Speaker
Description
As Vietnam accelerates its transition from an English as a Foreign Language model toward broader second language use, writing pedagogy faces renewed demands: students must communicate not only accurately but also effectively across culturally diverse academic and professional audiences. Yet many university writing courses continue to prioritise grammatical accuracy and organisational conventions, leaving culturally shaped rhetorical habits — indirect thesis development, implicit argumentation, and limited audience awareness — largely unaddressed.
This paper reports on a classroom-based action research study investigating the implementation of ICC-Write, a four-stage intercultural writing framework grounded in intercultural rhetoric theory and updated models of intercultural communicative competence. The study was conducted with 28 English-major students across a four-week instructional cycle at a Vietnamese university. Drawing on the ICC-Write framework, instructional activities were sequenced through four stages — Notice, Compare, Produce, and Reflect — designed to develop students' critical awareness of rhetorical differences between Vietnamese and English academic writing. Data were collected through pre- and post-writing tasks, reflective journals, a post-instruction questionnaire, and teacher observation notes.
Findings indicate meaningful gains in students' intercultural writing awareness. Post-task writing samples showed a marked increase in explicit thesis placement, with over 70% of students demonstrating stronger argumentative structure compared to pre-task baselines. Reflective journal entries revealed that students actively examined their own culturally influenced writing habits and articulated specific adjustments made to accommodate international reader expectations.
The study suggests that intercultural writing instruction can be integrated into existing writing courses without major curriculum reform — a practical consideration as Vietnamese higher education responds to the evolving demands of second language use in academic and global contexts.
Biography
Truong Hoai Uyen is a lecturer and researcher in English Language Teaching at University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Da Nang, Vietnam, with nearly 15 years of experience in higher education. She holds a Master's degree in English pedagogy and specialises in writing instruction, intercultural communicative competence, and language teacher education. Her recent research focuses on intercultural writing pedagogy for university EFL learners, examining how culturally shaped rhetorical habits influence Vietnamese students' academic writing in English and how instructional frameworks can support the development of intercultural writing awareness. She is particularly interested in classroom-based and action research approaches that generate practical insights for tertiary writing instruction. She has contributed to curriculum development and pedagogical innovation within her institution and is committed to advancing evidence-based writing pedagogy in the Vietnamese higher education context.
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