VietTESOL International Convention 2026

In this talk, I will present a broad overview of the PhD requirements and approaches in various countries around the world – though with a primary focus on the UK, where I have most experience. The talk will focus on what I see as the three key aspects of undertaking a PhD. The first of these is the role of the research student. As a student, there are a number of key areas that should be considered, from the ethics of the whole question asked and of the approach taken. Next comes the decisions around the research approach, followed by data collection, analysis and interpretation. The talk focuses on key aspects of the journey, specifically related to the literature review and the interpretation of the findings in terms of that literature. Next, I turn to the examination process, briefly highlighting the different approaches taken around the world before discussing the key messages that appear to be similar across many, if not all, systems. The talk then turns to the role of the independent examiner, a role I am very familiar with having undertaken it 40 times in the UK (England and Wales), Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Sweden. Finally, I consider life after the PhD, which I have always seen as a beginning and definitely not an end The talk ends with an open session in which I will respond to questions from the attendees about any aspect of the PhD journey. Key Points: (1) different approaches across the world; (2) the student’s perspective 1: Early decisions, from ethics to analysis; (3) the student’s perspective 2: What to expect in an examination; the examiner’s perspective: What an examiner is looking for; and (4) life after the PhD.

In recent years, teacher leadership has gained increasing attention as an important factor in improving teaching quality and supporting school development. Research has consistently highlighted the importance of preparing preservice teachers for teacher leadership during their initial teacher education. However, limited research has examined how preservice teachers conceptualize teacher leadership, particularly in the context of teacher education in Vietnam. This study explores how preservice teachers conceptualize teacher leadership and the factors shaping their conceptualization. Using a multiple case research design, data were collected through three rounds of semi-structured interviews with a group of 26 preservice teachers in teacher education programs in Vietnam. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify patterns in participants’ understandings of teacher leadership. The findings indicate that preservice teachers conceptualize teacher leadership as a multifaceted concept in which teacher leaders act as role models, collaborators, resource providers, and agents of change. The study also identifies factors shaping preservice teachers’ conceptualizations of teacher leadership across the micro, meso and macro levels. These findings have important implications for teacher education programs, highlighting the need to integrate teacher leadership into initial teacher education and to create supportive conditions that enable preservice teachers to overcome existing barriers to leadership development.

As social media becomes an integral part of students’ daily lives, it is increasingly positioned as a space for informal English learning. However, how learners regulate their learning in these environments remains insufficiently understood. This study examines how Vietnamese EFL university students use social media for self-directed English learning. The research draws on Garrison’s (1997) Self-Directed Learning framework to examine their learning experiences across three main dimensions: motivation, self-management, and self-monitoring. Adopting a qualitative multiple-case study methodology, data are generated through semi-structured interviews and reflective journals to generate in-depth insights into learners’ lived experiences across diverse social media platforms. This analysis focuses on how students initiate learning, manage resources and activities, and self-evaluate their learning. Findings are expected to reveal that social media serves as an accessible and engaging learning environment for facilitating English language acquisition, particularly through authentic input and personalised content. Although students exhibit some motivation and self-management in selecting platforms and materials, their learning processes appear to lack structure and be experience-based. Specifically, self-monitoring techniques, including goal setting, reflection, and evaluation, still seem limited. More critically, algorithmically generated content is likely to influence learning, both enhancing exposure and reinforcing passive consumption, highlighting a tension between students’ autonomy and platform influence. This study underscores the need for pedagogical recommendations for fostering more intentional and reflective self-directed learning in the Vietnamese EFL context.

Despite the acknowledged effectiveness of translanguaging - allowing students to use their native language (L1) to learn, discuss, and write, even if the instructor does not speak that language - as scaffolding in language education, research depicting how specific scaffolding strategies are integrated into pedagogical translanguaging in English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classrooms remains limited. This workshop explores how ESL instructors in Viet Nam, those who are not fluent in Vietnamese but native English speakers, and those who are fluent in both Vietnamese and English, can best support their emerging bilinguals in the Vietnamese EFL classroom. Several key scaffolding strategies are examined and discussed to analyze how ESL language instructors can linguistically advance their students in classrooms with varying levels of fluency and proficiency. The key takeaway is perceiving scaffolding as fluid, on a spectrum, in order to best accommodate and aid emerging Vietnamese-English bilinguals. Teacher talk in Vietnamese, modeling in two languages, and employing gestures, realia, and translation matching games are some scaffolds demonstrated in this workshop. Engaging and motivating learners to securely incorporate English into their identity is also discussed. This workshop aims for participants to critically reflect upon their personal choices regarding a conceptual understanding of scaffolding strategies. Granted, all language classrooms are linguistically diverse and every instructor has their own toolkit for enhancing the linguistic outcomes of their students; therefore, this workshop is meant to be both informative and interactional, with participants sharing their thoughts, ideas, successes, and challenges during the presentation.

This workshop will detail a project executing non-verbal exercises to help medical English students improve communication skills and doctor-patient simulations. The research was done with first-year students at a medical university in Vientiane; the presentation will include the need for such a project, the methodology of our research, and the results we found. Students practiced culturally appropriate body language, gestures, eye contact, posture, and tone of voice to feel more confident in speaking English and comfortable in patient care. After the presenters’ demonstrations, conference participants will try the activities themselves and discuss ways to use them in their own classrooms. The exercises can be easily adapted to diverse settings, such as universities, workplaces, and professional training. This workshop shows how non-verbal skills can support language acquisition and professional development, specifically in medicine and people-facing roles, to lay the foundation for further non-verbal instruction in English classrooms with varied focuses at any level.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the way students learn, access information, and complete academic tasks. In a recent survey conducted by the presenter, 100% of students reported using AI tools, highlighting the urgent need for educators to move beyond debates about whether students use AI and focus instead on how they use it. While AI offers powerful opportunities for language learning, creativity, research, and personalized support, it also raises an important challenge: how can teachers ensure that students continue to think critically rather than simply depend on instant answers? This practical and interactive workshop explores how educators can guide students to use AI ethically, responsibly, and effectively as a learning partner rather than a replacement for thinking. Participants will examine strategies for moving students beyond copy-and-paste habits toward deeper engagement, reflection, problem-solving, and independent learning. The session will demonstrate how carefully designed prompts, tasks, and classroom activities can promote analysis, evaluation, creativity, communication, and meaningful language use. Drawing on real classroom examples, participants will experience adaptable activities that integrate AI into speaking, writing, reading, and collaborative learning. The workshop will also address academic integrity, transparency, bias, and the development of clear classroom expectations for AI use. By the end of the session, participants will leave with practical tools, ready-to-use ideas, and greater confidence in helping students become thoughtful, ethical, and active learners in an AI-powered world.

The modernization of English-language programs in ASEAN is attracting significant interest from universities seeking to align programs with current and future employment opportunities through Outcome-Based Education (OBE). To align effectively within an OBE framework, university programs require a comprehensive understanding of current and future job markets to establish relevant and measurable learning outcomes. This is a critical step in curriculum modernization. This training workshop offers a process for identifying stakeholders and understanding their needs as the basis for OBE-driven curriculum modernization. It is designed specifically for curriculum developers, educators, and academic staff, especially in English language programs. Stakeholders are individuals or groups who can directly or indirectly affect or be affected by the programs. The primary learning outcome is to equip participants to identify key stakeholders for conducting an effective market survey that drives OBE design. For instance, recognizing "Employers of English language program graduates" is critical to defining the specific skill requirements needed to ensure graduates achieve targeted outcomes. The training uses engaging collaborative activities, where participants work in groups to brainstorm, map, and visualize stakeholders and identify clear rationales for selection aligned with OBE. Digital tools like Duck Race Name Picker, Padlet, ChatGPT, and Mentimeter are incorporated to drive participation. Ultimately, this workshop underscores a crucial takeaway: the success of the market surveys depends on identifying the key stakeholders early in the curriculum modernization process.

While English textbooks provide valuable linguistic input, many classroom activities do not always create meaningful opportunities for interaction, learner voice, or authentic communication. This interactive workshop explores how standard textbook activities can be transformed into communicative learning experiences that promote active student engagement, critical thinking, and cultural exploration. Drawing on adaptations of America250 lessons implemented in Vietnamese Access classrooms, the presenters will share practical, classroom-tested strategies for maximizing communication and learner participation. Participants will experience interactive activities such as a “Human Bar Chart” discussion task, which encourages learners to express opinions, justify ideas, and respond respectfully to different perspectives. Additional examples will demonstrate how reflective discussion tasks can help students connect classroom content directly to their own identities, personal goals, values, and cultural understanding. Through hands-on participation and collaborative reflection, participants will examine key principles of communicative task adaptation and explore how to apply them across different teaching contexts. Working in small groups, attendees will actively redesign a familiar textbook activity into a dynamic learning experience that promotes interaction, learner voice, and meaningful engagement. By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with practical adaptation strategies, ready-to-use activity ideas, and a flexible framework for transforming textbook activities into engaging communicative learning experiences in their own classrooms.

This study investigates diachronic shifts in ecological representations in Vietnamese literary discourse, based on a purposively selected corpus of canonical works produced before and after 1975. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics and ecolinguistic discourse analysis, the paper examines how transitivity patterns, appraisal resources, and metaphorical constructions encode changing human–nature relationships across distinct socio-historical contexts. The corpus includes pre-1975 wartime texts alongside post-1975 postwar narratives. The analysis reveals a significant ecological reconfiguration. Earlier works predominantly construe nature as an ally, a strategic landscape, and a symbol of collective identity, reflecting an ideologically unified and anthropocentric worldview shaped by wartime conditions. In contrast, post-1975 texts increasingly depict nature as a wounded, degraded, and contested entity, indexing emerging ecological concerns and moral ambiguity in the context of reconstruction and modernization. The study argues that this shift represents a transition from collectivist anthropocentrism toward a more critical and reflexive ecological consciousness in Vietnamese literature. By situating Vietnamese literary discourse within global ecolinguistic debates, the paper contributes to expanding the field beyond its predominantly Western focus. It also highlights the potential of literary texts in fostering critical ecological awareness in language education.

