VietTESOL International Convention 2026

As Vietnam gradually moves toward a more functionally oriented ESL trajectory, English language classrooms are increasingly expected to promote authentic communication, interdisciplinary learning, and meaningful language use beyond grammar-focused instruction. In this context, Content-Based Instruction (CBI) has emerged as an effective pedagogical approach that integrates language learning...

This presentation explores how Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowers EFL teachers to design high-quality, differentiated listening materials tailored to learners’ diverse proficiency levels. In Vietnamese tertiary education, where classes typically include both English majors and non-majors with mixed abilities, creating suitable listening resources remains a time-consuming and...

This workshop introduces language learning as a creative and human-centered process in which AI can promote imagination, expression, and engagement. Through an AI-powered visual storytelling workflow using ChatGPT, Google AI Studio (Nano Banana), and Canva, participants will explore how AI-powered comics can enhance reading comprehension and writing fluency in English language classrooms. The...

This presentation reports the design and classroom implementation of automated adaptive learning pathways developed to support undergraduate students’ academic paraphrasing skills. Grounded in formative assessment, mastery learning, and learner autonomy, the model addresses a persistent challenge in EFL writing instruction, where students differ in vocabulary knowledge, sentence restructuring...

In many CLIL lessons, content objectives and language ones are not often clearly aligned. Content objectives may be written without sufficient consideration of learners’ language proficiency, whereas language objectives are often written as broad vocabulary goals. This workshop focuses on how classroom teachers can design both content and language objectives that work together and directly...

Project-based learning in young learners' classrooms can lack clear structure and teacher support, which may discourage its use or lead to projects that prioritize product creation over meaningful language development. As education shifts away from traditional approaches, there is a growing movement toward communicative, student-centered learning that promotes the development of 21st-century...

Grounded in Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) principles, this workshop demonstrates how teachers can analyse teaching materials and practices, distinguish between exercises and tasks, and create engaging, age-appropriate and communicative tasks to teach Vietnamese young language learners in alignment with the General Education English Language Curriculum 2018. The session also highlights...

Fostering learners’ self-awareness of progress in the primary ESL classroom is often constrained by children’s cognitive and linguistic limitations (Cameron, 2001). However, my classroom practice has always supported encouraging autonomy from an early age, because, as Dam (2009) claims, even young learners can reflect and take ownership of their own learning when provided with age-appropriate...

Today, as EdTech proliferates, many digital learning platforms have become increasingly generic, often failing to address the specific demands, teaching contexts, and assessment criteria of educators and learners. This issue highlights the growing need for more adaptable and teacher-driven educational solutions. Fortunately, recent developments in AI have begun to lower technical barriers,...

Developing authentic and fluent oral production remains a core challenge in English language teaching. Grounded in Paul Nation’s Four Strands framework, this workshop demonstrates how educators can strategically utilize authentic magazine articles to achieve a pedagogical balance among Meaning-focused Input, Language-focused Learning, Meaning-focused Output, and Fluency...

Abstract

This presentation explores how mobile applications and self-directed learning can be integrated to enhance English speaking skills among ESL learners in the Lao context, which may share similarities with many teaching environments in Vietnam. The presenter will explain how mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) creates flexible and engaging opportunities for students to practice...

Error correction remains one of the most sensitive yet essential aspects of language teaching, often raising questions about timing, effectiveness, and learner engagement. This highly practical workshop reimagines error treatment by placing collaboration, movement, and gamification at the heart of feedback practices. Rather than positioning the teacher as the sole authority, the session...

Although generative artificial intelligence accelerates lesson planning in English Language Teaching, its automated tools lack the contextual understanding that human educators possess, particularly insight into their learners' proficiency and learning needs. Consequently, algorithms generate dense instructional sequences that cause student cognitive overload. Teachers recognise the need to...

As Vietnam transitions from a foreign language (EFL) to a second language (ESL), preschool education is under increased pressure to offer children more natural, meaningful, and frequent exposure to English beyond isolated language lessons. This workshop responds by demonstrating how early childhood educators can use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools to create simple English songs...

