What's the Most Popular Second Language in Vietnam?

When Truong Nguyen (called simply ‘T.’ publically) decided to attend high school in America in 2001, his reason was simple: “I wanted to live the American dream.” He added he felt a bit of pressure from his parents, who encouraged him to complete his education abroad and gain his citizenship in the foreign country.

Funding his first year with an international scholarship, Nguyen and his parents paid for the rest of his high school career themselves. After graduating, he went on to complete a BA in computer science from the University of Louisiana. He said he liked the culture of the South.

“I found a job in San Francisco working for a startup and I got a company to sponsor my [H1B] visa application,” he said. “But it’s hard. You have to stay in the same job for three or four years before getting a green card, and if you switch jobs, you have to start the process all over again.”

As an engineer in Silicon Valley’s quickly rotating startup community, sticking to one job wasn’t feasible or realistic. “When I moved to Canada, the process was a lot easier. It’s just a lot better.”

As Vietnamese youth become sought-after students in the international education system, concerns like the difficulty of the application process and new visa laws start to matter. Is the American dream becoming the Canadian dream?

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Getting Savvy

As Christopher Runckel, America’s first diplomat to Vietnam after the war, told us, “In some markets, like the United States +and Canada, the recruiter is basically trying to recruit the kid, but here [in Vietnam] they’re trying to recruit the parents, and they’ll often choose the programs the kids will go off to.” For parents, the decision has many factors at play: safety is typically the number one concern, though price and prestige also enter into the decision-making process.

Chi Thuc Ha, the Director of University Counseling at American Education Group (AEG) says that family ties also play a strong role. If the future college student’s uncle lives in Texas, chances are parents will feel more comfortable if their child attends the University of Dallas rather than Cal State.

While these factors undoubtedly play a part, more and more often Ha says that the parents are changing, not just their kids. “[P]arents are a lot more savvy now,” she said. “I think in the past, especially with the EB5 [visa], they were just focused on where they had put financial and economic roots. [...] Now they’re trying to find what’s the best fit for their kid.”

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According to the Vietnam Department of Statistics, almost 130,000 Vietnamese students studied abroad in 2016, and almost all of their tuitions were self-funded.

It’s a student group that could bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to a country during each four-year education cycle, not counting higher education after college.

Universities have caught on to the potential windfall; hundreds of university representatives come courting to Vietnam’s major cities every year in the hopes of swaying kids and parents towards their schools. At the Global Education Fair coming to HCMC this March, for example, representatives from 13 countries will be present, all ready to woo.

In particular, Canada has made systemic efforts in their immigration and education system to appeal to a broader range of international students, and their efforts have been paying off.

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Enter Canada

Although Ha works primarily with students focused on American schools, she has seen a dramatic shift in interest. “It hasn’t been until the last few years that students have been like, ‘Hey, by the way, can we also apply to these other countries?’” And because Canada’s application process runs a few months after most colleges in the United States have sent their acceptance letters, she sees many students opting for Canadian applications.

“Almost every student I have this year submitted an application to McGill and Toronto,” she said.

The proof is in the numbers: According to statistics from a survey put out by “Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada”, students from Vietnam studying in Canada have risen dramatically: in December 2016, the survey cited a 55 percent year-on-year student increase, second only to India’s 57 percent. Compare this to the United State’s more modest 5 percent gain in the same period.

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However, this accounts for almost 5,000 Vietnamese students in Canada, still a paltry sum compared to the around 22,000 studying in the US.

Runckel says the increase doesn’t have so much to do with the schools, but with the government. “I’ve seen an increase in interest in Canada this year in particular. And a lot of that’s because they changed their immigration law.” Making the immigration process easier has made Great White North more welcoming to students and immigrants, just as the United States have been shutting their doors increasingly tighter.

Getting the Right People

How to make Canada more appealing to Vietnamese students? It starts with the application process. According to Deren Temel of University World News, in 2015 Vietnam was ranked third-slowest for Canada’s study permit processing time, a major factor as a student makes plans for his or her future. In response, two programs have been started to increase the efficiency of Canada’s application process: the Canada Express Study (CES) program, an 18-month program launched in 2016, and the Study Direct Stream (SDS), which will be officially on line in March 2018 and will focus on post-secondary college applications.