The standardized proficiency tests and their washback effects have been drawing great attention from researchers across the globe. The current study investigates the impacts of the Vietnamese standardized test of English proficiency (VSTEP) on non English-majored undergraduates’ behaviors during test preparation process. This research adopted a mixed-methods approach, utilizing two primary research instruments namely questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were gathered through survey questionnaires with 157 non English-majored juniors and seniors at a public university in the eastern part of Dak Lak province, Vietnam. Furthermore, qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 5 student participants to amplify the data pools. The findings from the questionnaire indicated the most popular out-of-class activities students did for enhancing their English proficiency. In addition, a majority of the respondents believed that the VSTEP test would accurately measure students’ English standards and motivated them to learn English. Besides, the interview data provided deeper information about the amount of time they spent on preparing for the VSTEP test and how they prepare for it.

This transition reflects a strategic language policy direction aimed at equipping learners with practical communicative competence for global participation. Rather than positioning English as an isolated academic subject, the ESL perspective emphasizes its role as a functional medium for interaction in educational, professional, and social contexts. A critical factor supporting this shift is the integration of technology into language teaching and learning. Digital tools such as learning management systems, mobile applications, and AI-powered platforms enable more interactive, learner-centered, and context-rich experiences. These technologies provide learners with access to authentic input, real-time communication, and personalized feedback, thereby fostering greater language immersion even in traditionally EFL environments. For teachers, technology also offers innovative ways to design communicative tasks and monitor learner progress. However, the transition to ESL in Vietnam presents several challenges, including gaps in teacher training, inconsistencies in policy implementation, and unequal access to technological infrastructure across regions. Without addressing these issues, the effectiveness of this shift may be limited. This paper proposes that aligning language policy with technological innovation and teacher development is essential for successful implementation. It further highlights practical implications for classroom practices that promote communicative competence. By embracing an ESL-oriented framework supported by technology, Vietnam can better prepare learners to engage confidently in the globalized world.

This practical workshop provides a strategic roadmap for educators looking to design, execute, and sustain intensive English language & capacity building initiatives as Vietnam transitions toward its 2035 ESL goals. Drawing on the presenter’s experience leading high-impact teacher training workshops, student leadership initiatives, and textbook creation projects through international specialist assignments and local public diplomacy grant programs, this session breaks down the lifecycle of successful educational programming. The first half of the workshop goes in depth on past programs implemented across Pakistan, Egypt, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The presenter will share pedagogical outcomes, systemic impacts on teacher professional development, and the distinct operational challenges faced when running intensive initiatives in resource-variable environments. Rather than viewing the conclusion of traditional international funding cycles as an endpoint, this session reframes the changing landscape as an opportunity for local innovation, adaptation, and self-sufficiency. The second half shifts to forward-looking, actionable strategy. Participants will explore alternative regional funding avenues, corporate social responsibility partnerships, and institutional collaborations capable of sustaining these high-impact models. Through a collaborative blueprinting activity, attendees will work in teams to identify local stakeholder resources and map out potential cross-institutional networks for future teacher training or student initiatives. Ultimately, this workshop aims to bring together proactive educators, school leaders, and consultants to form collaborative communities of practice. By the end of the session, participants will leave with a concrete framework for developing their own localized programs and a network of potential partners ready to advance their communities and Vietnam's goals.

This 60-minute workshop focuses on teacher-trainer course design for English-medium instruction (EMI) and its transformative role in international colleges and universities. Participants will explore various curriculum model options that effectively integrate English language learning with subject content, fostering an immersive educational experience for both teachers and students. We will examine innovative assessment strategies tailored to English medium contexts, ensuring that evaluations reflect students' language and content mastery. Additionally, the workshop will address essential teacher support mechanisms, highlighting professional development opportunities and resources that empower educators to thrive in English medium settings. The workshop will include activities where participants will discuss and share opinions and experiences. The activities are intended for everyone to participate actively to foster more interaction and less lecturing so that the experience can be more memorable and beneficial to specific professional purposes. Join us for a session aimed at enhancing understanding and implementation of English-medium instruction in diverse educational landscapes.

Artificial intelligence tools are rapidly changing how English teachers create classroom materials, allowing lessons, quizzes, and activities to be generated within seconds. However, faster content production does not necessarily lead to deeper language processing or more meaningful communication. In many classrooms, students move quickly through visually polished activities without sufficient opportunities to notice language patterns, negotiate meaning, or actively construct understanding. At the same time, many teachers work in contexts where technology access is uneven or classroom device use remains limited, creating uncertainty about how AI can realistically support language learning. This hands-on workshop explores how teachers can utilize AI-generated materials while maintaining strong pedagogical foundations for communicative language teaching. Through classroom-tested activities for pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar instruction, participants will explore how typography, visual organization, and learner-generated tasks can shape attention and reduce cognitive overload. The workshop also examines how collaborative task design can support interaction, language processing, and more meaningful classroom participation. The workshop also demonstrates practical ways to adapt outputs from tools such as NotebookLM into low-tech and classroom-friendly learning tasks that promote deeper participation rather than passive task completion. Participants will leave with practical design principles, adaptable activity frameworks, and immediately usable strategies for creating more cognitively supportive and communicative English learning experiences in diverse teaching contexts.

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 prioritize communicative competence and a "language usage ecosystem," yet limited research has synthesized how empowering tools such as board games or card games for authentic learning (Poole, 2025) and intercultural learning (Spano, 2021) specifically support intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and learner belonging during this transition. This workshop addresses that gap by examining theoretical foundations, including ICC, sociocultural theory, game-based learning, and self-determination theory, alongside inviting participants to join in three sessions of three different analog games to experience first-hand how a game-based lesson is conducted. Drawing on recent scholarship, the workshop also analyzes how tabletop games create rule-bound social systems that offer structured, low-stakes environments for negotiation, collaboration, and identity expression. Lastly, the workshop contributes a conceptual framework for using board games to foster learner voice and sustainable belonging. This highlights the significance of analog games as vital tools for educators navigating Vietnam’s systemic evolution toward a more communicative, ESL-oriented pedagogical landscape.

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has gained increasing attention worldwide due to its positive impact on student well-being, engagement, and academic success. However, despite its growing importance, SEL remains underexplored in many English language teaching contexts in Asia (Bai et al., 2024). As language learning is closely connected to emotions, confidence, relationships, and classroom interaction, integrating SEL into EFL instruction can help create more supportive and effective learning environments (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). This 90-minute interactive workshop introduces participants to the fundamental principles of SEL and demonstrates how these can be integrated into English language classrooms. As Vietnam moves toward an increasingly English-mediated environment, learners need not only language proficiency but also confidence, resilience, collaboration skills, and empathy to communicate effectively. Through interactive quizzes, reflective discussions, and hands-on activities, participants will experience practical SEL-based strategies that can be readily adapted to various EFL contexts. The workshop consists of three parts: an overview of SEL in language education, a guided session featuring SEL-integrated classroom activities, and collaborative adaptation of these activities to participants’ own teaching contexts. By the end of the session, participants will be able to identify key SEL principles in language education, recognize the role of emotions in learning and participation, apply simple SEL strategies to enhance classroom climate and engagement, and reflect on their own emotional experiences as teachers. Participants will leave with practical ideas and adaptable activity templates for immediate classroom use. Designed for English language teachers, teacher trainers, and educators interested in student-centered pedagogy, this workshop offers accessible approaches to embedding SEL into everyday teaching practice.

This doctoral study examines the use of Change Laboratory, a formative intervention grounded in Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), as both a professional development model and a research methodology to support teacher learning during Vietnam’s transition from English as a foreign language to English as a second language. The study focuses on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers working at two primary schools, who face the dual challenge of teaching subject content and English. Adopting a bottom-up approach, Change Laboratory positions CLIL teachers as co-analysts of their own activity system. Through participation in a structured expansive learning cycle, teachers engaged in empirical and historical analysis to identify systemic contradictions in their work, collaboratively model and implement solutions, and evaluate and consolidate changes in practices. Within this process, teachers examined emerging CLIL-related tensions, including curriculum and textbook demands, content and linguistic knowledge requirements, and CLIL pedagogical approaches. These analyses informed their design of locally responsive pedagogical solutions aimed at renewing CLIL teaching practice. The forum presentation introduces the theoretical and conceptual framework, research design, and methodological rationale with particular attention to how Change Laboratory processes were intentionally designed to support pedagogical renewal in relation to CLIL’s dual focus on content and language. It also reflects on key ethical and methodological challenges of conducting intervention-based research in a highly exam-orientated educational context. The session invites critical feedback on the study’s methodological approach and contributes to broader discussions on innovative, context-responsive professional development models for CLIL teachers in Vietnam.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) has become increasingly popular in EFL education due to its potential to promote active learning, collaboration, and learner-centered practices (Thomas, 2000; Bell, 2010). At the same time, learner agency has emerged as an important educational goal, as it enables students to take an active role in shaping their learning experiences (van Lier, 2008; Mercer, 2012). This study explores how collaborative PBL practices influence learner agency among university EFL students, focusing on both enabling and constraining factors. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, survey questionnaires, reflection journals, and project documents. The findings indicate that collaborative PBL supports learner agency by creating opportunities for shared decision-making, peer support, collaborative problem-solving, and greater ownership of learning, which are consistent with sociocultural views of learning as mediated through interaction and participation (Vygotsky, 1978; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). However, the results also reveal several challenges, including unequal participation, free-riding behaviors, dominance by certain group members, and assessment-related pressures, which may limit students’ opportunities to exercise voice, choice, and autonomy. The study suggests that learner agency is not an automatic outcome of project-based learning but is shaped by the ways collaborative practices are organized and experienced (Biesta & Tedder, 2007). Therefore, careful attention should be given to promoting equitable participation, shared responsibility, and meaningful decision-making opportunities in collaborative PBL environments to maximize students’ agentic engagement.

