The Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs (COVA) will cooperate with other agencies to carry out a pilot program to promote mother tongue language teaching abroad this year, said Deputy Director of the Vietnamese Overseas Authority Dang The Hung at a seminar in Hanoi on April 20. The program is part of the national scheme to popularize the language among overseas Vietnamese communities from now to 2020, said the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing Hung. The scheme has set a goal to help overseas Vietnamese master a good command of their mother tongue in listening, speaking, reading and writing in an effort to uphold traditional cultural and national identities and boost solidarity for successful communities overseas. The program will be firstly carried out in Laos, Cambodia, Russia, the Czech Republic, the U.S. and Canada and will be widely launched in other countries. There are almost four million Vietnamese living, working and studying in 100 countries and territories worldwide, including 250,000 in Laos and Cambodia.