Both programs are similar on paper, and work to accomplish the same goal: to make the transition from Vietnam-based application to Canada-based student as quick and effortless as possible. The system requires less financial documentation and has a faster visa processing time than traditional methods, and all forms and documents are easily accessible online.

Eligibility for the fasttrack are relatively simple: an IELTS score of 6 or above is one of the several conditions, along with an investment of CAD$10,000, to be deposited to Scotiabank, Canada’s national banking chain, which will be used by the student during their first year abroad.

So far, the changes have made a positive difference for the northern country’s educational goals. Speaking from the Consulate General of Canada’s office in HCMC, Consulate General Kyle Nunas said that the changes have made a large difference: now that the process is easier, over 50 percent more Vietnamese applicants are choosing to apply to Canada than two years previously.

What’s more, completing education in Canada gives that student credit in the country’s point-based permanent residency application program.

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A complete education gets the aspiring Canadian resident up to 30 points, almost half of the 67 points currently required to live in the country legally.

“The point is to have more people come into the country, but to have the right people come—skilled, smart, experienced,” Runckel said. This is in direct contrast to the United States’ process, which encourages students to stay on a student visa and then return home after they gain their degree due to the U.S.’s difficult immigration process.

For Consulate General Kyle Nunas, the changes work to make Canada more welcoming to a wider group of people. “We’re a nation made by immigrants, after all,” Nunas said.

Unintended Consequences

As Canada makes efforts to accommodate new residents, immigration and international laws have been tightening since President Donald Trump has stepped into office, and even before. “I think we’ve done more to lose some of the good will that we’ve with some countries in the last year than we’ve done in any one-year period in our history,” Runckel said. He said the the policy changes have had unintended victims, like small colleges who previously depended on international students as an important source of revenue.

For Vietnamese citizens hoping to move to the United States after college, the H1B visa has made a concrete difficulty for their plans. Multiple people we talked to agreed it’s getting harder to nab one of the visas, especially with the current lottery system in place.

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Hillary Huong Vu, a video animator who attended Missouri State University from 2012 to 2016, said that during her time in the country, the increase of anti-immigration sentiment became palpable, both socially and in the government. “I personally didn’t experience anything huge,” she said, when trying to recall instances of racism directed against her. “It was just little things, like people talking slowly because I have an accent.”

Vu’s worst experience came at the tail-end of her time in the U.S., when a man approached her on the street loudly asking her if she was from China or Korea, and telling her to go back to her country. “It was scary,” she said.

Hate crime incidents in America have gone up over the past year, from 5,800 in 2016 to more than 6,100 last year, according to FBI statistics. Ha at AEG says it’s unlikely any safety concerns would affect a Vietnamese family’s decision to study or move to the country. “For most families that I work with, that’s not something that they really see, primarily because as Asians we’re not the primary target [...] when people talk about anti-immigration,” she said.

Vu agreed, saying simply, “I don’t think Trump has any affect on the students that go there to study. If they find a program, they’ll go.”

“And I would just say, ‘Be careful, choose wisely.’ It’s not bad if you’re comfortable with it.”

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When Vietnamese doctor Duong Quang Trung traveled to France to be trained in advanced medicine in the 1990s—one of the first of what would become thousands of French-trained Vietnamese doctors—he forged a strong rapport with a French doctor Alain Carpentier and was struck with a bold idea.

Why not bring Carpentier directly to Vietnam?

The partnership had already yielded tremendous results. According to French Consul General Vincent Floriani, in the past few years alone nearly 3,000 Vietnamese doctors have completed the French physician training but this reverse exchange would create a valuable new health asset in Vietnam. The two physicians partnered to created The Heart Institute in 1992, a medical organization that offers cardiac surgery services with support from France’s national health system. To date, it’s been a critical resource for over 4,300 young patients, many of them impoverished.

