An introduction to modern spoken and written Vietnamese, designed for novice learner without any experience with the language. The first semester emphasizes phonetic concepts, syllable formations and tonal distinctions along with simple sentence structures in everyday topics. Class activities focus on reading and writing skills, based on involving intensive drill on phonology to learn vocabularies and grammatical structures to formulate contextual conversation. By the end of the second semester, students should be able to function successfully in ordinary Vietnamese conversation and read simple texts of moderate difficulty.