Materials for Learning Vietnamese Language

From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: materials for learning Vietnamese language

There was a posting several weeks ago asking about materials for learning Vietnamese language. I was sick at the time and couldn't reply. Now I would like to mention some specific materials and hope to spark some general discussion.

Last June I got serious about making daily progress in my Vietnamese language abilities. I read up on what is known about language learning among adults, and began acquiring and using materials for Vietnamese.

Language learning is a topic which the stern science of linguistics can't cope with. The scholarly literature is contradictory. There are a lot of helpful ideas, but no satisfactory sense of how adults learn language.

The most persuasive general statement I found is by Henry Sweet, the linguist who was the model for Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady", who taught in the 19th century that learning a language is a matter of using common sense, continually to ask yourself, "What is the best thing I can do right now in order to improve?"

The helpful ideas are: stop when you're bored; practice skills that are as specific as can be, but practice a few different skills every day; mix up tasks that are active and passive, solo and social, easy and hard, extensive and intensive; continue to use materials prepared for language students as well as normal materials; set goals that are important to your life and work; evaluate yourself periodically.

These "principles" have led me to a lot of materials over the last year. Working with them has been a pleasure, and has improved my abilities. The process has also helped me think about how in the future I may work with students on Vietnamese language issues. On the one hand, I'm likely to teach at a place where there is no Vietnamese language instruction. On the other hand, I am likely to have students who have some Vietnamese language competence and are looking for a purpose and some activities that will bring the language of home into the language of adult life in the greater world.

One class of materials I have found helpful are readers prepared for language students. I began with Nguyen Dinh Hoa's "Read Vietnamese." It is systematic and progressive. The reading itself is fascinating, drawn from Southern newspapers in the early 1950s, a point of view you don't often encounter in the English historiography.

Laurence C. Thompson and Nguyen duc Hiep's " Vietnamese Reader" emphasizes general cultural information, legends and so on; Robert M. Quinn's "An Intermediate Vietnamese Reader" uses social science materials. Each of these readers give the flavor of a particular moment, of a particular set of foreigners who were getting involved with Vietnamese language.

If you like to root around in this kind of thing, there are treasures. I have found "Notes pratiques de langue vietnamienne" by Capitaine Baron, and "52 semaines pour apprendre a parler, lire et ecrire l'annamite sans maitre Europeen sans fatique sans grosses depenses " by Henri Oger. These are primers, but I use them as readers, since I am working on French towards the same goals as with Vietnamese.

A current reader from France, Nguyen Phu Phong's "Le vietnamien par les textes" looks back to the literary journalists of the 1930s. Marina Prevot's bilingual edition of "Tu dois vivre" ( "Anh Phai Song") is also a current reader made of 1930s material. Nguyen Bich Thuan's "Contemporary Vietnamese Readings", also current, presents materials from all over the print environment (down to street signs) in present-day Viet Nam. Rosemary Nguyen's bilingual edition, "Literature News: Nine Stories form the Viet Nam Writers Union Newspaper, Bao Van Nghe" presents recent short stories from Ha Noi.

Every Vietnamese bookstore I have visited in the US carries some current readers for self-study by children, containing more of the kind of lore and legends which Thompson and Hiep present. I have bought the first four of the ongoing series, "Em Hoc Su Viet" by Nguyen Thi Tuyet Long and Hoang Chau An. On the history shelves there will also be some historical or political essay in bilingual presentation, such as Vu Ngu Chieu's "The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam (3-8/1945)/Phia Ben Kia Cuoc Cach Mang 1945: De Quoc Viet Nam (3-8/1945)."

Clearly, buying readers has become a hobby for me. The more general benefit these things offer the language learner is to provide short, interesting texts that can be fully and exactly mastered, with ready reference to a glossary. I select a book, pick a chapter, and charge through it, to practice guessing and intuition. Then I settle down and nail down every last word, using the handy word-list at the end of each section. Later on I review and re-read the chapter again and again, learning its vocabulary and becoming familiar with a store of random stuff that comes in handy sooner or later.

For more extensive reading, I have greatly enjoyed current newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are easiest. You know what most of the stories are about, in a general way if you know newspapers, and specifically if you follow the daily news through other sources. Guessing what a story is about is easy and fun. Figuring out advertisements is easy and informative. And Vietnamese newspapers in the US are wonderful, still maintaining the great traditions of the institution: columnists, games, local color, appropriations, stories and poems. The news coverage is wonderful, with more comprehensive international coverage than the English-language press, and such features of special interest as a section devoted to Viet Nam and another devoted to Vietnamese people all over the world.

