The struggle with learning English

At that time my Vietnamese skill was low and slurred, so I just mumbled in passive agreement.

Later, sober and free from etiquette, I observed a frog in front of my house. My mind, no matter how hard I tried, I still could not determine whether it was a green frog or a frog green.

My foreign friends and students also encountered countless awkward situations. I've read, for example: David was scurrying, red faced, when a Vietnamese friend called out to him "Mày đi đâu đây?". (where are you going?) David's face turned red and he stammered, "I can't answer, it's a private matter."

David didn't understand at that time that to greet each other, Vietnamese people often ask "where are you going?", "what are you doing?"... But when your stomach is rumbling, you can just wave your hand, smile charmingly, and quickly run off to solve the urgent matter, there's no need to answer in detail.

Much like "did you eat rice yet?" doesn’t actually mean "did you eat rice yet."

I was discouraged when struggling to learn Vietnamese, especially when people threatened me with the famous sentence "a great storm is not as bad as Vietnamese grammar."

"Really?" I asked. "Is that true? Is it really scarier than terrible storms?"

Generally people give an affirmative and unequivocal "yes".

Outside of encountering unexpected situations while living here, I feel "The Great Language Wall of Vietnam" for foreigners, far more than grammar, is definitely the pronunciation.

A few foreigners are fluent in Vietnamese and write with mostly correct grammar, but not everyone can scale that wall. And the truth of that statement is revealed when you come into contact with the diverse, lively, and extremely changeable Vietnamese language in everyday life.

Speaking Vietnamese clearly, being easily understood, and avoiding being teased by people "if I understood I would die (hiểu chết liền)" means you have reached the "master level" of the language (for us foreigners). Also that sentence is not true because now I speak well and everyone is still alive and happy.

Similarly, when your pronunciation is good enough, you will be able to fully understand the nuances of the speaker's meaning, which can be hidden behind the surface of the words.

Upon hearing my Vietnamese friends telling each other "don't talk badly about Jesse, he understands everything", I began to feel confident that "my Vietnamese is good now."

All because I did not cling to the fear and obsession of clutching Vietnamese textbooks like pearls, but gradually relaxed myself, allowing my mind and soul to freely express myself in this flow of the language.

Please excuse the very long-winded introduction. My real intention is to talk about Vietnamese people studying English.

English centers are popping up everywhere in Vietnam. Within a 2km radius from my house in Nha Be District in Ho Chi Minh City, I can walk to two English centers in less than five minutes. Vietnamese people learn English from a young age, study until they're over 40, study forever, but most of them can't really use the language, especially not correctly.

About 10 years ago, my mother came to Vietnam to visit me. The friendly neighbors came to ask her simple questions like "How are you?" but, startled, she couldn't even understand that, let alone more complex questions. For many reasons, Vietnamese people focus too much on grammar. The English teaching method in Vietnam also takes "grammar" and "vocabulary" as the basis, while the foundation for effective English use lies in pronunciation and listening and speaking. I do not deny the importance of learning grammar, but you should not consider it as everything, unless you intend to become a writer or poet.

Students learn science in English at Hanoi Star Primary & Secondary School in Hanoi, December 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Hang

Vietnamese students can get very high scores in English exams, but when it comes to communicating at work or studying abroad, they are still confused and lack confidence like chickens with tangled feathers.

Some English teaching centers contribute to making this situation worse and more difficult to fix, because they do not pay attention to how to teach and learn English effectively, and herd students in like cash cows.

Before coming to Vietnam, I used to teach English in Japan. There, we had a great working environment between Japanese and Western teachers. Japanese teachers focused on grammar and writing, foreign teachers were responsible for pronunciation and speaking.

Currently in Vietnam, this is not the norm. I used to teach English and eventually just had to give up. Even some of my colleagues say that teaching English in Vietnam is "soul crushing".

Some schools are not clear about a lot of things, such as foreigners should teach this, Vietnamese should teach that. After a period of teaching, I realized that students could not even speak four consecutive English sentences, so I designed my own elaborate curriculum, with the aim of helping students to "speak English". The children liked it and improved their speaking ability and pronunciation.

But then I was reprimanded and fined because I did not follow their curriculum.

Such things drain my enthusiasm and passion for teaching. What more can I do for students who are afraid of speaking, if I fail to stimulate their love of language? It's difficult to watch them go through the painful monotony of a-thousand-hour English language introduction.

Nowadays, with the development of AI, robots teaching and translating English will become popular. Without studying, you can easily read and understand foreign languages, but you can only master a language if you really immerse yourself in its speech.

As someone who used to really like teaching English and learning Vietnamese, despite the storm of difficulty of the languages, I want to emphasize the problem of overemphasizing and favoring grammar when learning a foreign language.

Language is a living entity, not a dead language on paper. If you only teach and learn for the immediate goal of scores or degrees, I really regret your time and money.