Recently, UNC Chapel Hill’s Vietnamese program has been highlighted in an article on VOA’s Vietnamese news service. The article focuses on two students, Jennifer Tran and Megan Lam, as well as Sunny Vo, the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant for Vietnamese. Both Tran and Lam speak Vietnamese at home with their parents, though are not fluent in reading or writing the language. Taking Vietnamese language courses at UNC, they say, has helped them connect to their heritage.
UNC Chapel Hill offered Vietnamese as a virtual study abroad pilot program in 2020, and Carolina then re-established in-person instruction in the 2021-22 academic year. The beginner class this year is 90% students from Vietnamese families, filled to the 20-person capacity. A second-year class launched in the 2022-23 academic year, which is taught by Sunny Vo, who has a Master’s degree in languages and education from the Benedictine University of Chicago. Her approach is based in teaching not only the language, but also lessons on Vietnamese history, music, and youth culture. The Carolina Asia Center is excited by the growth of the Vietnamese courses, and hopes to add more classes related to Southeast Asia in the future.
To see the original article in Vietnamese, click here.