The nature of the learners

Children enter the early years of schooling with varying degrees of early literacy capability in Vietnamese and/or English. For young students, learning typically focuses on their immediate world of family, home, school, friends and neighbourhood. They are learning how to socialise with new people in settings outside the home, share with others, and participate in structured routines and activities at school.

Vietnamese language learning and use

Vietnamese is learnt in parallel with English language and literacy, with each supporting and enriching the other. Vietnamese is used at home and in familiar Vietnamese-speaking settings, and in classroom interactions, routines and activities, supported by the use of materials and resources, gestures and body language. At this stage, there is a focus on play, imaginative activities, games, music, dance and familiar routines, which provide scaffolding for language development. Repetition and consolidation help learners to identify familiar and new words and simple phrases, and to recognise the purpose of simple texts. Learners use Vietnamese for functions such as greeting, asking and answering questions (for example, Em chào thầy/cô. Chào bạn. Bạn tên là gì? Tôi tên là Mai), responding to instructions (for example, Các em ngồi xuống. Mở vở ra đọc với cô), and taking turns in games and simple shared tasks. There is a natural transition from spoken to written language. Learners use a variety of cues, including images, context and frequently used word patterns, to comprehend texts and to communicate.

Contexts of interaction

The primary contexts for interaction in Vietnamese are the immediate environments of home and the classroom. Learners use Vietnamese to interact with each other and the teacher within the learning environment at school and with immediate family members at home. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) enriches the learning of Vietnamese language and culture by providing alternative experiences, a range of resources, and opportunities to access authentic language in different contexts.

Texts and resources

Learners engage with a variety of spoken, written and visual texts such as children’s songs and nursery rhymes, stories from Big Books, plays and interactive resources. Writing skills progress from identifying the alphabet and tone markers to tracing, labelling and copying letters, and then to constructing simple, short texts using familiar vocabulary.

Features of Vietnamese language use

Learners become familiar with how the sounds and tones of the Vietnamese language are represented in words and symbols. They practise pronunciation through activities such as singing Vietnamese folk songs (đồng dao, ca dao), and experiment with sounds, single vowels, consonants, syllables, simple phrases and sentences relating to pictures, objects and actions, for example, M cho mẹ, má, mèo, mua and H cho hoa hồng, hát, học. Đây là cái nhà. Em bé đang ngủ. They learn to recognise the letters of the Vietnamese alphabet and tone markers, making comparisons with the English alphabet, and write letters, words and simple sentences, for example, Con thích ăn cơm. They share similarities and differences between the ways they communicate in Vietnamese and English, and begin to recognise how language use changes according to speakers and context.

Level of support

The classroom is a new context for communication, where learners rely on the teacher to assist their learning. The teacher uses scaffolding, modelling, cueing, monitoring, feedback and encouragement to support learning experiences. Multiple and varied sources of input and stimulus are provided, for example, bilingual Big Books and picture books, subtitled cartoons and video programs, realia, objects, maps, charts and gestures.

The role of English

Vietnamese is used as the medium for class interaction and to demonstrate and model new language acquisition. English may be used to explain features of language and aspects of culture. Both English and Vietnamese may be used when learners communicate about similarities and differences between Vietnamese and other languages and cultures and reflecting on how they communicate and behave in Vietnamese- and English-speaking contexts.