Elementary Vietnamese

Elementary Vietnamese is a paid beginner textbook course from Tuttle, written by Harvard’s Vietnamese program director, Bình Như Ngô. It’s best for learners who want a classroom-style path you can follow chapter by chapter, either solo or alongside a teacher.

You work through carefully sequenced lessons built around dialogues, then move into grammar notes, usage notes, exercises, and pronunciation drills. The publisher includes around 8 hours of native-speaker recordings, so you can hear the dialogues and practice sounds and tones instead of guessing from the page.

Tuttle also hosts companion downloads for the 4th edition, including audio and flash card materials on their downloadable content page. The main drawback is that it feels academic and can be vocabulary-heavy early on, so if you want quick travel phrases or lots of guided speaking practice, you’ll probably want to pair it with a tutor or conversation practice.