Is it really worth it
Recently my English students and I have decided to get certified for our Vietnamese; however this process has been extremely frustrating...

Last week we had to fire our Vietnamese teacher (and I only had 3 classes with her). The situation was that one the first lesson we were promised that we could take the certification test after completing 60hrs of study.

On the second lesson she came to tell us that there was a new policy and that students had to study a minimum of 120 hours (and at $4 per hour that’s $480 as opposed to $240) and we voiced our opinions and she said that she’ll check again and bring us a price list.

On the third lesson, she waltzed into my student’s house with a smug look on her face and presented the price list to us. She said ‘Here is the list, everything is here…I don’t know anything, I’m only the teacher’

The list showed that we had to study a minimum of 15 hours a week for 6 months (360 hours X $4 = $1440)…for a basic certification and the advanced certification required 15 hours a week for 1½-2 years ($4320 or $5760)... A 4 year bachelor’s course costs $5140…

So I had a discussion with my students and talked about the price saying that it’s ridiculous that a Certificate would cost more than a Degree… My Vietnamese teacher then interrupted ‘But of course…that is normal’

How the hell is it normal that a bloody certificate is more expensive than a bloody degree???

So I calmly told her that we were having a conversation and that it would be better that she not involve herself in it as she had already claimed to ‘not know anything’… so after a few minutes on her part she started yelling ‘you are the worse student I have ever seen’ *note the use of worse and not worst, and seen compared to met* ‘everything was ok until you came’ *referring to yours truly*

I then pointed my finger at her and calmly said ‘Are you shouting at me?’

She yells back, ‘No, I am not!’

‘Then why are you raising your voice at me?’

She kept quiet for a couple of minutes and called her supervisor… The teacher passed the phone to me and the supervisor yelled over the phone ‘I don’t want to hear anything! I don’t want to hear anything! I don’t care… you come down to the office…I don’t want to hear anything’

Anyways after I handed the phone back to the teacher, she started screaming again ‘you are the worse student I have ever seen…’ I got irritated and yelled back ‘Woman… please be professional… If you really are a teacher then you shouldn’t be talking to your students like that… and if I am the worse student you have ever seen then your are the worst teacher I have ever met’

*teacher continues to yell and stuff*

‘Look just go… we are not interested in studying with you and you have been fired… Just go… your voice irritates the hell out of me…’

She stands up and walks towards the door, ‘you are the worse student I have ever seen’ *one would expect more intellectual banter from an educated person…guess I was wrong on the ‘educated’ part*

‘Goodbye forever!’ *dramatically raising her arm in the manner of which a Nazi would when saluting Hitler* ‘I hope I never see you again’

‘Look… you’re out of a job… just go… Oh and you better drive carefully…because if you die, you will NEVER see us again’ Ok that wasn’t the most mature thing to say but man… I was extremely frustrated

Learning Vietnamese
I don’t see why learning the local language is so expensive, it just doesn’t make sense… Many organizations provide affordable language courses with the objective to provide an opportunity for the Vietnamese to make progressive choices to improve their own lives.

English language centers charge anything from US$20-US$70 for a course. The Gothe Institut charges a total of US$300 ( I think) for their complete German course.

These courses are well planned and have a curriculum which students and teachers are required to follow… However when learning Vietnamese…none of the teachers I approached are able to show me the curriculum and lesson plans… They simply assume that 120hours of study will make you proficient in Vietnamese… Absolutely ridiculous…

It seems that profit has priority over education… Shouldn’t a language course in the native country be cheaper than that of a foreign language?...What the hell…