As Vietnam gradually repositions English from a foreign language to a second language, English classrooms are increasingly expected to promote authentic communication, critical thinking, and intercultural interaction. However, greater authenticity in language use also raises pedagogical concerns regarding taboo, controversial, and emotionally triggering topics. This conceptual paper discusses the challenges English teachers may encounter when sensitive issues such as politics, religion, gender, sexuality, mental health, war, and social inequality emerge in classroom discussions. Drawing on current ELT discourse and the traditional PARSNIP framework commonly used in language teaching and assessment, the paper argues that complete avoidance of sensitive topics may no longer reflect the realities of contemporary English use in digitally connected and globally influenced contexts. At the same time, unrestricted discussion may create discomfort, cultural tension, or emotional risks within Vietnamese classrooms. The paper therefore examines the tension between communicative authenticity and sociocultural appropriateness in Vietnam’s emerging ESL environment. Rather than advocating either censorship or unrestricted openness, the paper proposes a balanced pedagogical approach that encourages contextual sensitivity, teacher awareness, and critical intercultural competence. The discussion offers practical implications for classroom communication, curriculum design, and teacher professional development in Vietnam’s evolving English language education landscape.

Despite educational reforms prioritizing "communicative competence," traditional classrooms are often dominated by mechanical grammar and vocabulary drills that fail to bridge the gap between controlled practice and real-world language use. Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is the most theoretically and empirically supported method for second language acquisition that develops communicative competence through authentic language use. TBLT has been shown through a meta-analysis to be more effective than the traditional approach of Present-Practice-Produce with a large effect size in promoting communicative abilities. However, due to the lack of task-based course books among other factors, the implementation of TBLT has been limited. This hands-on workshop addresses this challenge by guiding teachers to design diverse and potentially engaging tasks based on the Global Success books used in Vietnam. Participants will first be introduced to the four criteria for tasks including a primary focus on meaning, learners using their own linguistic resources, a communicative gap, and clearly defined communicative outcomes. The workshop guides participants through the experience and development of tasks categorized by discourse types and communicative gaps. Participants will also explore implementation factors, such as the various stages of the task cycle. Drawing from her published works and classroom experience, the presenter will showcase concrete examples ranging from in-person group activities to interactions with a TBLT dialogue agent. Participants will walk away with a deeper understanding of TBLT and its theoretical foundations, along with a practical framework and fresh ideas to develop engaging tasks for their own classrooms.

This presentation reports on the curriculum redesign and pedagogical implementation of an English-Medium Instruction (EMI) across two diverse higher education contexts: Software Testing course and a Comparative Educational Administration course following participation in an intensive eight-week EMI professional development program. Responding to current demands for English proficiency, and globalization and industry oriented competencies in Information Technology education and international education. Both projects reconceptualized traditionally lecture-dominated courses into a learner-centered EMI environment integrating content mastery, professional communication, and learner autonomy. Drawing upon principles of task-based and project-based learning from autotechnographic studies, the redesigned courses incorporated EMI scaffolding strategies across syllabus development, lesson planning, assessment design, and classroom interaction. Key interventions included structured vocabulary support, reading and listening scaffolds, mini-lectures, peer teaching, collaborative problem-solving, reflective journals, and authentic project-based testing tasks. Assessment practices were refined through formative feedback mechanisms and rubric-based evaluation emphasizing both technical performance and disciplinary communication in English. To strengthen the connection between classroom learning and professional practice, the courses further integrated experiential learning activities, including company visits, alumni mentoring sessions, and industry and professional workshops led by software testing practitioners and international education scholars. Preliminary observations suggest increased student engagement, participation, confidence, and independent learning behaviors within EMI settings. This presentation contributes practical and pedagogical insights into EMI curriculum development for Information Technology and Comparative Education disciplines and highlights strategies for balancing technical rigor with language support in Vietnamese and comparable EFL higher education contexts.

Critical incidents are unplanned and unexpected events that occur during lessons and prompt teachers to reflect on teaching and learning. Regardless of an institution’s context or teaching approach, such incidents are a natural part of classroom life and can provide valuable opportunities for teacher learning. Analysing these moments can help educators develop greater reflective awareness and refine their classroom practice (Richards & Farrell, 2005). In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the concept of critical incidents and consider their potential advantages and limitations for teacher professional development. Drawing on McCabe’s model (2002), participants will examine ways of describing classroom incidents and reflect on the factors that make them “critical.” They will also have an opportunity to share and analyse incidents from their own teaching practice, allowing them to exchange perspectives, explore new solutions, and support one another through collaborative reflection. As a result, participants will leave the session with insights gained from reflecting on both their own and others’ critical incidents, as well as practical strategies for incorporating critical incident analysis into teacher training. These strategies can be adapted to participants’ own educational contexts to support reflective practice and facilitate teachers’ professional development.

As Việt Nam continues to press toward foreign language integration, especially English as a second language, content teachers have the dual burden of learning English and teaching in it across the curriculum. The path to empowering students through content and language integration is eased with the help of English teachers’ language support courses for teachers in content areas using English as the Medium of Instruction (EMI). EMI teachers are also tasked with moving beyond traditional methods (teacher-centered lectures) to methodology that engages students and enlivens language. By weaving in the 4Cs (Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity), teachers using EMI can begin to point their students toward global citizenship with 21st-century practices that are student-centered. In this workshop, we will acknowledge the challenges EMI teachers face. With the time we have, we will examine two Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) EMI lesson plans, identifying the features that make just one of them a 21st-century plan with integrated 4Cs. Participants will then use that model to recreate one lesson plan they teach that needs a 4Cs “makeover.” Participants will leave the workshop with the full presentation to review, the model lesson plans for comparison, and new professional insight into why and how to begin making learning both practical and engaging.

EMI (English as medium of instruction) has been implemented globally and regionally over the recent years (Dafouz & Smit, 2016; Macaro et al., 2018), including in Vietnam since the 1990s. Additionally, the theoretical frameworks of learner and teacher agency studies (Chen et al., 2020; Gao, 2019; Ngo, 2024) have contributed to the studies of EMI in higher education, particularly in relation to learner and teacher agency. Moreover, the theories of the six dimensions of ROAD-MAPPING and language policy and planning (LPP) have been integrated into stakeholders’ agency. The paper aims to examine the vital role of stakeholders’ agency in EMI implementation in higher education in one university of the Mekong Delta (MD), Vietnam. The study employed a qualitative research methodology, involving in-depth interviews with six lecturers, four students, and two market employers in MD, Vietnam. The research employed NVivo to code (sub)themes for content analysis. The findings of the study reveal four themes regarding the research gaps, research questions, and theoretical and conceptual frameworks: (1) decision-making; (2) language construction; (3) identity construction; and (4) contextual construction in EMI implementation in higher education. The discussion about their agency would also be clarified compared to the literature, particularly from 2020 to 2026, to compare the findings, analysis, and previous studies, negotiating with the Vietnamese MOET, policymakers, educators, and researchers, even in the regional areas like Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, to get insights into the context. The limitations of the study would also contribute to further EMI studies with the agency.

This hands-on workshop gives English educators and curriculum administrators a practical framework for crafting institutional AI policy that moves beyond prohibition toward design. Drawing on recent research from MIT Media Lab, Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the session establishes that the cognitive skills AI erodes, including critical thinking, independent writing, oral argumentation, and analytical reading, are the very skills English education exists to develop. It also notes that a decade of smartphone-driven decline had already weakened these faculties before generative AI entered classrooms. Using the analogy of strength training and muscle atrophy, participants examine why protecting cognitive struggle is not a pedagogical preference but a neurological necessity. Through four structured micro-tasks (sorting student behaviors, diagnosing a weak institutional policy, assessing the feasibility of AI-resistant assessments, and committing to a first action), participants work in small groups to apply eight alternative assessment models, such as Oxford-style oral defenses and process portfolios. During this collaborative phase, attendees evaluate how these specific models can be adapted for their unique regional contexts and student populations to ensure academic integrity remains intact. Participants leave with four printed reference handouts covering the evidentiary case for change, ten policy drafting commitments with a self-check tool, all eight assessment models with implementation notes, and a personal action commitment card. The workshop is designed for educators from ministries and universities who need to brief leadership or redesign assessment practices in response to AI, and who want a framework grounded in evidence rather than anxiety.

While mastering collocations is vital for natural and fluent expression, vocabulary instruction in many high schools remains heavily dependent on memorizing stagnant, isolated wordlists. This rigid word-to-word translation often acts as a major barrier, causing EFL learners to produce awkward, unnatural phrases. To tackle this persistent issue, this 60-minute interactive workshop offers language teachers a suite of dynamic, low-resource classroom games using America250 historical and cultural narratives to make collocation instruction deeply memorable. The session opens with a practical look at the lexical approach, illustrating how teachers can shift their focus from single vocabulary items to meaningful linguistic chunks. Participants will experience three versatile classroom activities firsthand using America250 content, including "Collocation Speed Dating" for kinaesthetic matching, "The Domino Effect" for structural reinforcement, and "AI-Generated Collocation Stories" to demonstrate how digital tools can spark creative language output. Drawing on real-world experience from large high school classrooms, the presenters will share insights on how these activities can seamlessly bridge the gap between heavy syllabus requirements and active communication. The workshop concludes with a hands-on collaborative segment where attendees will work in small groups to adapt these games to specific textbook units. Participants will take away concrete pedagogical tools and downloadable templates ready for immediate classroom application.