Grammar teaching in many English classes of Vietnamese primary schools is customarily form focused․ Much of the time is spent on rules explanation‚ translation‚ and controlled practice․ There is too little time spent on communicative and spontaneous language production․ Since English is no longer viewed mainly as a school subject‚ but as a lingua franca‚ it is necessary to incorporate the...

Vietnam faces a stark pedagogical paradox: an ambitious national mandate for systemic bilingualism (Decision No. 2371/QĐ-TTg, 2024) colliding with chronic resource constraints in classrooms across the country. Meeting this challenge demands innovative, scalable frameworks that teachers can implement now, without waiting for infrastructure to catch up. This workshop argues that Google's...

Project-based learning (PBL) is widely recognized for promoting authentic communication, collaboration, creativity, and learner autonomy in EFL classrooms. However, in many Vietnamese high school contexts, project lessons are often limited by students’ difficulty in generating original ideas, unequal participation in group work, and overreliance on text-heavy presentations. As a result,...

Reading comprehension remains a major challenge for many EFL students, particularly in Vietnamese high school classrooms where learners often work with dense textbook passages, abstract ideas, and unfamiliar vocabulary. In mixed-ability classes, these difficulties can reduce learner engagement, limit participation, and negatively affect vocabulary retention. Traditional reading instruction may...

How can English language teachers build, sustain, and benefit from Communities of practice that genuinely improve classroom learning and contribute to their professional careers and wellbeing? How can creating a professional development network benefit ELT teachers?
Based on the British Council funded project Empowering Language Teacher Development through Teacher Activity Groups: A Focus on...

As English language teaching increasingly shifts toward ESL-oriented realities, communicative competence requires more than mastery of written grammar structures. Research in corpus linguistics has consistently shown that everyday spoken interaction relies heavily on features such as discourse markers, ellipsis, vague language, and other patterns typical of spontaneous speech. However, these...

Each learner embodies unique interests, strengths, and diverse ways of processing information. These differences foster an inclusive education environment in the pedagogical contexts. By acknowledging the learner needs the English language teacher educators to facilitate dynamic learning experiences for each learner. Particularly, ‘Dyslexia’ is a language learning difficulty that occurs as a...

Many Vietnamese secondary school students struggle with listening and speaking despite spending years learning English because the input for listening skills in the early years of learning English was often inaccurate, such as teachers having incorrect pronunciation, focusing only on grammar while neglecting to teach listening, speaking, communication, and sound development for children. . One...

Despite the growing availability of digital teaching tools, many EFL practitioners continue to manage their lessons across multiple disconnected platforms — presentation slides, online timers, name-picker apps, and printed task instructions — switching between them in real time. This fragmented approach increases teacher cognitive load, disrupts lesson momentum, and creates a visually chaotic...

In many EFL reading classes, students understand a passage but still struggle to use its language in speech or writing. This workshop addresses that gap by treating oral reading not as a mechanical pronunciation drill, but as a principled step between comprehension and output. The central claim is that learners need opportunities to take the text into themselves: to hear it, say it, pause...

There is a gap between how educationalists conceptualise learner autonomy and how it comes to practice (Borg, 2018). Teachers in young learner classes often prioritise other skills that dictate their attention and action since many have the perception that promoting learner autonomy could better be considered in higher stages of learning rather than primary where learners are perceived to...

The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in English language education presents both transformative opportunities and significant ethical challenges. This presentation shares a reflective journey of implementing AI tools with junior high school students, focusing on the transition from mere tool adoption to responsible digital citizenship.
The author explores various AI-driven...

This workshop explores how reflective practice and ethical AI integration can support sustainable professional development for lower secondary EFL teachers in Vietnam. In the context of increasing educational demands and rapid technological change, many teachers experience workload pressure, limited opportunities for reflection, and uncertainty about the effective use of AI in teaching....

