English May Be Ticket to Better Job in Vietnam

You might as well post an “English-only” sign here.

It’s the sole language being spoken by thousands of Vietnamese at private language centers because the appetite to learn tieng anh is insatiable.

Ask practically anyone from waiters to computer engineers, and chances are good they’re juggling full-time jobs with evening classes and private lessons. It’s a heavy-duty commitment of time--up to 10 hours a week--and money, with yearlong courses that can run up to $150.

In a nation where per capita income is $311, that’s a sizable investment. But investment is exactly how most people view it.

The payoff is a job, preferably with a foreign company that pays as much in a month as the average person makes in a year.

“If you want a job, then you learn English. If you have a job, you can get a promotion or a better job if you know English,” says Nguyen Phuong Nga, founder and co-director of the Khuong Thuong English Center in Hanoi. “It’s the language of choice for anyone who wants to get ahead.”

The avid public interest in embracing the language of a former wartime enemy reflects the continuing economic and social rebirth of a country whose doors were once closed to the world.

“English is traditionally the chief means of international communication. That’s not an exception in Vietnam,” said Le Quoc Hanh, dean of the English department at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies.

Interestingly, the country’s political history in the past century can virtually be charted through the foreign language of choice by its citizens.

Under colonial rule, as part of Indochina, French was de rigueur. In fact, a rigid education system ensured that francais was the only language taught in schools. During the Vietnam War came a brief flirtation with Chinese as North Vietnam looked to its northern neighbor for financial and military assistance.

Russian preoccupied much of the late 1970s and the ‘80s as Vietnamese students battled for university scholarships to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and workers got jobs on Soviet-financed projects. But doi moi, the 1986 economic reforms that opened Vietnam to foreign investors, stirred a flood of interest in tieng anh.

In the last five years, hundreds of private language centers have sprung up in the larger cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and Hanoi to fill growing public demand. Despite the fact that Vietnam hosted an international summit for French-speaking nations last fall, it’s clear that no other language holds the lure of English.

Here in the capital, once the evening skies darken and the cacophony of blaring horns quiets, the empty campuses of public primary and secondary schools throughout the city fill up for a second time.

Because of a lack of facilities, many private language centers rent space at local schools. Mini-traffic jams begin when hundreds of students on bicycles and motorbikes descend upon school gates.

At Khuong Thuong Center, which was set up in the late 1980s and is one of the earliest language centers, enrollment stands at 300 students, although it has reached as high as 2,000.

Declining numbers indicate not so much a drop in interest, says founder Nga, but competition from the growing number of language schools. Students come to learn the three fundamental levels of English, known as the “ABCs.” The fourth--and graduating--level, called “in-service training,” is offered only through university-accredited schools. Anyone who wants to work abroad needs that kind of training, and foreign companies use it as a measure of proficiency.

“When I first started the center, there were only a few other centers. We used to have classes in the hallways because there was no space,” Nga recalls. “Now, all of the schools around here are full at night unless they’re in some far corner of the city.”

Like many of her generation, the 40-year-old Nga learned extensive Russian but switched to learning and eventually teaching English when the prevailing political winds turned westward.

Now her classes are filled with students eager to get a head start on the newest job prerequisite. Most are working people like Vu Quang Ngoc, who view English as the ticket to a better job and life.

For the first eight hours of his day, Ngoc, 28, works as a hotel cook. He spends the remainder of his evenings, five days a week, in class. He’s been studying English for more than two years and has another year and a half to go before graduating.

It costs him about $70 for a yearlong term, roughly a quarter of his $300 annual income. But as he sees it, there is no other choice.

“I have to learn. I don’t want to be in the kitchen my whole life,” he says in slow and careful English.

After he got out of the army in 1990, he says, he came home to find no jobs available. His family had no money for education, so he taught himself to cook and started working in restaurants and hotels.

In his free time, Ngoc faithfully follows CNN, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. He practices English whenever he gets the chance, often with tourists passing through. His goal, he says, is to become an English-speaking guide for a tourism company.

Many in Ngoc’s classes are university students who already are taking English in school but want additional practice. They have become increasingly aware of the opportunities open to those who can speak the language well.

In 1996, the number of students at Hanoi National University enrolled in the foreign studies and language college was 2,225. Last year, that number jumped to 17,595, with the vast majority majoring in English.

At Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, the English Department is the largest one on campus, with 1,000 full-time students enrolled and 450 joining in the last year.

“Young people open up the newspaper and they see that jobs always ask for English,” Dean Hanh says. “Even in the early years of doi moi, when it was Japanese or Chinese or Singaporean companies that were here, the language you had to know was English.”

The reality is that it’s impossible to find a well-paying job without it, says Doan Phu Huyen, a 22-year-old computer science major at Hanoi Polytechnic University who is simultaneously enrolled as an English major at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies.

And well-paying translates into a job with a foreign company, he explains. A job with a state-owned company or with the government itself would net him an average monthly salary of $15 to $20. At a foreign company, that salary could easily be $200 to $300 a month.

“Especially in my field, I need to know English. America is the leading high-tech country,” he says. “Even if I wanted to work for a Vietnamese company, I couldn’t because the pay is so low.”

Last year, an estimated 63,500 Vietnamese workers were employed with foreign companies or joint-venture projects. A number of them cashed in on the fact that women were encouraged to learn foreign languages--instead of, say, math--long before men.

Take, for example, Nguyen Bich Lan, 29, who graduated in 1995 with an English degree. She quickly landed a job with a Hong Kong-based high-tech firm and worked her way up. She’s now the company’s human resources director.

“In my class, there were about 25 people. Only four of them were men,” she says. “Here, men are encouraged to study sciences or engineering. Foreign languages was something women chose to study more often.”

So when international companies began to flood into the country after 1986’s doi moi, it was women who had the speaking skills to get hired.

Lan’s monthly salary--more than $300 a month--has given her an unusual measure of economic freedom. She makes enough to allow her and her 5-year-old daughter to live on their own--an unusual situation for a single mother. “For me, knowing English made all the difference,” she says. “I like the independence I have in my job and my life.”