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“These sorts of initiatives are great”, Floriani said discussing the Heart Institute. The French state’s position is that there ought to be more of these types of projects. Consequently, Floriani said he sees his role, as the lead representative for France’s presence in Saigon, as one of finding and brokering new partnerships. “The job of the diplomat is to prepare the ground to make that possible”.

A Real French Education in Vietnam

Nearly six centuries have passed since France ruled Vietnam as a colonial power, but the European state remains actively involved in a wealth of initiatives in Vietnam, including education and language acquisition on top of healthcare.

From supporting local schools to cooperating with French education organizations in Ho Chi Minh City, the French government has remained an active part of Vietnam’s growth.

Today, there are 13,000 pupils who are studying in schools teaching French curriculums, from the doctoral level all the way down to preschool. These schools report to a governmental body that ensures compliance with French education standards.

There are a total of five primary schools that currently offer this type of French education. Two secondary schools, Lycee Francais International Marguerite Duras in Ho Chi Minh City and Lycee Francais Yersin, are offering pupils the chance to continue their education in an educational environment that accords with French education standards. And these schools “are about a third of what [students] would pay at other international schools,” Floriani said.

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In addition, there are a number of schools that offer a French immersion program to students studying in Nha Trang, Can Tho, Da Nang and Saigon.

Floriani said the overwhelming number of students in schools offering French education are expatriates—the French national population in Vietnam has steadily grown by between 15 and 20 percent the last few years—but “it’s something I want to improve,” he said.

In the Saigon high school, around 15 percent of the student body is Vietnamese, Floriani said. In Hanoi, he said about 40 percent of the students are part of the local population. Floriani said bringing more Vietnamese representation in to the student bodies of both would increase cultural exchange and enhance the relationship France has with an important partners.

An Unwavering Partnership

France’s continued involvement has at times put it at odds with another prominent partner: the U.S.

The relationship was chronicled in depth by Henrich Dahm, a researcher for the Institute of Asian Affairs, in his book “French and Japanese Economic Relations with Vietnam Since 1975”.

After the end of the American War in Vietnam in 1975, the U.S. and Vietnam maintained no economic relations. A trade embargo created in 1964 on all trade activities was extended until Bill Clinton took the office of U.S. president. Citing Hanoi’s help in locating military personnel that were still missing in action, he ordered the lifting of the trade embargo in 1994. Yet vestiges of the embargo remained through the current era. It was only in 2016 that former U.S. president Barack Obama lifted the ban on lethal arms sales to Vietnam.

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Through the freeze and subsequent thaw, a number of countries including France remained active partners with Vietnam in fostering international cooperation.

Even after the invasion of Cambodia when international partners lobbed criticism against Vietnamese leadership in 1975, Dahm writes that France remained committed to keeping the trade and diplomatic relationship active. It used its continued influence to bring an end to fighting between Cambodia factions and Vietnamese forces through an accord signed in Paris in 1989.

Long before Clinton chose to lift the U.S. trade embargo, France had been advocating for the integration of Vietnam into the global financial community. The U.S. consistently blocked France in their efforts at the International Monetary Fund, voting against measures that would bring economic relief to the region like refinancing the nation’s debt.

With Clinton’s decision to lift the trade embargo, France was able to move forward leading a plan to refinance the nation’s US$140 million debt. France led an 11-nation group that repaid about half the loan in Vietnam’s stead and won the country a loan with better terms.

According to Dahm, French aid to Vietnam has made it a top donor with aid concentrated in education, cultural enrichment, communication, water supply, sanitation, transportation, energy, economic management and human resources to name a few critical resources..

In 1993 when the doctor training program was conceived, French grant aid to Vietnam was about US$44 million, an increase of US$10 million from two years prior and nearly US$30 million from four years prior.

In return for their work, Dahm’s study found that French companies benefit from the aid, which is tied to large purchases of French goods and services. In return, the Vietnamese government has welcomed French companies seeking support for business deals in the country.