Creating meaningful assessments is an essential part of English language teaching, yet designing quizzes, setting answer keys, grading responses, and providing feedback can require considerable time and effort. By leveraging accessible digital tools, educators can streamline assessment practices while enhancing the learning experience. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how automated quiz design can support efficient and effective assessment in ELT classrooms using America250 historical and cultural resources. The presenters will showcase practical approaches to designing digital quizzes that automatically score, provide immediate feedback, and organize student performance data using America250 materials. Participants will analyze examples of assessment tasks adaptable for various proficiency levels and teaching contexts. In addition, participants will evaluate the benefits of automated assessment—such as reduced administrative workload, instant feedback, and data-driven progress monitoring—while addressing common implementation challenges. Common challenges and practical considerations for implementation will also be addressed. The session will offer hands-on ideas and classroom-ready strategies that teachers can immediately apply in their own contexts. Attendees will collaborate to draft a template for an automated quiz using ready-made strategies. By the end of the session, participants will be equipped to build efficient digital assessments that support student learning through timely, actionable feedback

Language teachers invest considerable time commenting on student writing, yet a persistent gap remains between the feedback provided and the feedback learners actually act upon. Research locates this gap not in delivery but in reception: learners engage with feedback affectively, behaviourally, and cognitively, and these dimensions operate simultaneously and interdependently (Ellis, 2010; Han & Hyland, 2015). This hands-on workshop, designed for English language teachers and university lecturers, uses Ellis’s three-dimensional framework as both its content and its method. Participants will first experience the framework from the learner’s seat, through a live demonstration of a working AI marker built on it: they receive a student draft, watch a first feedback round respond exclusively through Socratic questioning, revise on paper guided only by those questions, and then watch a second round deliver targeted, criterion-referenced correction that quantifies publicly how much self-revision the questions alone produced. Each round is debriefed through the same lens: which dimension did this design choice serve? The workshop then turns the framework into a design brief. Working in groups, participants will specify their own AI marker: mapping each engagement dimension to concrete feedback requirements, prompt rules, and the teacher’s place in the loop — and stress-testing their quality-control eye by diagnosing which dimension flawed AI output collapses first. Throughout, students never interact with the AI directly; the teacher curates every exchange.Participants leave with a design-specification worksheet, an engagement-diagnostic checklist, and the rationale to build — and defend — an AI marking workflow of their own.

Vietnam’s aspiration to transform English from a foreign language into a second language reflects a form of classical language planning in a society shaped by market socialism, neoliberal reforms, and postmodern realities. Although leveraging the linguistic capital of English for societal goals carries a utopian appeal, experience from Asia and elsewhere shows that such ambitions are often only partially realised in practice. In some societies, English has been even viewed as a “white elephant” which consumes precious national resources but produces limited outcomes. This presentation will seek a middle ground between idealised goals and pessimistic projections. It is organised into three parts. The first examines the policy through relevant theoretical lenses and outlines its underlying rationale. The second identifies common pitfalls observed in other national contexts and considers how Vietnam might avoid them. The third focuses on policy enactment, highlighting priorities, enabling conditions, and incentives that can support more sustainable results. The presentation will conclude by inviting all stakeholders to claim the policy, be part of its enactment process, and remake English as a Vietnamese public good in line with the national ambition.

Conventional grading systems, built on partial credit, averaged scores, opaque rubrics, or teachers’ intuition, often obscure rather than communicate what students can actually do. Specifications grading offers a compelling alternative: assignments are assessed on a pass/fail basis against clearly defined criteria, with bundled token systems allowing students strategic flexibility. While the model has gained traction in higher education, its adoption in ELT and teacher training contexts remains limited, and practitioners face real implementation challenges that the literature does not always address. This paper presentation reports on the instructor's experience adapting specifications grading for a university-level teacher training course in Vietnam. Drawing on Nilson's updated framework (2025) and Clark and Talbert's advocacy for rehumanising assessment through alternative grading practices (2023), the presenter examines three core challenges encountered during implementation: designing discipline-appropriate specifications, managing workload sustainably, and helping trainees transition away from grade-seeking behaviours. Participant survey data and assignment revision patterns are used to illustrate how these challenges were navigated across one academic semester. Attendees will leave with a replicable design template for specifications-based assessment, practical strategies for introducing the system to resistant learners, and a realistic framework for piloting the approach in their own professional development or ELT courses. The session invites reflection on how alternative assessment models can better align with communicative, competency-based goals central to contemporary English language teaching.

The study investigated EFL teachers’ experiences and perceptions regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in conducting Master’s-level research in the Vietnamese context. A mixed-methods design was employed, utilizing a questionaire with 99 EFL teachers and semi-structured interviews with 10 teachers. The findings revealed that the teachers had positive and open attitudes toward using AI to support their research; however, they expressed several doubts and concerns. The EFL teachers reported using various AI-supported tools for multiple purposes, with a focus on searching for sources and synthesizing the literature; supporting academic writing, and outlining and developing ideas. They perceived eight benefits of using AI in assisting them to search for and synthesize the literature; enhance academic writing; develop independent research; develop ideas and make outlines; promote critical thinking and creativity; save time and increase writing quality; analyze and interpret data; cite sources and detect plagiarism. However, they also identified seven barriers hindering the effective use of AI, including a lack of data accuracy and reliability; teachers’ insufficient understanding of AI limitations; limited critical thinking ability; risks of confidentiality and privacy breaches; inappropriate policies and incentives; fake sources; ethical issues and academic integrity concerns; insufficient AI literacy; and Internet disconnection. Accordingly, the teachers highlighted key ethical concerns regarding data accuracy; research ethics; critical thinking, understanding of AI limitations; acknowledgement of AI use; AI detection, plagiarism, and citations. Finally, several implications are proposed to improve Vietnamese EFL teachers’ experiences and perceptions toward utilizing AI for conducting research in postgraduate education.

This study aimed to examine whether students showed any improvement through gamified ESP vocabulary lessons on the online platform Kahoot! at a Vietnamese university. It also explored the students’ perceptions of benefits and challenges of using this platform for ESP vocabulary learning. Action research with the two-loop cyclical process was employed in an ESP class to implement the three-phase teaching of ESP vocabulary. Both quantitative and qualitative were collected through tests and questionnaires administered to 29 students, as well as semi-structured interviews with six students. After two cycles with necessary adaptations, the results revealed that the application of gamified learning positively impacted the students’ ESP vocabulary proficiency. Moreover, gamified learning was perceived as highly beneficial to the students in terms of improved language knowledge and digital literacy; increased engagement and interest; enhanced learner quality development, and a more effective learning environment. Nevertheless, the students also reported four groups of barriers when interacting with this gamified learning platform, ranked in descending order of agreement: institution-related, student-related, teacher-related, and technology-related barriers. The findings highlighted several major hindrances, such as internet disconnection, limited financial support, unsupportive teaching policies, and limited English proficiency and digital literacy while teacher-related challenges were considered the least serious. Finally, several pedagogical implications are provided to maximize its benefits and mitigate the existing limitations, thereby ensuring a more effective implementation of gamified learning to enhance Vietnamese students’ ESP vocabulary learning.

Repositioning English from a Foreign Language (EFL) to a Second Language (ESL) requires practical community engagement, wherein provincial universities play a pivotal role. This study evaluates the effectiveness of applying the Total Quality Management (TQM) model to Service-Learning activities to facilitate this linguistic transition. A mixed-methods case study was conducted at Pham Van Dong University. Quantitative data were collected using total population sampling of the entire cohort of final-year English pre-service teachers undergoing their graduation practicum, ensuring absolute representation of the intervention group. Qualitative data were gathered via semi-structured interviews with local learners, applying purposive sampling until data saturation was reached. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Findings indicate that integrating TQM enhances pedagogical responsiveness to learner needs and significantly reduces psychological barriers, resulting in an increased frequency of daily English usage among local residents. The study proposes a practical management framework to help provincial universities optimize student resources, fulfill their University Social Responsibility (USR), and contribute to regional language development strategies.

Abstract
Overseas postgraduate study has become an important pathway for language teachers’ professional development. While previous studies have largely examined how returnee teachers negotiate their identities and adapt their pedagogical practices, less attention has been paid to how they understand and interpret themselves as professionals in the post-return phase. Addressing this gap, this study explores the professional self-understandings of Vietnamese EFL returnee lecturers through Kelchtermans’ (2009) framework of professional self, comprising five dimensions: self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, task perception, and future perspective. Adopting a qualitative multiple-case study design, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with four Vietnamese university EFL lecturers who completed MA TESOL programs in the United Kingdom and subsequently returned to higher education institutions in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Data were analyzed thematically using Kelchtermans’ framework as an analytical lens. Findings suggest that participants developed positive professional self-images as competent English users, university lecturers, and emerging academics. Overseas study appeared to strengthen their self-esteem through enhanced linguistic confidence, pedagogical expertise, and research-related knowledge. Their job motivation was shaped by commitments to student learning, professional growth, and intellectual engagement, while task perceptions extended beyond classroom teaching to include mentoring, curriculum development, and scholarly activities. Future perspectives were characterized by aspirations for doctoral study, greater research engagement, and broader contributions to higher education. The study contributes to the literature on returnee teachers by demonstrating the value of examining professional identity through teachers’ professional self-understandings. Implications for teacher education, institutional support, and the professional development of returnee lecturers are discussed.
Keywords: professional identity, professional self, EFL returnee lecturers

This study examines how 15 B1–B2 level students in a multicultural Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) English Communication class at a private university in Tokyo perceived content-aligned small talk activities, framed through the heuristic pyramid model of willingness to communicate (WTC; MacIntyre et al., 1998). During a 13-week semester, students engaged in ten five-minute conversational sessions, six of which with instructor-prepared content-aligned questions and four with open prompts. At the end of the semester, a bilingual survey consisting of 16 Likert items and open-ended questions was administered. Data gathered were analyzed quantitatively and through reflexive thematic analysis. Students reported strong enjoyment (M = 4.40), low nervousness (M = 2.73), and near-universal agreement that small talk should occur every session (93.3%). Identified themes mapped clearly onto WTC pyramid layers, namely, rising state communicative self-confidence, interpersonal and intergroup motivation in the multicultural cohort, and transfer to L2 use beyond the classroom such as at English café, part-time work, and other courses. Japanese and international students differed in how they articulated benefits, with Japanese students foregrounding anxiety-to-confidence shifts and international students foregrounding intergroup motivation. Implications are drawn for L2 pedagogy in multicultural higher education contexts where WTC development is a curricular priority.