Within the US, the most mainstream American newspaper is the Vietnamese edition of the San Jose Mercury, the "Viet Mercury." But nearly any place in the US has a Vietnamese newspaper that at least pretends to "cover" that spot. I subscribe to "Pho Nho", the Washington, DC area paper that includes the Carolinas in its catchment area.

Magazines can be a little harder for guessing. Literary journals like "Van Hoc" and "Hop Luu" have their own conversations going on, you would really have to get involved with their fan culture to rip through them the way I like to do. I have found "Dien Dan Phu Nu" and "The Ky 21" more open and expansive, oriented toward the world in general from a perspective within Vietnamese language, rather than worrying the topic of Viet Nam to death.

These are matters of taste, of course, but discovering and developing preferences is a basic purpose and engine of book technology. Think of the all the English professors you know who stopped reading after they took their orals, or after they published the second book, because they started listening to their profession rather than to what makes them happy. Always, when reading, ask yourself, "Am I having a good time?"

I have also found resources for listening to Vietnamese language. Radio goes very well with reading newspapers. There is no local VN station in my area. But a great many stations have live webcasts, and maintain archives of special features. I record a half an hour every Friday, and listen to it over the week. VNFM, at "vnmedia.com", offers rich programming for the language learner. There are often twenty minutes of ads at one stretch, all of them highly redundant and clearly structured, really great for guessing. The presentation of the programming includes direct address, dialogue, music with voiceover, skits, and call-in, a variety of format which keeps me alert and interested.

For more sustained programming in a single mode, I go to "kicon.com", which offers such things as the VOA broadcast in Vietnamese. In the archives there are interviews with people who have a lot to say. There are several with the poet Nguyen Chi Thien, whose poetry I dislike, but who turns out to be a thoughtful commentator on the quality of life in doi moi. There is a sermon by Nhat Hanh, complete with video. There is an interview with the Orange County merchant who honored Ho Chi Minh in his video store.

I don't have easy access to a Vietnamese video rental shop. That's just as well, since I can't really follow what is going on for more than ten minutes at a time. I have bought a few items that I work through slowly. For "controlled" materials, I got two of the affordably priced videos sold to immigrant mothers for their children. "Moi Ngay 5 Phut Hoc Tieng Viet" and "Co Be Ao Choang Do (RedRiding Hood)" are good rowdy children's programming.

Of course, anywhere in the world one can get a copy of "Paris By Night" from Thuy Nga or its distributors. The show numbers are great, of course, and then the patter of the emcees with performers gives me an opportunity to listen to people talking about something that I have just witnessed that I am interested in.

"Paris By Night" emcee Nguyen Ngoc Ngan is also the locus of materials in other media. He has scads of books, several of them on audio tape. I have got "Coi Dem" in both versions. Hearing him read his work aloud helps me read it silently; after reading it silently I can follow it aurally. If you can get to a Vietnamese bookstore, or get some catalogues, you can put such a package together with other authors. For example, at Minh Van bookstore in the DC area, I found audio tapes that contain recordings of stories in the collection "Niem Vui Ung Thu" by the author closely linked to the store, Tran Long Ho.

I have not got involved in listening to Vietnamese singers. I don't like the music that much and, as with books, listening very much to music you don't enjoy is a dead end. Too bad, since the music and its fandom offer a rich set of resources for learning language. There are the cassettes and CDs, and there are the videos, and then there are the magazines and the gossip. Every singer has known attributes of character, and a distinctive personal history. There's a lot to talk about with people, a way to find out who you are and what you have in common with people you meet. A bonanza for language learning, really, but I just don't like the music that much.

For prepared audio, I have found the tapes to Nguyen Bich Thuan's "Contemporary Vietnamese: An Intermediate Text" helpful. They are useful dialogues and brief pattern drills.

Well, those are the kinds of things I have found in the last year. I wish I had been able to use video programming, but it's not on cable in my area and satellite reception has a high entry costs which I would lose when I leave my apartment.

Most of these activities and materials are for what some pedagogues call language study, rather than language learning. They are things I do by myself rather than in dialogue with living, present people. I would say, following the social linguists, that I am peopling my head and my office with scenes of dialogue in which I can rattle around as a scholar.

