Teaching and learning Chinese characters in the Feudal period of Vietnam from the perspective of modern foreign language teaching

Abstract

Borrowing from foreign countries, Chinese characters were initially used as a system of foreign languages in the sense that there has not been definite evidences to prove that the Vietnamese people had their own writing system existed before importing the Chinese characters. In common sense, Chinese writing language has been considered as one of the most difficult characters to learn and memorize. This raises a question: How did Vietnamese people effectively learned Chinese characters in the past? How did the system of teaching Chinese textbooks compiled in accordance with learners at different  level and age? The author claims that there might be a complete system of textbooks teaching Chinese characters, clasified relying to the level and age of different learners, through which, many Vietnamese famous celebrities were succefully trained in comparison with other countries in the region using Chinese characters (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.). Historical materials often refers to the competition of poems and speeches between Vietnamese people and neighbors. Therefore, this article aims to research the perspectives of the Chinese characters learning system of ancient Vietnamese in order to suggest some solution to the improvement of teaching modern foreign language for Vietnamese youth, to preserve the old father's traditions in the modern society.