Textbooks play a central role in English Language Teaching (ELT) by providing structured content and guiding instructional practices. In Vietnam, the Global Success textbook series has been officially adopted for nationwide use from the 2026-2027 academic year and is claimed to be developed according to the communicative approach in alignment with the 2018 General Education English Curriculum. However, limited research has systematically examined the extent to which these materials operationalise communicative principles, particularly in reading tasks, which constitute a major source of language input and are crucial for students’ performance in high-stakes examinations at the end of Grade 9. This study investigates reading tasks in the Global Success textbooks for lower secondary students (Grades 6-9). It aims to critically evaluate the extent to which these tasks align with CLT principles. For this purpose, a set of CLT-based criteria was synthesised from the literature, and a modified version of Littlejohn’s (2011) task analysis framework was employed to analyse selected units across the four textbooks. The analysis generates frequency counts and percentage indices, with a scoring scheme to compare the degree of communicativeness. The findings are expected to provide evidence-based insights into the communicative value of the textbooks and inform pedagogically principled adaptation in classroom practice.

In many Vietnamese public high schools, vocabulary instruction continues to rely heavily on rote memorization of isolated word lists. While this approach may support short-term recall, it often results in limited lexical depth and unnatural language use. This study argues that developing structured lexical networks, rather than expanding vocabulary size alone, is essential for fostering flexible and accurate language production in Vietnam’s evolving ESL-oriented context. Grounded in schema theory and research on lexical semantics (e.g., Sotoudehnama & Soleimanifard, 2013; Altay, 2017), the paper examines how hierarchical relations (hyponymy), part-whole structures (meronymy), and collocational patterns can be systematically incorporated into instruction. Insights from studies on conceptual grouping and corpus-informed learning suggest that organizing vocabulary into meaningful networks enhances long-term retention and reduces substitution errors influenced by first-language transfer. Drawing on classroom-based examples from Vietnamese secondary settings, the paper outlines practical strategies such as semantic mapping, guided collocation analysis, and introductory data-driven learning (DDL) activities. Participants will (1) analyze sample classroom tasks aligned with these principles, (2) identify strategies for adapting vocabulary instruction to their own contexts, and (3) formulate recommendations to promote metalinguistic awareness. The session concludes with implications for curriculum alignment and teacher development as Vietnam continues to strengthen communicative competence and academic literacy in English education.

Dividing syllable structure remains a major problem for Vietnamese EFL learners, primarily due to the structural differences between their mother tongue and English. While traditional resources provide basic phonetic transcriptions and meanings, they often lack detailed structural analysis. This project introduces SyllableLab, an automated CALL platform designed to provide a comprehensive solution for syllable study. The tool follows key phonological rules, such as the maximal onset principle and phonotactic constraints, to ensure that all syllable divisions are accurate. Besides normal features of a dictionary like British and American transcriptions and meanings, SyllableLab automatically divides a word's syllable structure into three main components, including onset, nucleus, and coda. By presenting these three components through visual tree diagrams, the platform allows learners to analyze and distinguish between complex syllable structures in both British and American English. Furthermore, three games related to onset, nucleus and coda enable students to reinforce their understanding, leading to improvement in pronunciation accuracy. The effectiveness of the platform was evaluated through a pilot study involving 40 EFL learners who engaged with fundamental phonological theory, visual tree diagrams, and interactive games in SyllableLab. The results indicate that this integrated approach significantly enhances learners' accuracy in syllable division and strengthens their phonological awareness. Ultimately, the author intends to contribute this platform to higher education institutions as a modern digital tool to support lecturers in their phonology lessons.

This study examines the effectiveness of a structured 4P strategic framework (Predicting, Pinpointing, Paraphrasing, and Polishing) in enhancing EFL learners’ real-time processing in gap-filling listening tasks. Addressing the persistent gap between learners’ metacognitive awareness and their ability to apply strategies under time pressure, the study operationalizes metacognitive listening strategies into a sequenced and task-specific framework. A mixed-methods quasi-experimental design was employed with 81 grade 11 students in Vietnam, assigned to an experimental group (n = 40) and a control group (n = 41) over a ten-week intervention. Quantitative data from pre- and post-tests were analyzed using paired and independent samples t-tests. Results showed a statistically significant improvement in the experimental group compared to the control group (p < .001), with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.95), indicating substantial practical impact. Qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews revealed increased strategic engagement, including reduced cognitive overload, more effective handling of lexical variation, and improved self-monitoring. These findings suggest that the 4P framework facilitates the proceduralization of metacognitive knowledge, bridging the gap between declarative understanding and real-time task performance. Pedagogically, the study offers a classroom-ready, step-by-step strategy sequence that supports learners’ listening processes in exam-oriented contexts. The study contributes to L2 listening research by providing an empirically validated model for integrating metacognitive strategy instruction into time-constrained assessment tasks.

English language classrooms are increasingly diverse, requiring more flexible approaches to support meaningful second language use. However, limited flexibility in instructional design can create barriers to engagement and understanding, particularly for neurodiverse and plurilingual learners. Using a reflective, practice based approach grounded in experience supporting students with disabilities as a class assistant, note taker, and tutor in higher education, this presentation examines challenges such as text heavy instructions, limited multimodal resources, and difficulties processing abstract academic language. Drawing on Universal Design for Learning, the presentation demonstrates, based on classroom observations and practice informed insights, how multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression can be applied to English language teaching. It further explores how digital tools and open educational resources can be used to adapt instructional materials, simplify complex texts, and support multimodal learning. Participants will gain practical strategies, including text adaptation and multimodal resource design, to reduce cognitive and linguistic barriers and create more accessible and inclusive English language learning environments.

This study investigates the implementation and pedagogical impact of the Systemic Functional Linguistics Genre-Based Approach (SFL-GBA) in secondary literacy education across global contexts. Drawing on a corpus of 33 empirical studies published between 1995 and 2024, the review maps how SFL-GBA has been enacted in Years 7-12 classrooms across diverse languages, learner populations, and regional contexts. The synthesis demonstrates that the approach effectively enhances students’ academic literacy and disciplinary writing, particularly when supported by well-trained teachers, culturally responsive pedagogy, and structured scaffolding frameworks. Integrating SFL-GBA with critical, translanguaging, and multimodal pedagogies further extends its relevance in linguistically diverse classrooms. The findings indicate that the long-term sustainability and scalability of SFL-GBA hinge on continuous teacher professional development and collaboration among educational stakeholders. Future research should broaden its application across linguistic and disciplinary domains and empower teachers as adaptive curriculum designers who can evolve SFL principles to meet shifting educational needs.

Vietnam's move from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to English as a Second Language (ESL), which is part of the 2025–2035 national language policy, is the beginning of a major change in the place of English in education. Though this shift is designed to encourage more students to use English in academic and professional settings, it raises concerns about equity in access and continuing proficiency gaps among students. This study investigates questions of equity within Vietnam’s transition from EFL to ESL by assessing the degree to which English language and language proficiency discrepancies influence students’ participation, learning experiences, and perceived access to English-mediated education. Using a mixed-methods study design, data were collected from around 150 university students using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Students’ readiness to engage with English and participation is divided between those with more advantaged backgrounds and those with less advantaged backgrounds. Students from more advantaged backgrounds can be reported as having more confidence, participation, and exposure to English in general, whereas those from less advantaged backgrounds have fewer and thus less opportunities to practice and support. Such disparities play a part in uneven classroom engagement and perceptions of fairness. This study highlights the requirement for ESL policy execution on an equity basis, focusing on inclusive pedagogical approaches, targeted support, and equitable access to learning opportunities.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly integrated into EFL classrooms to support digital multimodal composition (DMC). However, limited evidence explains why learners with similar proficiency levels experience GenAI-assisted tasks differently, particularly in affective engagement and vocabulary learning. This qualitative study investigates (1) how similarly proficient EFL learners differ in affective engagement during a GenAI-supported DMC pre-reading task and (2) how these differences relate to perceived vocabulary gains. Twenty Vietnamese undergraduates at CEFR B1 completed a DMC pre-reading task using ChatGPT to generate inquiry questions, clarify unfamiliar vocabulary, and create thematic illustrations, followed by a reading comprehension activity and an 11-item open-ended reflection. Data were analyzed thematically using Keller’s ARCS model (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction). Findings revealed substantial divergence despite identical task conditions. Most participants reported that vivid AI-generated visuals increased attention and helped topic comprehension, while some perceived outputs as generic and weakly relevant. Confidence was the most differentiating factor: students who iteratively refined prompts (typically two to three rounds) reported stronger self-efficacy and readiness for reading than one-shot prompters. Satisfaction and perceived vocabulary gains were highest when GenAI outputs aligned closely with reading content and learning goals, but decreased when outputs were unrealistic or cognitively overloaded. The study highlights prompt-iteration training and output-task alignment as key pedagogical conditions for effective GenAI-supported vocabulary learning.

As Vietnam moves from an EFL orientation toward wider use of ESL and English-medium instruction, English language teaching professionals have an important role to play beyond preparing students and lecturers for language readiness. This practice-oriented presentation examines how established expertise in ELT can contribute to English-medium instruction through pedagogy, curriculum support, classroom communication, and language-aware assessment. The session begins by clarifying English-medium instruction as the teaching and assessment of subject-specific content in English, while noting that definitions vary across contexts and institutions. It then considers the implications of recent national direction in Vietnam, where English is increasingly positioned as a working language in education rather than only a subject of study. Drawing on practical examples from language teaching, the presentation identifies transferable areas of ELT expertise, including but not limited to: communicative teaching approach techniques, collaborative learning, differentiation, and questioning techniques. Participants will be invited to reflect on how these practices can support subject teachers, students, and curriculum teams in English-medium environments. The presentation argues that English-medium instruction does not make English language teachers less relevant; instead, it makes their pedagogical knowledge more strategically important.

