Vietnamese for Heritage Learners: Coming Fall 2025
What’s the most popular language received through CourseShare?
Vietnamese, by a wide margin!
Since administration of the CourseShare program moved from the Provost’s office to the Language Center about a decade ago, Vietnamese has been the most requested language. Despite productive CourseShare partnerships with two universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) that offer local Vietnamese courses, Michigan State University (MSU) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), we have never been able to offer enough seats to meet demand.
University of Minnesota (UMN) students choose Vietnamese for a variety of reasons, but students almost always have one thing in common: they are heritage learners of the language, not true beginners.
During Spring 2024, the Language Center launched an outreach initiative, led by Saena Dozier and Carter Griffith, to learn more about the local population of Vietnamese students. They conducted focus groups, administered surveys, and reviewed other available data. As a result of this initiative, they recommended the creation of a two-course sequence for heritage learners that:
- Accommodates various proficiency levels
- Prioritizes conversational skills
- Exposes learners to multiple varieties of Vietnamese
- Integrates cultural elements throughout
- Provides an immersive experience
In order to ensure that there are enough seats in Vietnamese language courses to accommodate all UMN students, the Language Center is launching the development of a new Vietnamese language program, with course offerings as early as Fall 2025. The course sequence will be designed with heritage learners in mind, for fully remote distribution, so that it can be shared via CourseShare in the Big Ten. We will aim to share our new heritage sequence, while also continuing to receive a traditional four-semester sequence.
Development has just begun, and we are now looking to hire a 25% graduate research assistant who is a native or near native speaker of Vietnamese (see official job description below).
Until this new sequence launches, CourseShare remains the best option for UMN students to learn Vietnamese. If you are aware of students who need to complete a language requirement, and are considering Vietnamese, encourage them to register for the courses available now through CourseShare or to contact the Language Center at [email protected]
