VietTESOL International Convention 2026

English language teaching has pushed hard toward technology, yet the digital divide across Southeast Asia leaves a practical question for teachers: which students are really ready for digital learning? This symposium argues that the digital divide in language learning is no longer about whether students are connected. It is about what they can actually do with what they have at home like phones, computers, both, or neither, and whether their digital skills match what online English learning expects. We call this functional digital access. Three studies provide perspectives on what this means for classrooms in the region. We start by showing a general pattern across 34 education systems: the same access pattern predicts large differences in the digital skills that online language tasks require. We then turn to Vietnam, where the country is split almost evenly between fully equipped students and smartphone-only students, and the reading gap between the two groups is about 28 points even after we account for family background. Finally, we investigate the situation in Cambodia, where nearly three quarters of fifteen-year-olds rely on a smartphone alone, and school computers help only weakly. The team brings together researchers in large-scale educational testing with experienced English-language classroom teachers across Taiwan, Vietnam, and Cambodia, so each paper grounds its findings in what classrooms in the region actually look like. The session closes with practical takeaways for teachers: what to ask of digital tasks, what not to assume, and where institutions and policy need to back classrooms up.

#2434 Digital Access as Language Policy in Vietnam's EFL to ESL Transition
Author: Joseph Lavallee
Co-authors: Thuy Minh Anh (Doris) Hoang, Ngoc Khanh (Kev) Huynh, Bao Chau (Bella) Le, Ngoc Quynh Nhi (Cheryo) Nguyen

Vietnam is moving English from being a foreign language to being a second language, expanding its role in school, work, and daily digital life. This change raises a practical question for English teachers: which students are actually ready to learn in classrooms that increasingly live on screens? Using Vietnam's 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data, we group fifteen-year-old students by what they have at home — a working computer and internet, only a smartphone, or neither — and ask what this means for their learning. Reading skill is our best measure of the kind of academic English that an expanded English role will demand. The pattern is clear. Smartphone-only students come from less wealthy families, more often live outside cities, and score about 28 points lower in reading than peers with a full home setup, even after we account for family background and other factors. How students use their devices does not close the gap: doing schoolwork online adds about five reading points and leisure use takes away about nine, but neither erases the much larger gap from device access itself. Schools with more internet-connected computers narrow the gap only slightly. For English teachers, this matters in everyday decisions: designing homework that works on a phone, planning offline alternatives for students with weak connections, building in extra digital-skills support before launching apps or online tasks, and being careful about assigning work that quietly assumes a home computer. Digital fairness has to sit alongside curriculum, assessment, and teacher training.

#2435 Functional Digital Access and English Learning in Cambodia
Author: Scott Sommers
Co-authors: Joseph Lavallee, Jason Slimon, Joshua Wilwohl

The increasing emphasis on technology for second language learning assumes that students have steady access to digital learning tools with online connections — for blended learning, distance education, mobile-assisted language practice, AI-supported activities, learner-autonomy work, and technology-enhanced testing. This study asks how realistic that assumption is for fifteen-year-old students in Cambodia, using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We group students by what they have at home: a working computer plus a smartphone, a computer only, a smartphone only, or major gaps in both. Only about nine percent have the full setup. Nearly three quarters rely on a smartphone alone, and almost one in seven have major gaps in basic access. The full setup is concentrated in cities and in wealthier families; it is almost absent in smaller towns and rural areas, and reaches about thirty percent only in city communities. The reading gap matters as much as the access gap. Smartphone-only students score about 24 points lower in reading than students with the full home setup, even after we account for family background. Their first-language reading is already behind, which makes the demanding digital English work that technology-enhanced learning expects even harder for them to do. This digital divide is unlikely to disappear soon. The most practical response is to teach as if the phone is the main classroom tool: phone-first task designs, offline-friendly versions of online activities, scaffolded digital-skills support, and apps and testing tools built to work well on the devices students actually carry.

#2436 Different Tools, Different Skills: The Digital Divide in Technology-Enhanced Language Learning
Author: Jason Slimon
Co-authors: Yvonne Hu-Di Giusto, Joseph Lavallee, Scott Sommers

Technology-enhanced language learning assumes that connected students are ready to read, write, collaborate, and learn online. This study tests that assumption using the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), a large international test that measures eighth-grade students' ability to search, evaluate, organize, produce, and share digital information across 34 education systems. We group each student by what they have at home — both a computer and a smartphone, only a computer, only a smartphone, or neither — and ask what it predicts. The differences across countries are large. In some systems, more than nine in ten students have the full home setup; in others, only about half do, and more than one in five rely on a smartphone alone. Home access predicts how well students do on the test. Students who only have a smartphone score about 39 points below students with the full home setup, and students without working devices score nearly twice as far behind. The skills the test checks — finding information, judging which sources to trust, producing and sharing digital text — are exactly the skills that online English-learning tasks already expect students to have. Better school technology narrows the gaps but does not close them. For English classrooms, the practical message is direct: digital homework, online collaboration, automatic feedback tools, and AI-supported writing tasks all assume more than many students can use. Teachers can plan around the devices students actually have, and build in extra digital-skills support for students who arrive without it.