Despite ongoing reforms in English language education in Vietnam, a persistent gap remains in primary classrooms: students are exposed to English instruction, yet have limited opportunities to use the language meaningfully. This paper addresses the gap by proposing a practical, classroom-based approach to reposition English from a subject of study to a medium of everyday use. The study draws on an action research project conducted over one semester in a Vietnamese public primary school. The intervention integrates English into daily classroom routines, structured interaction, and task-based learning activities, enabling continuous and accessible language use. Rather than relying on ideal conditions, the approach is designed for real classrooms with typical constraints such as large class sizes and limited exposure. Data were collected through classroom observations, student work samples, and recordings of learner interactions. The findings show a clear increase in spontaneous language use, student participation, and communicative confidence. Notably, students began to initiate English use beyond teacher prompts, indicating a shift from passive learning to active language engagement. Based on these findings, the paper proposes the L.I.V.E Model (Language Integration for a Vital Ecosystem), consisting of four interconnected components: Language Routines, Interactional Scaffolding, Value-driven Tasks, and Experiential Reflection. The model provides a feasible and scalable framework for teachers seeking to create language-rich environments within public school contexts. This study offers both theoretical insight and practical implications for repositioning English in early education, particularly in resource-constrained EFL settings.

The globalisation of education has strengthened the position of English as the dominant lingua franca in higher education globally and across Asia. While certain countries, such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, have integrated English in teaching at both secondary and tertiary levels, Vietnam maintains a strong tradition of delivering the national curriculum in Vietnamese at the secondary level. However, the expansion of international universities within Vietnam and the introduction of English-medium programmes in national universities have created a linguistic and academic skills gap among students transitioning from local high schools to international university settings. This gap significantly impacts students' academic acculturation and influences their overall academic performance and experience. This presentation reports on a study conducted at British University Vietnam (2019-2026), focusing on pre-university and first-year undergraduate students enrolled in English for Academic Purposes courses. The study aimed to identify linguistic and academic challenges faced by Vietnamese students transitioning from monolingual secondary education to an English-medium university. A mixed-methods approach was employed, incorporating both quantitative data e.g. students' test results—and qualitative data derived from student reflections and questionnaire responses. Experiential learning theory was applied as the main research framework, and students were invited to continuously reflect on their learning experiences. The identified challenges broadly fall into two categories: language skills and academic skills. These findings create implications for future research and classroom application as the identified gap needs to be addressed at the pre-university level to support students’ transition to university.

This study examines how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools shapes academic procrastination, with a particular focus on the role of self-regulation in AI-mediated learning. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in educational contexts, it can function both as a cognitive support and as a shortcut that may alter students’ engagement with academic tasks. A mixed-method design was adopted. Quantitative data were collected from 180 undergraduate English-major students at a Vietnamese university using a structured questionnaire measuring AI use, AI-regulated self-regulation, and academic procrastination. An open-ended question was included to capture students’ experiences with AI in relation to task management and deadlines. The findings indicate that AI use is associated with both self-regulation and procrastination. More importantly, self-regulation mediates this relationship, suggesting that students’ ability to monitor and evaluate their use of AI determines whether it supports or undermines their learning. Qualitative responses further reveal that increased reliance on AI near deadlines may contribute to delayed task initiation, whereas more self-regulated learners use AI more selectively and strategically. This study contributes to ongoing discussions on technology-enhanced learning by reconceptualizing self-regulation in the age of AI and highlighting the need for AI-aware learning strategies in language education.

Although the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is widely used to describe language proficiency, classroom implementation often lags behind policy because teachers need practical routines that translate CEFR “can-do” descriptors into observable performance and usable formative evidence. This study examined whether a rotational pair-work intervention could improve Thai secondary students’ sentence-level writing when interpreting public signs through modal verbs. Thirty Thai Grade 9 EFL learners participated in a pretest–intervention–posttest design. The intervention used station rotation tasks in which learners constructed sentences from signs and conducted peer checking using three CEFR-informed criteria: grammatical accuracy, sentence construction, and orthographic control. Writing performance was assessed with a four-point rubric. Mixed-effects modelling showed a significant effect of test condition, indicating improved writing after the intervention. Pretest-to-posttest gains were observed across all criteria, with larger improvements in grammatical accuracy and sentence construction than in orthographic control. Overall, the findings suggest that repeated, low-stakes sentence writing combined with structured peer negotiation can make progress visible within ordinary lessons. The study proposes a practical, repeatable routine for embedding assessment for learning in everyday instruction, eliciting performance evidence, distributing formative feedback, and operationalizing CEFR descriptor dimensions as task-specific, observable scoring criteria for sentence-level classroom assessment without extensive curricular overhaul.

This talk explores the innovative ways we can incorporate positive psychology principles into SLA for adult learners to support their academic self-esteem, motivation, and performance. Positive psychology focuses on positive elements and well-being in human psyche and experience rather than only psychological problems and distress. It approaches human difficulties from the standpoint of strength instead of weakness. Traditional models of language teaching mainly focus on cognitive abilities and language skills while paying less attention to the psychological and emotional needs of learners. Nevertheless, the study by Wang et al. indicates that positive psychology interventions in educational environments go beyond reducing anxiety and lead to academic flourishing (Wang et al., 2021). Many adult learners in Vietnam come from exam- and performance-oriented educational backgrounds and bring the same expectations into language learning. Positive psychology interventions can help learners view learning as a process rather than focusing only on outcomes, encouraging greater autonomy and enjoyment in learning. I will introduce some activities adopted from a model called EMPATHICS to influence learners’ academic motivation, self-esteem, and performance. The EMPATHICS model, proposed by Rebecca Oxford (2016), considers different psychological aspects including emotion and empathy; meaning and motivation; perseverance and resilience; agency and autonomy; time; habits of mind; intelligences; character strengths; and self-factors, especially self-efficacy. This talk is based on my small-scale master’s dissertation research. The audience will leave the session with a good grasp of the model, as well as practical ideas they can utilize in their own classrooms.

At its core, the purpose of EFL for the vast majority of students is to facilitate interaction with non-Vietnamese visitors who are customers in a hospitality, tourism or commercial environment or to smooth the obstacles involved routine business dealings or travel overseas. For a much smaller but growing number, however, it is also to foster collaborative projects, develop skills that are not taught at a professional level in Vietnam, or develop and sustain friendships and social relationships. While these higher-level types of interactions do necessitate greater fluency and language facility, they are not dependent on any specific body of knowledge in English other than some specialized vocabulary. Under an English as a Second Language educational structure, however, a sizeable number of students will be expected to take classes in subjects such as maths, science and other subjects taught in English. Training instructors to teach these subjects in English will, of course, involve a transformation of the teacher-training system that is certain to prove challenging. In the meantime, however, existing CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) courses that are part of an EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) program can give insights into how to implement the curriculum overhaul that will take place in the next decade. The presenter will share his long experience implementing CLIL-based instruction within modified EMI environments in both Japan and Vietnam using a Task-Based Learning approach that can help smooth the transition to ESL.

Research that examines longitudinal growth of lexical sophistication in L2 writing offers useful implications for setting realistic goals, providing learners with relevant learning contents, and devising suitable assessment practices. However, this examination is often moderated by text length and topic familiarity and consequently most studies in this area have controlled these two factors at the group level, leaving the investigation at the individual level almost unexplored. The present study filled this gap. To this end, it tracked the changing pattern in 17 representative indices of lexical sophistication across three sets of 16 statistical reports written by the same 16 English-majored high-school students in Vietnam at the end of their grade 10, 11 and 12. Their text lengths were measured by tokens and topic familiarity was rated by each learner using a five-point Likert scale. A mixed-effects general linear regression model was used to gauge the predictive power of time, text length and topic familiarity for the above 17 indices. The results showed that apart from the strong and consistent predictive power of time, text length could account for their lexical sophistication growth for three word-level indices (i.e., word meaningfulness, SUBTLEXus-Range, and SUBTLEXus-Frequency), while topic familiarity could do so for three phrasal-level indices (i.e., COCA-Academic-Bigram-Frequency, COCA-Academic-Bigram-Range, and COCA-Academic-Tri-Prop-30k) and one word-level index (i.e., Age of Exposure). These findings altogether suggest that the control of these two variables at the group level might distort their true relationship with the individual lexical sophistication growth, which in turn might misinform our instructional practices.

This study investigates an innovative multimodal pedagogical framework designed to alleviate "translation paralysis" among nursing students at the CEFR A1 level. While traditional English for Specific Purposes (ESP) curricula often focus on rigid technical tasks that can overwhelm beginner learners, this model shifts the educational paradigm by utilizing Human-AI synergy. Under this framework, students are empowered as "AI Directors," leveraging generative AI tools and OpenAI technologies to bridge the gap between their professional intuition and their limited linguistic proficiency. The methodology required participants to draft healthcare-related copywriting following the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model, while simultaneously employing image generation features to create visual representations of innovative nursing products. This "Visual Scaffolding" approach aims to reduce cognitive overload by allowing students to conceptualize technical ideas through imagery before refining them into text. Key findings from a sample of 30 participants demonstrated statistically significant learning gains ($p < .001$) between initial drafts and final versions. Furthermore, qualitative analysis revealed a sophisticated Evolution of Literacy, as learners moved from vague descriptors to precise technical terminology like "portable hemodialysis device." Ultimately, the findings suggest that integrating AI as a mediatory bridge allows beginner learners to bypass the creativity-language gap, effectively fostering a stronger Professional Identity and enhancing technical communication skills in a high-stakes medical context.

Teacher identity is increasingly understood not as a fixed trait but as a dynamic multiplicity of “I-positions.” Drawing on Dialogical Self Theory (DST) by Herman (1992), this comparative case study examines how three Vietnamese EFL teachers reconstruct professional identity as they negotiate the external voices of an MA TESOL program. Data from semi-structured interviews and program-related reflections were analyzed through narrative analysis to develop within-case accounts of identity positioning, and thematic analysis to identify cross-case patterns of theory uptake, constraint, and adaptation. Findings suggest that academic theory does not produce uniform adoption; instead, it prompts differentiated dialogical strategies as teachers navigate tensions between established practitioner voices and newly introduced academic voices. Participants managed these tensions through three mechanisms: (1) building a meta-position that re-authorizes intuitive practice through scientific legitimacy; (2) using theoretical concepts as promoter signs to retrospectively validate previously marginalized practices; and (3) counter-positioning to resist theories perceived as incompatible with local teaching realities. The study challenges linear knowledge transfer assumptions in teacher education and reframes resistance to theory as potentially agentic identity work aimed at protecting professional coherence and student well-being.

