Languages and Ethnic Minority Students’ Access to Education in Vietnam: Problems Turned into Opportunities from the Perspective of Translanguaging

Compared to students of the ethnic majority (the Kinh), minority students have a lower level of educational attainment. Language barriers have been widely accepted as a cause for this disparity. That is, ethnic minority students encounter schooling difficulties due to their disadvantages in Vietnamese, the national language and also the language of the ethnic majority in Vietnam. This chapter reports part of the findings of a project that explored schooling opportunities for ethnic minority students in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Specifically, the chapter highlights the findings related to language difficulties experienced by students of two ethnic minorities in two highland provinces (Gia Lai and Dak Lak). Data were collected from informal talks/interviews with educational/school leaders, teachers, and parents in local villages. The findings show that a low level of Vietnamese was perceived as the major challenge to the ethnic minority students’ schooling opportunities. In addition, students were discouraged to capitalize on their indigenous languages to facilitate their learning and engagement in the classroom. The chapter begins with an overview of educational inequalities between ethnic majority and minority students in Vietnam. Next, we focus on language barriers experienced by ethnic minority students by reviewing relevant studies. The findings and discussion will be the central section of this chapter. Based on the literature and our research findings, we suggest a solution to the perceived problems. That is, policy and practice of education for ethnic minority students need to be innovated in accordance with translanguaging, which posits ethnic minority students’ language resources should be seen as strengths rather than challenges.