for hire at centers, receiving a very modest salary to learn experience, make connections... and then gradually conquer customers and create their own tutoring network.

A Vietnamese class at the Faculty of Vietnamese Studies and Vietnamese Language, University of Social Sciences and Humanities

The profession of teaching Vietnamese to foreigners is increasingly promising, as the number of foreign enterprises in Vietnam is increasing. Suppose that only 10% of the nearly 180,000 Koreans in Vietnam today want to learn Vietnamese, then meeting their needs will also open up a great opportunity for language teaching centers. Abroad, the Vietnamese community in Europe, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, etc. also creates a huge potential market for those who professionally teach Vietnamese to foreigners. For example, in Taiwan, since September 2018, this country has stipulated that mixed-race children must study at least 1 hour of their mother tongue per week at school, causing the demand for Vietnamese teachers to increase dramatically because there are nearly 90,000 mixed-race Vietnamese children living here. Vietnam's position is also increasingly raised in the region and in the world, making Vietnamese studies more and more promising, attracting Vietnamese language learners from all over the world.

World class Vietnamese language school No. 1

When it comes to the oldest place to teach Vietnamese to foreigners in Vietnam, we must mention the Faculty of Vietnamese Studies and Vietnamese Language, University of Social Sciences and Humanities. In 2018, the Faculty celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding, and the 62nd anniversary of its tradition of teaching Vietnamese to foreigners. According to Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thien Nam - Head of the Faculty, in more than half a century of researching and teaching Vietnamese as a foreign language, the Faculty has trained more than 10,000 foreigners at the Faculty as well as at many universities and centers of Vietnamese studies around the world. Among them, there are many veteran diplomats, senior interpreters, especially 15 foreign students who have become Ambassadors and Charge d'Affaires in Vietnam.

Former British Ambassador to Vietnam - Mr. Giles Lever visited the Faculty of Vietnamese Studies and Language as he prepared to end his term as ambassador to Vietnam (May 2018)

Generations of professors and lecturers of the Faculty have made constant efforts to bridge the Vietnamese language to the world, helping foreigners, overseas Vietnamese, and Vietnamese people of mixed race to understand and love our country more through the beauty of the language, which is also a part of Vietnamese culture. In recent years, the Faculty has successfully compiledVietnamese proficiency framework for foreigners,Format of Vietnamese proficiency test for foreigners, applied nationwide and in many countries,Training program for Vietnamese teachers for foreigners, as well as directly training Vietnamese teachers for foreigners, in charge of professional matters for the project.Strengthening online Vietnamese language teaching for overseas Vietnamese…

Although they have made such an important mark in the research and teaching of Vietnamese in the country and in the world, when talking to the teachers at the Faculty of Vietnamese Language and Vietnamese Studies, everyone can see that they are sincere, close, friendly, natural and humorous, perhaps because their working environment is associated with many foreigners. In the book “Half a century of the Faculty of Vietnamese Language and Vietnamese Studies” (Hanoi National University Publishing House), the confidences of veteran teachers always make readers both moved and sometimes smile to themselves. Every teacher who works as a “teach abc” teacher, as Mr. Nguyen Tai Can said (p. 130), takes advantage of the opportunity to learn from their own students to use a few foreign languages, which is also a way for them to teach better. Mr. Ho Hai Thuy also learned many languages ​​by himself in that way. He confided: “The most important thing is to pay attention to the cultural aspect, never think of yourself as the center to ask silly questions like: How many breweries are there in Cuba? During the war against America, one of our teachers, who only knew of one brewery on Hoang Hoa Tham Street, asked that question. If someone asked him now how many breweries are there in Vietnam, he would probably know.” (p.134). Mr. Hoang Trong Phien affirmed that the Vietnamese Language Department is the first Vietnamese language teaching institution in the country, opening the door to cooperation in teaching Vietnamese with universities abroad. The first person to ring the bell abroad was Mr. Ha Xuan Vinh in Sweden. Then came Mr. Do Thanh, Duy Ngoc, Tran Khang, Dac Hue, Dinh Thanh Hue, Nguyen Thi Khanh, and Quoc Vinh. They are worthy of the title of ambassadors building a bridge of friendship between Vietnam and other countries in the world (p.138).

Foreign students majoring in Vietnamese Studies at the Faculty of Vietnamese Studies and Vietnamese Language

However, it is so touching when talking about the greatest gain in the profession of teaching Vietnamese to foreigners, Mr. Bui Phung, former head of the department, summarized in a simple sentence: "The most proud thing is that language teachers learn more Vietnamese (if they really want to learn), learn to love their mother tongue more, and be more careful when writing and speaking Vietnamese.”. For me, when I went through the course on Teaching Vietnamese to Foreigners, I suddenly realized that I had been using Vietnamese mainly out of habit. To teach foreigners, teachers must cultivate a lot of knowledge, skills, life experiences and behaviors. At that time, my feeling was that Vietnamese is both beautiful and very difficult, and the challenge for teachers is to explain Vietnamese in a way that is easy for learners to understand, easy to imitate and follow. Teaching Vietnamese, therefore, is not only a profession to make a living, but also an opportunity for each teacher to feel the beauty of Vietnamese, to appreciate and be grateful for the gift given by parents since the cradle, to be able to rely on it and proudly convey the deep love for the homeland in their hearts to the world.

According to Vietnamese Students