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has reshaped higher education, particularly in technology-enhanced language learning (TELL). While digital transformation offers increased flexibility, accessibility, and learner autonomy, it also raises concerns regarding sustainability, including cognitive overload, reduced interaction, and imbalance between physical and digital learning environments. Despite extensive research on TELL, the concept of physical-digital balance remains under-explored and insufficiently operationalised in empirical studies. This study investigates how a sustainable physical-digital balance can be understood and maintained in Vietnamese tertiary EFL classrooms. Grounded in Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), Digital Learning Ecology (Barron, 2006; Luckin, 2010), and the learning ecosystem perspective (OECD, 2021), the study proposes a conceptual framework of sustainable physical-digital balance in TELL to capture the integration of face-to-face and technology-mediated learning practices. Employing a sequential explanatory mixed-methods research design, quantitative data are first collected through a structured survey administered to students and lecturers, followed by qualitative interviews to elaborate and contextualise the survey findings to provide deeper insights into how a sustainable physical-digital balance in TELL can be conceptualised and sustained within the context of Vietnamese higher education. Quantitative data are analysed using descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis to examine relationships among digital competence, pedagogical practices, perceived balance, student engagement, and learning outcomes, with digital overload considered as a moderating factor. Qualitative data are coded and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings contribute theoretically by operationalising the concept of physical-digital balance as a measurable construct within sustained TELL, and practically by offering evidence-based insights for educators and institutions seeking to design balanced and sustainable digital learning environments in the context of higher education. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

This study examines academic burnout among Vietnamese university students preparing for a high-stakes English proficiency test in the context of its growing social and educational significance. In Vietnam, such tests function not only as measures of language proficiency but also as forms of linguistic capital associated with academic access, employability, and social prestige. Their rapid expansion, commercialization, and visibility in social media have intensified pressure surrounding test preparation. However, the impact of this pressure on learner well-being remains underexplored. Drawing on linguistic capital and Conservation of Resources theory, this study investigates whether perceived social pressure predicts academic burnout and how collectivist cultural values shape learners’ experiences. The study proposes that social pressure may lead learners to increase study intensity, which over time contributes to resource depletion and burnout. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design is employed. Phase 1 consists of a survey of 150 university students from multiple universities in Vietnam. Quantitative data are analyzed using reliability testing, descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression. Phase 2 involves semi-structured interviews with selected participants to explore how expectations are communicated and experienced. The study highlights the relationship between assessment practices, learner pressure, and well-being, and suggests the need for more sustainable and learner-sensitive approaches to English language education in Vietnam.

The positive effects of reflective practices in education have been widely reported. However, little research attention has focused on how to facilitate reflective practices among aspiring primary English teachers. Through four nine-week online courses delivered by educators in Australia to fourteen undergraduate students living in central Vietnam between February 2024 and March 2026, we offer a novel way of developing aspiring teachers’ reflective teaching and learning skills. In this presentation, we present a literature review of (1) the applications of sociocultural theory and reflective practices, (2) the integration of reflective practices and videos in teaching and learning, (3) we explain how the proposed five-dimensional reflective cycle framework, DATAE, can assist educators in the design of English courses, (4) how we design online learning activities to mentor aspiring primary teachers to reflect using the DATAE framework (5) then we present qualitative data posted by the participants on discussion forums via Moodle, (6) provide insights into undergraduate students’ learning experiences and their attitudes towards reflective learning and teaching (7) and finally we discuss the implications and provide recommendations. The findings from this study supports the view that DATAE framework is an effective strategy and videos are practical tools for educators to mentor aspiring teachers to practice reflective learning and teaching – even by distant educators. This study contributes to the literature of English-Medium Instructions, and it is in line with the Vietnamese national plan (2025–2035) in repositioning English as a compulsory second language in all schools by 2035.

This study examines how AI-generated personas can address the limitations of conventional role-play in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classrooms for Tourism students. Traditional classroom activities often fail to reflect the complexity and unpredictability of real-world service encounters.In this approach, AI tools are used to create diverse tourist profiles with different cultural backgrounds, communication styles, and behavioral traits, including demanding customers and situations involving misunderstanding or conflict. These profiles are embedded in task-based activities where students engage in role-play, problem-solving, and guided reflection. The study draws on a classroom-based implementation with 50 third-year students majoring in English for Tourism and Hospitality. Data are collected through observations, student reflections, and performance tasks to examine how these AI-supported scenarios influence communicative competence, intercultural awareness, and workplace readiness. Findings suggest that AI-generated personas increase engagement and expose learners to more varied communicative challenges. Integrating such tools into ESP teaching can better prepare students for communication in the tourism industry.

The study validates the self-regulation for AI-based learning scale (SRAILS) for measuring students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) in AI-driven English Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms at the Hanoi National University of Education in Vietnam. Using a mixed methods design, survey data were collected from 238 EMI students, followed by semi-structured interviews to interpret quantitative findings. The original 46-item SRAILS instrument demonstrated excellent reliability (Cronbach’s α = .969). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a refined 30-item scale comprising four dimensions: motivational components, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, time and study management, and environmental self-regulation, contextually adapted in Vietnam higher education. The validated structure confirms that SRAILS is a reliable and contextually appropriate instrument for assessing SRL behaviors in AI-driven EMI learning environments. Qualitative insights further reveal that while AI tools enhance motivation and strategic learning, language barriers in EMI contexts still challenge effective self-regulation. The study recommends integrating AI-supported SRL training and pedagogical guidance in EMI courses to strengthen students’ autonomous learning capacities in Vietnamese teacher-education programs.

As English-medium instruction (EMI) expands rapidly across Asian higher education, universities in Vietnam are increasingly mandating content teachers to deliver courses in English under national language policy initiatives. Despite a growing body of research on EMI teacher identity, two significant gaps persist: the Vietnamese context remains underrepresented, and the anticipatory phase when teachers negotiate their identities before EMI implementation begins has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner and Morris's (2006) Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT) ecological framework, this qualitative multiple case study examines how four content teachers across different disciplines at a Vietnamese university negotiate their professional identities in anticipation of a mandated EMI policy. Data were generated through in-depth semi-structured interviews and institutional policy documents and analyzed thematically using the PPCT framework as an analytical lens. Findings reveal complex identity tensions shaped by intersecting ecological layers from national policy pressures to disciplinary allegiances and imagined futures as EMI practitioners. This study contributes the concept of anticipatory identity negotiation to the EMI literature and offers implications for policy-sensitive EMI teacher development in Vietnam and comparable contexts.

Phrasal verbs (PVs) are a frequent yet notoriously difficult aspect of English vocabulary, occurring roughly once every 150–200 words in authentic discourse (Gardner & Davies,2007; Biber et al., 1999). Their idiomatic meanings, polysemy, and syntactic irregularities often hinder acquisition, particularly for learners in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. In Vietnam, the Global Success textbook series (Grades 10–12) provides a major source of input, yet little is known about how PVs are represented and how this aligns with learner knowledge. This study adopts a dual approach, combining a corpus-driven analysis of the Global Success series (74,370 words) with a diagnostic test of 43 high school learners. The corpus was examined for PV frequency, distribution, semantic transparency, and CEFR level, and results were benchmarked against the BNC2014 and PHaVE List. The diagnostic test, comprising 60 receptive and 60 productive items, was piloted and statistically validated (Cronbach’s α), enabling comparison between learner performance and textbook input. Findings show that the textbooks contain only 246 PV tokens (0.33% of the corpus), approximately half the density of authentic English. Coverage is uneven, with many PVs appearing only once and limited attention to polysemy. Learners performed better onhigh-frequency, transparent PVs recycled across grades but struggled with idiomatic or low-frequency items. Interestingly, several PVs absent from the textbooks were nonetheless known, reflecting extra-curricular exposure through media and online use.The study concludes that Global Success provides insufficient depth and recycling of PVs. Pedagogical implications highlight the need for systematic recycling, explicit treatment of polysemy, and supplementary materials to better support learners’ development of natural, idiomatic English.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines capable of performing tasks such as reasoning, learning, decision-making, and problem-solving (Russell & Norvig, 2021). This study investigates the application of AI in designing advanced English listening activities to support the preparation of high-achieving high school students for provincial-level English competitions. It specifically examines the effectiveness of AI-assisted tools in generating listening materials, increasing task complexity, and fostering higher-order listening skills among gifted learners. In this context, AI-assisted listening task design denotes the pedagogical integration of technologies to create and refine listening materials. These technologies enable teachers to generate authentic-like audio input and diversify task formats to meet the cognitive and linguistic demands of advanced learners. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study collects data through surveys, questionnaires, classroom observations, and analyses of learners’ performance. The participants include Grade 10 English-major students from Le Quy Don High School for the Gifted in Gia Lai Province, who are preparing for provincial-level English competitions. These students represent high-achieving learners with advanced language proficiency and strong academic motivation. Additionally, experienced English teachers and trainers evaluate authenticity, difficulty, and pedagogical suitability of AI-generated materials. The findings indicate that AI-assisted tools not only enrich task authenticity and variety but also enhance learner engagement, strengthens critical listening skills, and improves students’ readiness for competitive examinations. Overall, the study underscores the pedagogical potential of AI in advanced listening instruction and technology-enhanced language learning.

