The State Committee on Vietnamese Overseas is scheduled to conduct a survey on the teaching of Vietnamese to expatriates in Laos and Cambodia in May, part of a scheme to popularise the language among overseas Vietnamese communities.

Russia and the Czech Republic , European countries that have a traditional relationship with Vietnam, will also be surveyed as well as the US and Canada, where there are large Vietnamese communities.

The Deputy Director of the Vietnamese Overseas Authority Dang The Hung told a two-day workshop in Hanoi on April 20, that the project has set a goal to help expatriates master a good command of Vietnamese in all four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing in an effort to uphold traditional cultural and national identities and boost solidarity for successful communities overseas.

The project is launched at a point when the Vietnamese language has been fading among the younger generations who were born and have grown up overseas.

Problems with teaching methods as well as limitations in the contents of the Vietnamese language curriculum, unfair competition and inappropriate actions by Vietnamese schools abroad were other reasons for putting the project into practice.

High on the workshop’s agenda is investigating the teaching methods used in Laos and Cambodia as well as teaching aids such as textbooks.

The State Committee on Vietnamese Overseas reported that the expatriate population has now reached almost 4 million in 100 countries and territories, including 250,000 in Laos and Cambodia./.