THE CHINESE LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT OF HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION – CURRENT SITUATION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

Abstract

Since its establishment over 30 years ago, the Chinese Language Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Education has been a leading position in teaching the Chinese language in the country. From a macroeconomic perspective, increasing investments from Chinese and Taiwanese corporations have led to a high demand of people be able to speak Chinese in Vietnam. However, the current supply of Vietnamese people who are proficient in Chinese has not met market’s expectations. From an educational perspective, the lack of Chinese language teaching capabilities in the national curriculum is another key problem to solve.

From the issues outlined above, as educationalists, we need to evaluate current capabilities of the Chinese language department and the Chinese language teaching arena. We need to understand what we have and have not achieved so that we can find solutions to existing problems and contribute to the sustainable development of the department in particular and the field in general.