Bilingual education: key to success in Vietnam's mountainous regions!

Bilingual education: key to success in Vietnam's mountainous regions!

In the mountainous regions of Vietnam, especially in provinces such as Ha Giang, Lao Cai, Lai Chau and Dien Bien, everyday school life is a unique challenge for first graders. These children usually speak their native languages, such as Mong, Dao or Thai, which makes teaching the national language, Vietnamese, much more difficult. Teachers must apply a high level of patience and commitment to not only teaching letters, but primarily building relationships with students. This is emphasized by Ms. Nhe Thi Phuong, a teacher at Po Qua School in Ha Giang, who reports the difficulty of teaching children like Tho Mi Mi who do not understand Vietnamese.

In order to overcome these barriers, flexible and intuitive teaching methods are used in lessons. Teachers use a variety of tools, including images, videos and games, to facilitate access to the Vietnamese language. The use of real objects also promotes learning and ensures that students actively participate in lessons. It is noteworthy that teachers make the effort to also learn the local language of their students. These measures improve communication and enable deeper understanding.

Bilingual education and cultural integration

Bilingual education, which includes both the students' native language and Vietnamese, is crucial to understanding the learning content. Not only does it help you better understand the subject matter, but it also makes it easier to familiarize yourself with your own culture. The students receive additional Vietnamese lessons every week, and ethnic lessons are also offered in the students' respective languages. Parents, who often do not speak Vietnamese, still play an active role by accompanying their children to class and supporting them in the learning process. This creates strong support within the community.

Education experts emphasize the importance of a respectful learning environment and intercultural bilingual education (IZE). This underlines the relevance of providing children in multicultural and multilingual contexts with a preferably comprehensive education. Historically, the need for bilingual education has been recognized in many countries characterized by a variety of cultures, such as Latin America. These approaches, often born out of the need to survive in a multilingual society, show that students in such programs often achieve better results than in monolingual classes.

The case of Vietnam shows that teachers in the highland regions not only impart knowledge but also strengthen students' self-confidence. The aim is to ensure that Vietnamese is no longer a barrier for these children. Rather, it should become a valuable companion in the learning process, which goes hand in hand with promoting self-confidence and intercultural exchange. This strategy is also in line with global efforts to promote intercultural education and preserve linguistic diversity, which still faces challenges in many countries, particularly in Latin America, such as discrimination against indigenous languages.

The generation of multilingual education initiatives is also being discussed in other countries such as Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, where the inclusion of indigenous languages ​​and cultures is becoming increasingly important. This is in line with global trends to value cultural diversity and promote respectful intercultural dialogue. In Vietnam, bilingual education helps ethnic minorities become better integrated into society, which can lead to positive social changes.