VietTESOL International Convention 2026

While institutional debates over repositioning English in Vietnam have largely centred on curriculum reform and policy architecture, a quieter ecological shift may already be underway through the everyday digital practices of language learners themselves. This presentation reports on a mixed-methods study drawing on survey data and reflective narratives from 210 Vietnamese pre-service EFL teachers to examine how generative artificial intelligence has become integrated into participants’ English language practices beyond formal instructional contexts. Guided by a language-use ecology framework, the study finds that participants engage with artificial-intelligence-supported systems in sustained and purposeful ways for writing development, oral rehearsal, metalinguistic clarification, idea generation, and self-directed learning, often on a daily basis. These interactions extend beyond tool-mediated learning events and increasingly function as communicative episodes in which English is actively used rather than merely studied. The discussion proposes the construct of “micro-ESL environments” to describe digitally distributed interactional spaces in which English use becomes iterative, purposeful, and functionally meaningful despite the surrounding EFL policy context. The construct contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding the EFL/ESL distinction by arguing, on the basis of the present data, that artificial-intelligence-mediated interaction is creating localised conditions of sustained second-language use within predominantly foreign-language settings, thereby constituting a form of practice-level repositioning that operates beneath, and at times independently of, formal policy. Implications are considered for pre-service teacher education in Vietnam, particularly the need to recognise artificial-intelligence-mediated interaction as part of the emerging language environment in which future English teachers are already developing professionally.