Vietnamese Beginner's Course - Tapa blanda

A complete course for beginners, reflecting a multiplicity of roles. It has a slight bias towards the spoken language, with most of the course based on dialogue format, but also provides notes on relevant linguistic points on a sufficiently detailed level so that it can be used as a self-teaching material for independent learners with the help of tapes and instructions on tape.

After long years in isolation, a unified Vietnam emerges as a new frontier not only for doing business but also for numerous social, academic and personal relations. The desire for the outside world to learn Vietnamese is fast expanding, but textbooks which cater for a more demanding audience are very rare, and often rather dated, with language which is not up-to-date and in fact has not been used in Vietnam recently. This textbook addresses that problem, and offers a complete course for beginners. The approach is tried and tested at the School for Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where this course book, together with tapes, has been in use for several years in course for undergraduates and postgraduates, and for evening classes for business people seeking opportunities in Vietnam.. The content of the book reflects a multiplicity of roles, and is extremely versatile. It is written with a slight bias towards the spoken aspect of the language, with most of the work based on a dialogue format. This is generally suitable for a complete beginner, following a structured course in the language with teacher supervision in a class-based environment. The material has also been used very successfully as a tool for spoken language training alone, in which case the reading texts are omitted. On the other hand, notes are provided for the relevant linguistic points on a sufficiently detailed level so that it can be used as self-teaching material for independent learners with the help of tapes and instructions on tape. A number of students have taken the material with them to Vietnam and have used it on their own, to great effect. This textbook and the accompanying tapes should find favour with both academic and market- based learners, and also with second and third generation overseas Vietnamese.