Inspirational Ambassadors for Learning Vietnamese

(CPV) – “Vietnamese Ambassadors” affirms that the work they have done, are doing and will do is all aimed at spreading the love of their mother tongue and maintaining the Vietnamese language for the Vietnamese community abroad. They hope that the second and third generations of Vietnamese people will continue to speak their mother tongue fluently and maintain Vietnamese culture abroad.

In order to implement the Project "Day of Honoring Vietnamese Language in the Overseas Vietnamese Community (VLC) for the period 2023-2030", the Contest "Searching for Vietnamese Language Ambassadors Abroad" has been implemented for the second year by the State Committee for VLC. The contest aims to find individuals who are active in promoting culture, inspiring and motivating the learning and use of Vietnamese among our compatriots abroad; thereby contributing to preserving and honoring the Vietnamese language in the VLC community.

After being launched, the 2024 "Search for Vietnamese Ambassadors Abroad" Contest was enthusiastically responded to by Vietnamese Embassies and Consulates General in various countries and widely deployed to a large number of people.

Recently, on June 8, 2024, the Consulate General of Vietnam in Fukuoka (Japan) coordinated with the Vietnamese Association in Fukuoka to organize the award ceremony of the "Vietnamese Ambassadors Abroad 2024" Contest in Japan. Mr. Nguyen Duy Anh, Chairman of the Vietnamese Association in Fukuoka emphasized: "With more than 110,000 Vietnamese people living, working and studying in the provinces of Kyushu, Okinawa and Central-South Japan, preserving and promoting the Vietnamese language for the second and third generation of children, who are Vietnamese or of Vietnamese origin, is an important, practical and humane task".

According to Mr. Nguyen Duy Anh, in April 2024, the Launching Ceremony and the "Search for Vietnamese Ambassadors" contest in 2024 were launched, which is the first event in a series of activities to promote information, propaganda, and mobilize organizations, families and individuals to join hands to spread the Vietnamese language and national culture in the Vietnamese community in the region in 2024.

The contest attracted the participation of many contestants from many provinces and cities in the Kyushu - Okinawa region. The jury received more than 70 entries in many different categories and selected 35 contestants for the final round, opening the voting portal for the contestant with the most favorite content and presentation through online voting.

The Consulate General of Vietnam in Fukuoka said that the scale of awards for this year's contest includes: Youngest Vietnamese Ambassador; Vietnamese Ambassador with fluent Vietnamese pronunciation; Vietnamese Ambassador with good content; Stylish Vietnamese Ambassador; Inspirational Vietnamese Ambassador; Vietnamese Ambassador with the most popular content and presentation through online voting.

Contestants who submit their entries and are selected for the final round, posted on the Facebook page of the Vietnamese Association in Fukuoka, will receive a Certificate of Participation and a gift from the Organizing Committee. For contestants who live far away and cannot attend in person, the Organizing Committee will send a Certificate of Merit and a gift by post .

Not only in countries with large Vietnamese communities such as Japan, but also in countries with few Vietnamese people such as Tanzania, the "search for Vietnamese ambassadors" is also emphasized. The Embassy has posted information about the contest to find Vietnamese ambassadors on the Embassy's official website, and has also directly disseminated the contest to families with Vietnamese people.

According to Vietnamese Ambassador to Tanzania Vu Thanh Huyen, currently, there are 59 Vietnamese people living in Tanzania, including: 50 officers and employees working for Viettel Tanzania Company, 8 citizens married to foreigners and 01 priest (Catholic). In addition, there are also a number of businessmen who come to explore the business market for a short time. Because there are few Vietnamese people living and doing business in the area, there are no groups or organizations, but only at the family level.

In Tanzania, there are 5 children under 14 years old, learning Vietnamese is mainly on a family scale because the children follow their parents to work for a certain period of time in Tanzania. Among them, 1 child is the child of a Vietnamese citizen married to a Tanzanian. Along with studying at school in the host country, Judith (6 years old) is still learning Vietnamese.

In 2023, the "Search for Vietnamese Ambassadors Abroad" Contest was held for the first time and was a great success. The contest was held from April to August 2023, for NVNONN and foreigners in the host country, who love Vietnamese culture and language and are fluent in Vietnamese. After a period of fair and active work, the Contest's Jury, who are leading experts in language and culture, selected 5 Vietnamese Ambassadors Abroad in 2023 from Laos, Malaysia, Australia, Germany, and Belgium. These are individuals who are capable of using Vietnamese and have active activities to preserve and honor the Vietnamese language in the NVNONN community.

Sharing with us, Ms. Nguyen Thi Lien - one of the 5 Vietnamese Ambassadors in 2023 (currently living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) said: “I learned about the Contest through the Vietnamese Embassy in Malaysia. I find this a very meaningful contest, organized for the first time to honor those who have contributed to preserving and spreading the Vietnamese language abroad. When I learned that I became 1 of the 5 Ambassadors selected by the Jury, I felt very honored and proud. Returning to Hanoi to attend the Gala night "Dear Mother Tongue" is truly a beautiful memory in my journey of teaching Vietnamese. I find my work more meaningful and at the same time feel that I need to try harder to contribute to preserving and spreading the Vietnamese language".

