Why Are You Learning Japanese? Vietnamese University Students’ Perspectives on Work and Life between Vietnam and Japan

ABSTRACT

Although the numbers of Vietnamese skilled workers and students in Japan have been increasing rapidly, this phenomenon has not been fully understood in relation to Japanese language teaching in Vietnam’s higher education. In 2008, the Vietnamese government announced its so-called Project 2020 to enhance foreign language capacity within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), coinciding with ASEAN’s 2009 decision to adopt English as its sole working language. Project 2020 has promoted a second foreign language, Japanese, reflecting Vietnam’s pro-Japan policy and Japan’s business interests in Vietnam. The heavy reliance on support from the Japanese government and industry, however, has created problems in delivering a curriculum suited to the local context. Based on survey and interview data from university students and teachers in Japanese programmes in Vietnamese universities, this article argues that although students’ learning experiences have been shaped by the university curriculum, including industry internships and study abroad, individual learners believed that ‘cultural differences’ could prevent them from living in Japan in the long term. They were not studying Japanese to satisfy their future Japanese employers or exclusively for monetary reward, but for their personal growth as skilled workers who could contribute to the further development of Vietnam.

KEYWORDS:

• Vietnam
• Japanese language
• higher education
• skilled workers
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Acknowledgements

This research project was granted ethical clearance in accordance with the guidelines for the ethical review process of the University of Queensland, Australia (approval number: 2019000435). I would like to thank Yow-Tsyr Chang, a UQ Summer Scholar 2018–2019, for her assistance in collecting documents.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the anonymity of interview participants, the conference, which the author attended, is not identified in this study.

2. The lowest level is A1 and the highest is C2.

3. The lowest level is N5 and the highest is N1.

4. Although 28 students were interviewed, the numbers used here range from 1 to 31. This is because three additional students were initially scheduled for interviews, but these did not eventuate.

5. The number of Japanese native-speaker teachers in Vietnamese universities in Hanoi is fairly small. To maintain their anonymity, in this article their comments are presented without reference to the specific curricula of their institutions.

6. One student explained in the interview that it is compulsory to study another foreign language in the third year, and most Japanese major students choose Chinese.

7. This is the same sound as the Japanese word for spinach, and is often written in katakana (a Japanese syllabary) as if it refers to the vegetable, to increase familiarity with the concept.

8. In the survey, participants were asked to respond to the question on whether they incorporate Vietnamese culture and society into their Japanese language teaching on a scale from 1 to 5, and the average of the responses was 3.69.