But you do have to get out and talk to actual people from time to time. Since most of the people I can talk with who know Vietnamese would rather speak English or French with me, I don't engage in more than a few lines of dialogue in an ordinary day.

So I have taken to writing letters and email in Vietnamese. The medium gives me the opportunity to find ways to say what I want to say, rather than what I already know how to say. I have built an old-fashioned letter-book, with a fair copy of each letter that goes out and comes in.

Since so much of a letter is formulaic, and I often write about the same topics, this book helps me compose a proper letter in a reasonable period of time. A friend who I have helped with English will review a new letter over the phone, or the TA for the Vietnamese class at Carolina will give me the same service. The two different people give me different advice, of course.

I just bought a "Thu Tu Giao Thiep Hang Ngay: Model English-Vietnamese Letters for All Occasions", but I haven't used it yet. A Dainamco reprint from the old days, its usages are likely out of date.

Letter writing, like all the other things I do, is a small practice that has had some cumulative effect. They reflect the opportunities I've had with a year's funding for language study, at a certain place at a certain time in my life with certain resources for learning Vietnamese.

We native speakers of English who work in the United States with Vietnamese language have one small advantage, I think, over more established fields of foreign-language study and teaching, in that the quirky and individual aspects of language work are easier to see. I am not sure that researchers and students in German and French and Chinese and Japanese are actually doing any better at promoting second-language learning than we are with Vietnamese.

It may be that it just looks that way because there are more of them, and they have more money. Language is a social task, but it has to be performed by individuals, which is why linguists have a hard time building theory about how it is learned, and why it is hard to write curriculum past the elementary level.

My approach over the last year has been to be as individual as I possibly can. I have found that it works for me. The question is whether I will be able to use these experiences to teach other people to learn.

Dan Duffy

Graduate student

Department of Anthropology

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC

27599 USA

919-932-2624

<dduffy@email.unc.edu>

From: "sharon" <snuggles@pacific.net.sg>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: materials for learning Vietnamese language

Greetings from a new member:

Thanks Daniel for that very comprehensive posting on how to pick up the language. I have been struggling on my own for so very long that I've almost lost hope. Being in Singapore, one would think that language materials and tutors would come easy but this is unfortunately not so. I've learned under Nguyen Bich Thuan for a very short while (3 months) but have since stopped because I no longer qualify for the module as I'm not longer an undergrad. Fortuntely for me, I've a very nice and obliging tutor who sees me twice a week (1 hour each) but still, it's not enough. I shall follow your instructions and see if I can glean anything over the internet.

Just a brief introduction. I am an MA student from the National University of Singapore and my dissertation topic is simply on women issues but specifically, on what is called the "practice of asking for a child". I'm hoping to look at a group of female war veterans who yearn for a child so badly that they are willing to go to great lengths to conceive, such as using monetary payment. Mainly interested in ideas of motherhood and how the Vietnamese social system makes room (or maybe they don't) for these women. I've been searching for materials on this topic but to no avail. By chance, I heard that Harriet Phinney has just completed her PhD dissertation on this same subject but a search at the Uni of Washington website failed to produce her contact numbers/email. I'd like to consult her on this and would be very grateful if someone could verify or better still, connect us up. I would also like to hear your views on my topic and welcome all suggestions, either in terms of materials or contacts as to who may have done work on this area.

Lastly, I'd just like to mention that the discussions on Chinese military aid were very insightful and thanks to Judith Henchy again for putting this group together. I would have been totally insulated from the goings-on of research into Vietnamese studies had it not been for this group. Thanks.

Sharon Seah Li-Lian

Dept. of Sociology

Fac. of Arts and Social Sciences

National Unversity of Singapore

artp9345@nus.edu.sg

From: afscvn@netnam.org.vn

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Language Study Resources

The four resources I have found myself recommending most often to expatriates in Ha Noi wanting to learn Vietnamese are:

1. HOW TO LEARN ANY LANGUAGE Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on your Own, Barry Farber, Citidel Press, Carol Publishing Group, 1993. Farber self taught himself twenty-five languages. His book is the story of what he wishes now he had known when he started out on this life journey. It's fun to read. Tucked inside the story are very useful techniques for self-study. My sense on reading and re-reading this book is that even I can learn.