The work building connections continues today. In March, the French education ministry kicked off a five-day intensive French language course in Ho Chi Minh City for adult students. Students attending represented 12 countries in the Asia region.

The event is part of a broader celebration of formal relations between Vietnam and France. This year marks 45 years since leaders formalized diplomatic cooperation between the two nations.

Developing French Fluency

French assistance in Vietnam has included cultural exports like newspapers and films, as well as language training. In 1994, a cultural appreciation and language program aimed at young Vietnamese students began. It has since worked to develop a fluency in French sufficient to study in the University of Science and Technology in Hanoi, an institution jointly run by Vietnamese and French governments, other university-level programs taught in French or for some students the opportunity to study in France itself.

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Currently, some of that work is continuing with the Institut d'Échanges Culturels avec la France (“Institute of Cultural Exchanges with France”), which works with Saigon and Hanoi’s local Vietnamese population to foster French cultural awareness and train them in the language. One of the necessities for French citizenship is a minimum French language requirement. When the French Consulate is approached by Vietnamese interested in getting French citizenship or seeking to study in France but lacking the language requirement, Floriani said he directs them to the Institute.

Ripple Effects

The French state has also for years cultivated a presence in Vietnam. The partnership has yielded dividends for not only the country itself, but also neighboring nations.

In 1993, a formal partnership between France and Vietnam was created to bring working Vietnamese doctors to France to specialize in a range of disciplines including surgery, pediatrics and anesthesiology. Floriani said some of the French-trained Vietnamese doctors went on to work with Cambodian doctors to share their skills with their regional neighbor.

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“Vietnamese have this expertise to be able to provide training,” Floriani said.

The work the French have done in Vietnam “helps … promote cooperation,” Floriani said. That’s why he sees his mission in part as increasing participation from both parties, more Vietnamese students in the French schools, greater numbers of Vietnamese students studying in France.

“Basically, this is the job of any diplomat. Their job is to reinforce the links,” Floriani said.

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Stephen Coyle, an IELTS instructor for the Reliable English School (RES), didn’t just see the dawn of technology in the classroom—he heard it. “When I first started teaching [in Vietnam] 14 years ago, the noise level in the classroom was incredible; people were shouting, talking, laughing. Now, during the break, it’s completely silent. Everyone is just looking at their phones.”

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The heavy reliance on digital devices in Vietnam has come swiftly: over 35 million people use Facebook regularly in the country, and an estimated 32.43 million will have a smartphone in 2018.

The use of technology has irreversibly changed the way we look at the world and have become social, but in HCMC, will it change the way our kids learn as well?

A Tech Emphasis

Thomas Galvez, Saigon South International School’s Technology Learning Coach, acknowledged that technology can have detrimental effects on a child’s socialisation, but averred that it it’s all about balance. “It’s not about weaning them off [of smartphones],” he said. “It’s about teaching them the appropriate times to use it, and to understand the effects.”

With separate technology coaches for the elementary, middle and high schools and an overall ICT Director in the administration department, it’s safe to say that SSIS takes the role of technology in the classroom seriously. Earlier this year, SSIS became the first Apple Distinguished School in the country, a distinction both prestigious and rather nebulous.

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At the moment 400 schools spread across 29 countries are Apple Distinguished Schools. To hold this coveted title, Galvez said it wasn’t so much having Apple products (although SSIS is a completely Mac-driven institution and requires all parents to purchase a personal MacBook for their child when they enter the 4th grade), but rather promoting an innovative approach to learning. Finding ways to do this is Galvez’s bread and butter.

Although he acknowledged that it’s impossible to keep up with all the technological trends, he keeps current through an active world-wide professional learning network with other technology coaches. “Twitter is a great medium for this,” he said.

Once he discovers something he thinks might make learning more efficient, or connect kids in a deeper way, he meets with teachers to discuss how the program can be integrated into their lesson. For a language class, he said that SoundCloud is often useful, which allows teachers to comment in different places on a student’s audio file. For multimedia collaborations, he might suggest Explain Everything, an interactive whiteboard app that lets students create visual presentations in the cloud, so students and the teacher can interact as it’s created.

