VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Vietnam is currently repositioning English from a foreign language (EFL) to a second language (ESL) within its national education system, and pressing questions have followed about how this shift should translate into actual classroom practice, particularly in the teaching of Listening and Speaking. AI-assisted instruction is often put forward as one way of meeting the new demands, yet experimental evidence on integrated Listening-Speaking development under an ESL-oriented framework remains scarce in Vietnamese higher education, especially in institutions outside the country's most research-active universities.

This study examines the impact of AI tool integration on the Listening and Speaking development of first-year English-major students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hanoi Metropolitan University. A quasi-experimental design was adopted: participants were assigned to an experimental group receiving AI-assisted instruction grounded in ESL principles, and a control group taught through conventional methodology. Listening comprehension and spoken production were measured before and after the intervention, while learner surveys provided complementary data on perceived engagement, confidence, and tool usability.

Findings show that the AI-integrated group achieved stronger gains in both skill areas than the control group. Learners in this group also reported higher communicative confidence and lower speaking anxiety, which are dimensions of particular relevance to an ESL orientation that emphasises authentic, meaning-driven interaction. The results suggest that AI tools can play a substantive role in the EFL-to-ESL instructional transition when they are embedded in a coherent pedagogical framework rather than treated as occasional supplements.

In doing so, the study adds institution-specific empirical data to a literature in which Vietnamese-context experimental research remains limited, and offers practical implications for curriculum developers and teaching staff working through this policy-driven shift.