2. Oxford University Press has three picture dictionaries on three levels of language sophistication. Pictures have both English and Vietnamese labels. The drawings are of a western, urban lifestyle; you won't find vocabulary particular for rural Viet Nam. The three levels are A) THE BASIC OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY, ENGLISH/VIETNAMESE, Margot F. Gramer, 1995, 139 pages including index in Vietnamese and index in English; B) THE NEW OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY, Hai Trong Tran, 1989, 140 pages (more pictures per page than # 1) including index in Vietnamese and index in English; and C) THE OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY, Norma Shapiro and Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, 1998, 227 pages including two indices.

3. TIENG VIET CHO NGUOI NUOC NGOAI, (VIETNAMESE FOR FOREIGNERS), Nguyen Anh Que, Ha Noi, Nha Xuat Ban Giao Duc (Education Publishing Housoe), 1994. Like many books for learning Vietnamese, this one assumes you already know the language. As a result, it is frustrating for beginners. However, I find Mr. Que's chart on tones (a "graph" of pitch mapped against duration) on p. xxiv a particularly useful tool for people who learn visually.

4. TU DIEN VIET-ANH (VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARY), Bui Phung, Ha Noi, Nha Xuat Ban The Gioi (World Publishers), 1998 is by far the best dictionary available. It has 2,293 pages and 220,000 words. As you can see from the pub date, it's current. I relish Mr. Phung's extensive use of examples and find this an essential resource for literary and historical translation.

I know that Mr. Nguyen Dinh Hoa's dictionary and books for learning Vietnamese are still available from Tuttle Publishers in Vermont. They were useful companions for many of us during the war. However, I'd share with you this caveat. Most if not all those books date from more than thirty years ago, when compound words like "Viet Nam" were still hyphenated. Languages are organic and constantly changing. Thus, you'll want to be careful using them because, chances are, you'll be out of date and may sound a bit silly. Also, Mr. Hoa's dictionary is from the former South Viet Nam and so does not include some vocabulary common in the former PRG areas of the south or in the north of Viet Nam.

I hope this is useful,

Lady Borton

Quaker Service

Ha Noi

afscvn@netnam.org.vn

On Sun, 6 Feb 2000, Nguyen, Thuy Tm (Thuy) wrote:

Recently, I have been asked to compile a reading list for a Vietnamese Literacy program by the Vietnamese American Association in OKC. We are in the process of writing a grant to open summer Vietnamese classes for elementary, high school, and undergraduate students. My training have been in American Literature and Mental Health, therefore I am unfamiliar with current training materials used to teach Vietnamese grammar and composition.

I am looking for titles that relate to different levels of learning Vietnamese: beginning, intermediate, advance etc. The recipients of the program are mostly Vietnamese Americans, but the aim is also to introduce an undergraduate Vietnamese language program to interested students.

Thanks for your input.

Thuy Nguyen

University of Oklahoma

Graduate Student

(405) 946-8304

From: Chuong Chung <cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Vietnamese Language Curriculum

Hi co Thuy,

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I am a prof. here at CCSF and got your call for assistance with VSG. So, this is what I know about the materials. (anh Steve O' Harrow did hook you up with GUAVA). There is a bundle of materials in L1 (community language) developed by San Jose City Schools from K-9 nicely done in Vietnamese. Check with Kim Anh Nguyen she was the project director. Other materials developed by individual Saturday language program are not that great and tainted with political stuff. Thay Bac at UC Berkeley has more suggestions I am sure. San Francisco Unified School district had some stuff at San Miguel school.

I also found many books (resources) published in Vietnam on teaching: Nguoi Viet o Nuoc Ngoai (overseas Vietnamese) and they are fairly good. The institute of Linguistics in Ha Noi (11 Ly Thai To) have these resources and Prof. Bui Khanh The at the University of HCM do have the list of these materials on teaching Vietnamese to non-native speakers or American born Vietnamese.

Good luck

Chung Hoang Chuong

From: joseph j hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: Vietnamese Language Curriculum

Chi Thuy,

We just bought a CD-ROM for learning Vietnamese from the Vietnamese Professional Society. It is geared toward children, while much of the material I've seen in academia targets college students and adults.

You may want to check out the VPS web page: http://www.vps.org/english/ (click on the "software" link).

Also, I know that there is a great deal of curricullum development for children and high school students going on at community-based Vietnamses language schools (run by Viet Kieu organizations) in various cities.

Unfortunately I have no specific contacts...

Good luck,

Joe Hannah