There are nearly 90,000 Japanese language learners in Vietnam, up from 37.8 percent compared with the figure recorded in 2015, heard an exchange programme held by the Japan Foundation in Tokyo on June 28.

A student of Ngo Si Lien Junior High School in Hanoi makes a presentation on Japan. 

Vietnam ranks fourth globally in the number of Japanese language learners outside of Japan, after China, the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Taiwan (China). 

According to Masahiro Oji, a senior advisor of the Japan Foundation, to meet the increasing demand for Japanese learning, the fund has launched a programme to send about 3,000 Japanese teachers to Southeast Asian nations from 2014-2020. 

As of 2017, 30 Japanese teachers had been dispatched to Vietnam, the third most in the region following Indonesia and Thailand, Oji said. 

The Japan Foundation will open training courses for Japanese language teachers in Vietnam, India and Myanmar this year, he added. 

A project to pilot Japanese language teaching in schools in Vietnam was implemented in 2013. Two years later, the language was taught as the first foreign language in many schools. 

On September 9, 2017, Vietnam added Japanese language to the curricula of five primary schools in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. 

During the exchange programme, 100 Vietnamese students and educational officials were introduced to Japanese language teaching and learning methods, and visited Japanese high schools as well as tourist sites in Tokyo and adjacent localities. - VNA