Out of the Ordinary: Implementation of a New Japanese Language Program in Higher Education in Vietnam

RMIT University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City has played an important role in leading tertiary education in the region for two decades. The Japanese language program was launched as a part of the Vietnam-specific Bachelor of Languages program in 2017 with participatory active language learning as its fundamental pedagogical approach. The program has continued to evolve as a higher education program that reflects the university’s learning and teaching strategies, including authentic assessment, interactive and digitalized learning, and industry and community engagement. This chapter first presents the program structure with its core underpinning concepts aimed at producing work-ready graduates equipped with the necessary trilingual language skills and soft skills. Secondly, it explains the effort to realize hybrid-mode “flipped classrooms” without the use of any textbooks and the implementation of “authentic assessment” at every level in the language learning process while maintaining the integrity of the university’s higher education program. Then, the pros and cons of these approaches are discussed based on the informal feedback of students based on their beliefs regarding language learning, the expectations and feedback of industry participants, and the heuristic reflections of course instructors in the program.