“That’s the great thing about these cloud-based tools,” he said. “They provide asynchronous capacities that students and teachers can access to provide feedback and learn anytime, anywhere.”

The emphasis on creativity and multimedia emphasised by Mac products is widely believed to help prepare students for future careers, many of which will require teamwork, collaboration and thinking outside of the box. However, as Rob van Driesum, a parent of an SSIS child (and, full disclosure, the freelance copy-editor of #iAMHCMC) points out, “Not all kids will end up working in multimedia. They’ll need skills in Windows-based Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and so on.”

End in Itself?

The debate about technology’s role in the classroom has been raging for over a decade, since the concept of One-to-One learning was first propagated in the late 1990s. By providing students with personal learning devices, from which they could read digital textbooks and complete assignments, many claimed that the learning process could be more efficient and streamlined.

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Subsequent studies have suggested that digital learning isn’t the silver bullet some first believed it was, and some schools have tempered their expectations, or at least begun to view technology as a tool rather than an end in itself.

Thomas Galvez at SSIS mirrors these thoughts. “The whole focus of this job is really not technology,” he said. “Learning is always going to be at the centre of schools.”

He paused for a moment, and then continued: “A good teacher is a good teacher. And to be a good teacher, you don’t necessarily need technology. Really, it’s about relationships.”

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East Asian culture is known to praise academic achievements, and we see no exception here in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese parents, especially in the big cities, are pressured by social expectations as well as their own, and are sending their kids to all kinds of after school classes. In addition to the overwhelming workload in school, children spend their evenings not relaxing and enjoying life, but participating in classroom activities and struggling to learn new knowledge.

The question that these parents and even teachers seem to ignore: will it make them high-functioning people? Or can overwork undermine children’s development?

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According to Dr. Nguyen Thuy Anh, founder of the “Reading with Kids” club based in Hanoi, being forced to learn too many things at the same time can lead to a lack of motivation in children. Seeing no purpose in learning about subjects that they are not genuinely interested in, many children start developing the habit of what she calls “getting by”: rushing to finish homework without fully understanding the meaning of what they are doing.

Parents tend to assume that education can only be conducted in the classroom, and the responsibility of educating their children lies solely with the teachers. “In fact, children can learn a lot through day-to-day activities outside of school, including interactions with family members at home and going out together with friends”, she said.

Parents can encourage and motivate their kids to study simply by talking about subjects at school, and explaining to them why it is important that they learn certain things, instead of talking only about their grades. Too much pressure on perfect grades, without concern for the child’s psychological wellbeing, can even lead to disastrous consequences, such as low self-esteem, resentment, rebellion, and self-destructive behaviors.

Nguyen said “during the developmental years, a child does not really need to cram as much knowledge in their head as possible, but more importantly, they need to learn to live”. They need to learn about the world around them, which encompasses more than textbooks and school matters, and how they can fit into that world as an individual.

Making friends with the right people, learning skills such as self discipline and self-defense, and taking up hobbies can all benefit and potentially save their life in the future, as modern life is increasingly complex. All these things certainly do not come from hours of toiling over homework.

On the bright side, educators are now more aware of the problems with overwork, and starting to incorporate more elements into the school curriculum to facilitate children’s overall development.

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Dao Thi Phuong Thao, deputy head of Ban Mai Primary School, shared the school’s strategy for holistic development through a focus on five values.“We aim to cultivate these five values in our students, including personality, intelligence, capability, health, and global vision, through programs such as The Leader in Me. At school, children get to participate in a variety of fun, engaging activities rather than only learning in class,” Dao said.

On the last day of school before the Tet Holiday, students of Ban Mai Primary School gathered in the school yard to meet children’s writer Le Phuong Lien, author of a picture book about Lunar New Year, and then returned to class to write their own resolutions for the coming year. In the afternoon, they cleaned their classroom, following the traditional custom of spring cleaning before Tet. Such activities—though not explicitly academic and perhaps unusual in a school setting—are undoubtedly memorable to children and contribute to their development as a person.

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