Teaching Vietnamese teachers how to pronounce English should be a top priority

January 15, 2025 | 03:22 pm PT
Paul A. Olivier
No country within Asia rivals Vietnam in terms of the talent and ambition of its people. Yet Vietnam could play a much greater role in the local and global marketplace if it could solve one major problem - an inability to pronounce English correctly.

About 6 years ago, I was trying to find someone to help me draw a complex object in 3-D. So I contacted a young professor at a university in Ho Chi Minh City. He was surely one of the best in Asia in 3-D design. When I called him to ask if he would help me, I sadly discovered that he could not speak English. He managed to communicate to me that we should log onto Skype and communicate by means of text messaging.

Then to my great surprise, he began texting me a beautiful English, and he understood every word that I was typing. His grasp of the English language was brilliant in terms reading and writing, but in terms of listening and speaking, it situated at the level of a beginner in primary school. He had no idea of how to pronounce English correctly and was in no position to understand the spoken word. Throughout primary and secondary school, and throughout six years of university, this young man had English teachers who were not skilled in pronouncing English. Over all of these years, he had been taught to pronounce an English that very few foreigners could understand.

I know a young man, 26 years old, a native of Da Lat, who attended school his entire life in Da Lat and who completed his education with a degree in business. He had three job interviews in HCMC and two in Hanoi. He was told at each interview that he would not be given the job, because he could not speak English. He then got a job as a waiter in a coffee shop.

I know another young man, 25 years old, also a native of Dal Lat, who attended school his entire life in Da Lat and who also received a degree in business. He had two jobs interviews in HCMC and one in Hanoi. He was told at each interview that he would not be given the job, because he could not speak English. His family mortgaged their farm to send him to university. They continued repaying the debt to the bank until the year 2022. He then worked at a golf course cutting grass.

These last two examples are especially heart-breaking. The hopes and dreams of these two families were shattered and broken. There are thousands of stories like these throughout Vietnam.

These young people are precious, and they deserve a whole lot more in terms of learning the English language. Their parents might save or borrow relatively large sums of money to provide them a good education, and after graduating university, when they go out into the marketplace in search of a job where English is needed, they fail miserably.

Back in 2017, a young lady by the name of Tran Thao Uyen did extensive research on the speech intelligibility of Vietnamese students majoring in English at the Pedagogical College of Da Lat. She gave me a series of recordings of students reading an English text and asked me to underline all the words that were mispronounced. I could not believe what I was hearing. Just about every other word that they uttered was mispronounced. Later Thao Uyen submitted her research to a university in Nha Trang and received a master degree. In the conclusion of her thesis, she wrote that "no one could communicate in English with a high level of speech intelligibly."

As a foreigner in Vietnam, I am constantly approached in a casual manner by young people who want to practice their English. But what comes out of their mouths is generally unintelligible. They walk away so disappointed and confused. Many cannot even pronounce the word "English" correctly. Even the words "is" and "easy" are mispronounced. They mispronounce every word in this simple sentence: "English is easy."

Answering a telephone, working as a receptionist in a hotel, and working as a waitress in a restaurant, for example, can be jobs relating to speaking English, and when speaking and listening are for the most part ignored by schools and universities, the Vietnamese are not getting the education they deserve.

Students and a teacher during an English class at Dinh Tien Hoang Primary School in HCMCs District 1, Oct. 25, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Manh Tung

Students and a teacher during an English class at Dinh Tien Hoang Primary School in HCMC's District 1, Oct. 25, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Manh Tung

I once spoke to an English teacher in Da Lat who explained to me that she never has time to teach pronunciation in the classroom. In other words when someone completes a class with her, they do not know how to speak English. I wanted to get an idea of this teacher's pronunciation skills. So I asked her to pronounce a few words in my general pronunciation routine.

Almost every word she attempted to pronounce was wrong. This lady had been teaching English in a state school for more than 10 years, and she had no idea that her pronunciation was so bad. She was angry and upset. At this point, she felt totally inadequate to step into a classroom as an English teacher.

Every time this teacher mispronounces a word in English, she hands-on to the next generation of children in Vietnam the same bad pronunciation that she was taught. This cycle of handling on bad pronunciation from one generation to the next can be easily broken, and in most cases, it can be broken within a period of only six months.

If a Vietnamese teacher of English cannot pronounce English correctly, she should not be teaching English.

I also believe that for political and financial reasons, foreigners should not be stepping into the classrooms of Vietnamese schools to teach English. Vietnamese teachers should be able to teach English a lot better than foreigners. After all, Vietnamese teachers know Vietnamese and English, while foreigners for the most part only know English. I believe that native speakers of English are needed, but only to help Vietnamese teachers of English in pronouncing English proficiently.

Over the years I developed a general pronunciation routine to eliminate the most common errors that Vietnamese teachers make in pronouncing English. When teachers master these sounds, this eliminates over 60% of the pronunciation errors they pass on to their students. Next, I focus on the words associated with the English books that they use in the classroom. When they master these words, this eliminates the remaining errors that they pass on to their students.

When I teach teachers, they are called upon to pronounce correctly every word in a pronunciation routine. A single pronunciation error results in failure. This testing method of a perfect score sounds tough and demanding, but the exam is administered in such a manner that it is almost impossible to fail.

When an English teacher feels that she knows how to pronounce every word in a pronunciation routine, she then asks for a private one-on-one review of every word in that routine. If she makes mistakes during this review, she returns for a second review of only those words she failed to pronounce correctly in the first review. If she fails again in pronouncing any of these difficult words, she is allowed to return for another review, for as many times as necessary, until she demonstrates perfect mastery of that routine. Only then does she schedule to take the exam. At this point, she is sure to obtain a perfect score. It makes no sense to pronounce correctly some, and not all, of the words in a pronunciation routine.

Vietnamese students of English deserve the very best pronunciation from their teachers. They should be learning good pronunciation from an early age, and at no stage in their lives should they have to unlearn and relearn pronunciation.

Someone might think that simply listening to a good pronunciation routine at home is sufficient to learn pronunciation. But attending a class is important for two reasons. Firstly, in learning pronunciation, it is important to watch the facial movements of the teacher. This makes pronunciation so much easier to learn. And secondly, the teacher must be there to judge if someone is pronouncing a word correctly.

Without constant feedback from the teacher, it is difficult to learn pronunciation. Sometimes I would spend as much as 20 minutes teaching everyone in a class how to pronounce a single word. My classes tended to be quite noisy, with everyone shouting out words to one another, continually repeating these words over and over again, until everyone got it right. No one was allowed to fail. They all succeeded.

About 10 years ago, I went to a university in Da Lat to talk to the dean of the Department of English. I offered to teach pronunciation to his English teachers free of charge. He refused. He concluded our conversation by saying that pronunciation is not important. Such a such short-sighted and indefensible stance must change.

If English would be taught correctly in the public school system, private English schools would no longer be needed and would have to close down. Public schools should be able to teach English on the same level as the best private schools.

*Paul A. Olivier is an American expat who lives and works in Da Lat.

The opinions expressed here are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress's viewpoints. Send your opinions here.
 
 
go to top