Vietnam’s higher education system is undergoing a significant shift from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to English as a Second Language (ESL), yet assessment practices remain largely grammar-based and examination-oriented, creating a critical mismatch between teaching goals and evaluation methods. This study aims to develop a contextualized framework for reforming English assessment to...

As Vietnam moves toward more ESL-oriented educational goals, English teachers are increasingly expected to engage in reflective and inquiry-based professional learning beyond one-off workshops. However, many teachers experience fragmented professional development, cognitive overload, and difficulty sustaining classroom-based inquiry over time, even when valuable pedagogical insights emerge...

In many English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) contexts, instruction remains heavily exam-oriented, prioritizing accuracy over authentic communication. Vietnam is currently undergoing a pivotal transformation through Decree 2371/QD-TTg, which aims to transition the school system from an EFL environment to one where English is a second language (ESL). This shift necessitates new pedagogies that...

Storytelling has long been recognized as a powerful pedagogical tool in primary English language education (Ellis & Brewster, 2014). Despite these benefits, we observe that many primary English teachers in Vietnam remain hesitant to integrate storytelling into their classrooms. This reluctance is often attributed to resource constraints, including limited access to visual aids, technological...

At a time when classrooms across the region are consumed by conversations about artificial intelligence, a more foundational question is being quietly overlooked: do young learners and the teachers who guide them have the computational thinking and English communication skills that make any technology meaningful in the first place? This workshop argues that block-based coding, long before AI,...

Communication strategies (CS) are fundamental to L2 pragmatics and Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF). Since BELF emphasizes the pragmatic use of English, the basic CS in pragmatics extends to more advanced BELF CS. Multilingual speakers focus on negotiating the main message by deploying various pragmatic strategies that embed communication strategies to enhance explicitness in meaning...

In today’s digital era, technology has become an integral part of daily lives, changing the ways English language learners (ELLs) communicate in both their first language (L1) and their second language (L2). Twenty-first century media platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp offer valuable opportunities for mobile assisted language learning to engage ELLs through familiar...

The rapid shift toward English as a second language (L2) in the region demands a level of differentiation and assessment frequency that often leads to significant teacher burnout. This session addresses the "time-poverty" of ELT practitioners by exploring how Generative AI can be transformed from a simple chatbot into a sophisticated, reliable teaching assistant. Moving beyond surface-level AI...

In Vietnam, the English Language is one of the most dominant foreign languages, especially at both secondary and tertiary levels (Vu & Peter, 2021; Hoang, 2020). It is ubiquitous, and since 2025, a new policy has been implemented to make English the second language in the general education system (Cuong, 2025). Vu and Nguyen (2019) assert that vocabulary plays a crucial role in L2 learning....

Extensive research has proved that Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is an effective pedagogical approach for enhancing learners’ communicative language ability and fostering positive learning attitudes. However, most existing studies have been conducted in general English instructional settings and have predominantly relied on traditional linguistic indicators such as fluency and accuracy....

Teachers are expected to guide students with different needs, communicate with parents with different expectations, collaborate with colleagues with different working styles, and support junior teachers, all before the first lesson begins. Yet when it comes to professional development, the mentor is almost always the helper, never the helped. This workshop turns that assumption around. Drawing...

As Viet Nam continues transitioning from EFL towards a more ESL-oriented approach to English education, many teachers face the challenge of balancing curriculum requirements with students’ need for more opportunities to actually use English. In many classrooms, textbook-focused and exam-oriented instruction can limit classroom interaction, student engagement, and ultimately reduce students’...

English teachers in EFL and ESL contexts increasingly need classroom tools that reflect local curricula, learner needs, and constraints such as limited bandwidth, shared devices, and unsustainable subscription costs, yet commercial applications rarely meet these specifications. This 60-minute workshop demonstrates a replicable workflow in which language teachers, without prior programming...

In the era of digital education, vibe coding serves as a supportive
approach for both teachers and learners to enhance their teaching and
learning experience. This workshop explores the pedagogical prospect of Vibe
Coding, shifting the teacher’s role from passive users to active creators in ELT
practices. Conducted for participants with no programming experience, this
workshop instructs...