Vietnam makes Japanese part of $500 mln national language project

Local students will learn Japanese as part of a US$480 million national project intended to improve the learning and teaching of foreign languages, primarily English, in Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) said at a meeting in Hanoi on Tuesday.

Deputy Minister of Education Nguyen Vinh Hien said that Japanese will continue to be taught in middle and high schools, vocational institutions, and colleges after Vietnamese educators recently finished piloting a plan to teach it to school students from 2003 to 2013.

Vietnam started teaching Japanese to its students under the plan in the 2003-2004 academic year. The foreign language has been taught to 25,000 students at 19 middle schools and 12 high schools in Hanoi, Da Nang City, and Ho Chi Minh City ever since.

The Southeast Asian nation has earmarked around VND10 trillion (US$480 million) for a national proposal, titled Project 2020, to improve students’ command of foreign languages, especially English, from now until 2020.

In 2008 the country issued Government Decision 1400, the goal of which is “to renovate thoroughly the tasks of teaching and learning foreign languages within the national educational system.”

MoET’s Project 2020 was created in 2010 to implement this national renovation. Among its objectives is the establishment of regional foreign language centers as a major strategy to address teacher development and language teaching quality throughout the country.

Five such facilities were officially launched in January this year at the University of Languages and International Studies/VNU – Hanoi, Thai Nguyen University, Hue University College of Foreign Languages, the University of Foreign Languages – Da Nang City, and the Ho Chi Minh City University of Education.

Under Project 2020 Vietnam aims for the majority of its students to be able to use a foreign language, especially English, confidently in study, daily communication, and work by 2020.