Sharing about her work, Ms. Lien said: “As a Vietnamese teacher and a mother with children growing up abroad, I feel very clearly about the meaning of preserving and conserving the Vietnamese language. Through learning Vietnamese, my children and students learn about how Vietnamese people speak and communicate, about customs, habits, ethical concepts as well as about the history and landscapes of Vietnam. When they can communicate in Vietnamese, they will not be afraid to talk to their grandparents, relatives, and loved ones in the country, and will no longer feel communication barriers when they visit Vietnam… Thus, they will feel closer to their homeland Vietnam, and see themselves as a true “Vietnamese person”.

As the President of the Vietnamese Club in Malaysia, over the past 8 years, Ms. Lien and the Club members have always identified the pioneering task in mobilizing parents, gathering students, organizing classes, organizing teaching activities, extracurricular activities,...

Starting from zero, in early 2016, Ms. Lien and her colleagues in the Vietnamese Women's Association in Malaysia put the first strokes into the story of teaching Vietnamese in Malaysia and then opening 2 Vietnamese classes as well as maintaining the activities of the Vietnamese Club in Malaysia as it is today. She said that the campaign to have the first 2 classes was not easy because at that time, learning Vietnamese was not of interest to parents. Vietnamese students in Malaysia often study English, Chinese, Malay... so the schedule for learning Vietnamese is very difficult.

Therefore, when organizing classes, the Club has tried its best to make the children enjoy learning and progress, parents see that the classes are serious, high-quality and have many useful and meaningful extracurricular activities... From there, "good news spreads far and wide", people come to the Club to entrust their children with trust and confidence.

Dr. Tran Hong Van, currently living and working in Australia, is one of the five Vietnamese Ambassadors in 2023. Dr. Tran Hong Van is currently teaching at Western Sydney University and doing research at Strantard University on multilingual education and mother tongue maintenance for Vietnamese children abroad. She came to Australia in 2007 to study for a PhD in English. In 2018, she had the opportunity to receive a scholarship to participate in a project to assess the language skills of Vietnamese families in Australia and the maintenance of the mother tongue of children of Vietnamese families in Australia. From here, her second doctoral thesis was formed from this topic and was awarded the Best Thesis Award at Charles Sturt University. This is the opportunity for her to pursue research on preserving Vietnamese for children abroad.

Her four-year research and the team of professors and doctors leading the VietSpeech project have proven that maintaining Vietnamese does not negatively affect children's English ability and have found important factors in maintaining Vietnamese when living abroad. Two of those factors are that parents must speak Vietnamese with their children at home and that parents have a positive attitude towards maintaining Vietnamese language and culture.

According to Ms. Van, the difficulty in maintaining Vietnamese for children in the host country is: when they go out into the environment, they only speak the language of the host country, Vietnamese is only spoken in the family and in the Vietnamese community. Therefore, the Vietnamese speaking environment is at home, so the most important role in teaching Vietnamese to children is the parents. Parents must speak Vietnamese to their children at home and have a positive attitude to maintain the Vietnamese language and culture so that their children can speak Vietnamese well. If parents do not have these two factors, it is very difficult to maintain Vietnamese for their children.

In addition to her busy work at universities, Ms. Van has maintained free Vietnamese language classes for children at home on weekends for the past 5-6 years. With the support of the Vietnamese Consulate General in Sydney, Ms. Van has also created a reading program with her children, providing a set of 10 bilingual children's picture books for 100 Vietnamese families in Australia and instructional and discussion materials to help children love reading from a young age. This program has been enthusiastically received by the Vietnamese community in Australia. According to Ms. Van, reading books with children is very important because it not only helps children get acquainted with Vietnamese and develop their language, but also makes them love Vietnamese through stories.

Contributing to maintaining the use of Vietnamese, Ms. Van also proposed the initiative of the diary "One sentence a day". Ms. Van believes that this is a simple but effective tool, helping students maintain the habit of writing and using Vietnamese every day. Every day, students only need to spend 3 to 5 minutes to answer a short question such as "What's fun for you today?" or "What did you learn this week?". Using Vietnamese to write these things not only helps students preserve their mother tongue but also develops their thinking and expression skills.

Since March 2023, with the encouragement and support of the Vietnamese Consulate General in Sydney, Ms. Van has established an organization to promote the preservation of Vietnamese language and culture called VietSchool, with three main missions: after-school Vietnamese classes for primary school students in the Inner West area, Sydney and online Vietnamese classes; the Reading with Children program; the SuperSpeech program - a training course for families on how to help their children preserve Vietnamese and develop bilingualism.

Dr. Tran Hong Van affirmed that the work she has done, is doing and will do is aimed at spreading love and maintaining the Vietnamese language to the Vietnamese community abroad, hoping that the second and third generations of Vietnamese people will continue to speak their mother tongue fluently as well as maintain Vietnamese culture when abroad./.

Lesson 1: The thread connecting overseas Vietnamese with their roots

Lesson 2: Join hands to spread the love of Vietnamese

Lesson 4: Vietnamese connects Vietnam with international friends

Source: https://dangcongsan.vn/multimedia/mega-story/bai-3-nhung-su-gia-truyen-cam-hung-hoc-tieng-viet-671293.html