In the modern ESL classroom, smartphones often act as a double-edged sword, providing instant resources while simultaneously serving as a primary source of cognitive distraction. This presentation discusses the pedagogical outcomes of a "gated" technology policy implemented within a university-level IEP in Vietnam, where mobile devices are strictly put away except for highly targeted, time-bound tasks. This approach moves beyond a simple "no-phone" ban, instead focusing on intentionality and learner agency. The session outlines how periods of tech-free "deep work" compelled students to engage more effectively with physical textbooks and handwritten notes, fostering better retention and peer collaboration. Conversely, it examines how brief, teacher-directed intervals of phone use for specific tools—such as corpora or specialized dictionaries—complemented the learning process without leading to the passivity of automated translation. The presenter will share qualitative observations of student behavior, practical classroom management techniques for "putting away" and "bringing out" tech, and the impact this structure has on student focus and resourcefulness. Participants will leave with a practical framework for managing the "on/off" rhythm of technology to ensure that digital tools remain secondary to the SLA process, ultimately supporting a more sustainable and pedagogically sound classroom environment.

In Vietnam, IELTS Listening preparation is often dominated by mock-test practice, which is widely perceived as the fastest route to score improvement. However, this practice may restrict the development of essential cognitive and metacognitive strategies for effective listening. This qualitative study investigates how online one-to-one tutoring supports the development of these strategies through coursebook-based and mock-test-based activities. Drawing on classroom recordings, coursebook analysis, learner reflection logs, and interviews with tutors and learners, the study explores how listening strategies are taught, adapted, and applied in real-time instruction. Particular attention is given to how tutors mediate materials and how learners respond to strategy instruction while progressing from lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate listening proficiency. Findings reveal that coursebook-based instruction can provide useful structure for developing foundational listening strategies, but it does not automatically foster learners’ metacognitive reflection, error diagnosis, and independent strategy transfer. In this context, tutors play a critical mediating role by adapting materials and guiding practice. Mock tests, while beneficial for familiarization, require scaffolding to avoid overemphasis on surface-level test strategies. The study highlights the importance of instructional balance and tutor mediation in promoting listening strategy awareness, learner autonomy, and more effective test-preparation pedagogy in online one-to-one contexts.

This presentation discusses methodological strategies, challenges, and innovations in applying Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) within higher education. Drawing on Coyle’s (2007) 4Cs framework and Villabona and Cenoz’s (2022) findings on the difficulty of balancing content and language integration, it argues that effective CLIL requires a dynamic synthesis of cognitive, linguistic, and affective dimensions rather than a dichotomy between content-driven and language-driven approaches. Adopting a qualitative, classroom-based design, this study employs Science of Well-being and Spiritual Science and Social Diversity courses as illustrative cases to examine how CLIL can foster holistic learning, reflective thinking, and intercultural awareness. Data from student journals, classroom observations, and post-course surveys were analysed through the multidimensional engagement model of Philp and Duchesne (2016), encompassing cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and social dimensions. Findings indicate that reflective dialogue and concept-based scaffolding enhance learner engagement and language awareness, while key challenges remain in mediating abstract concepts and maintaining linguistic accessibility. The study concludes with a proposed integrative CLIL framework that extends beyond language and cognition, incorporating multidimensional engagement as an innovative approach for educators seeking to cultivate transformative, socially responsive CLIL practices.

As Vietnam moves towards treating English more as a second language than a foreign language, classrooms are under growing pressure to give students more chances to use English for genuine communication. In many classrooms, however, listening lessons still stop at checking answers, while speaking activities often remain controlled and predictable. This study explores whether listening-triggered drama tasks based on authentic materials can help create a small-scale “micro-ESL environment” in the EFL classroom, where listening leads into interaction. The study was conducted in two Grade 12 classes at a high school for the gifted in Vietnam. In each lesson, students worked with authentic texts containing social and emotional content, then took part in structured drama activities based on what they had heard. These tasks required them to interpret the texts, take on roles, and respond to peers, rather than simply repeat prepared language. Data came from classroom observations, video recordings of student performances, and short student reflections. The findings suggest that the drama activities encouraged more spontaneous use of English and greater student participation. Many students seemed more willing to speak without full preparation, respond to classmates’ ideas, and express their own views during performance. Although the study is small in scale, it suggests that listening-triggered drama may be one practical way to connect listening and speaking more meaningfully in line with current language education reforms in Vietnam.

As English shifts from foreign language to second language, sustained professional development for educators is becoming increasingly important. Teachers must be equipped with the skills needed to meet evolving instructional demands and to progress professionally. They not only need to be given opportunities to pursue continuing professional development (CPD), but also recognition for their professional learning achievements. Meaningful acknowledgement of teachers’ accomplishments, when extended beyond the individual to the wider department, institution, or teaching community, can play a key role in sustaining motivation, reinforcing professional identity, and encouraging ongoing engagement in CPD. While several widely used CPD frameworks support both self- and top-down assessment, recognition of completed training or professional development activities can be overlooked. Drawing on institutional initiatives and educator feedback, this presentation will explore practical approaches that schools, departments, or centers can use to acknowledge and celebrate professional learning, from individual achievement to shared, collective success. Attendees will leave the session with ideas to promote a culture of continuous professional learning that supports educators and ultimately benefits learners.

ABSTRACT
This study investigates the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and interactive platforms as "digital scaffolding" to enhance English writing skills for Grade 6 students in the disadvantaged context of Chu Puh Commune, Gia Lai Province. Following the Global Success curriculum, 120 students and 5 teachers participated in an 8-week action research cycle consisting of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The pedagogical framework utilizes AI-driven tools (Gemini/ChatGPT) for brainstorming and linguistic proofing, combined with multimodal platforms like Canva and Padlet to foster a process-oriented and collaborative writing environment. Data triangulated from pre- and post-tests, student questionnaires, and teacher journals indicate significant improvements in students' writing performance, particularly in lexical diversity and structural organization. More importantly, the findings reveal a substantial reduction in writing anxiety and a boost in learners' confidence and digital literacy. This research confirms the feasibility of low-cost digital transformation in rural education and proposes a practical model for personalized language instruction in the central highlands of Vietnam.

In many Vietnamese EFL classrooms, the heavy reliance on textbooks and written exercises often marginalizes personalized oral interaction. Consequently, students lack a conducive environment to develop speaking proficiency and struggle to apply English meaningfully in authentic, everyday contexts. This study investigates the effectiveness of using personalized digital portfolios on the Google Drive platform to enhance middle school students’ speaking skills and communicative competence. An action research study was conducted with 60 eighth-grade students over a two-month period. Each student created a personal digital portfolio containing videos, audio recordings, images, and other learning products related to their interests, personal experiences, and daily life. Teachers used the platform to monitor students’ progress and provide formative feedback based on speaking criteria including fluency, vocabulary use, and communication confidence. Data were collected through speaking tests, portfolio analysis, and classroom observations. The results demonstrated significant improvement after the intervention. The average speaking score increased from 5.8 to 7.2 out of 10, while the percentage of students actively participating in speaking activities rose from 42% to 78%. Classroom observations also indicated greater willingness to communicate in both classroom and familiar real-life contexts. The findings suggest that digital portfolios can effectively support personalized learning and encourage more continuous and meaningful English use among secondary school students.

This study investigated the effects of NotebookLM-supported English learning on Grade 9 students’ self-learning capacity in a Vietnamese lower secondary school. A quasi-experimental design was employed with 80 students, including 41 students in the experimental group and 39 students in the control group. The experimental group used NotebookLM as a teacher-curated AI learning support tool, while the control group followed regular learning practices. Data were collected using a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire on students’ self-learning capacity, which had been piloted with 36 students before the main study. Quantitative data were analyzed using t-tests and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings indicated that the two groups were statistically equivalent before the intervention, confirming a comparable baseline. After the intervention, the experimental group showed a substantial improvement in overall self-learning capacity, whereas the control group showed only a slight and statistically insignificant change. More specifically, the intervention produced notable gains across five key components of self-learning capacity: goal setting, learning strategies, self-monitoring, self-efficacy, and engagement. The PLS-SEM results further confirmed that NotebookLM had a positive and statistically significant effect on students’ self-learning capacity (β = 0.855, t = 7.738, p < .001), explaining 18.3% of its variance. These findings suggest that NotebookLM-supported English learning has the potential to enhance students’ capacity to set learning goals, apply appropriate strategies, monitor their progress, build confidence, and engage more actively in independent English learning.

Drawing on Kirkpatrick Model and Guskey’s Model of Teacher Change, this embedded case study evaluates the effectiveness of a pioneering MA TESOL program in Vietnam from the perspectives of its alumni across four dimensions: (1) overall impressions of the program; (2) knowledge, skills, and attitudes obtained; (3) changes in pedagogical practices, attitudes, and philosophy; and (4) changes in professional outcomes. The study employs in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 10 alumni who are practicing English teachers. Participation was voluntary, and interviews were conducted via Google Meet. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Each interview lasted 45–60 minutes, and each participant was interviewed twice. The interview protocol was developed based on conceptual framework combining the Kirkpatrick (2022) and Guskey (2002) models and endorsed by three experts in qualitative research. The data were triangulated by the end-of-program survey results collected by the Graduate School. Findings reveal that the participants: (1) care much about instructors’ pedagogical approaches; (2) prefer courses more closely aligned with their real-world professional demands; (3) expect courses to be more directly relevant to the program’s core objectives; (4) expect stronger institutional support, especially in progression control and supervisor assignment. This study extends Kirkpatrick’s (2022) model and produces original findings, such as the importance of instructors’ pedagogy, adult learners’ conceptualization of autonomy, etc. On a practical level, it forms the basis for improving the MA TESOL program in question as well as other programs in Vietnam.

Automated writing feedback is increasingly used in second-language writing, but less is known about how explanation-based feedback shapes learners’ revision decisions and sense of ownership. This explanatory mixed-methods study examined Vietnamese tertiary EFL students’ engagement with ProWritingAid in an English for Specific Purposes writing course. Sixty-eight second-year English majors completed three argumentative essays over eight weeks. Data included pre-post surveys, coded draft-revision comparisons, reflection notes, and interviews with 18 volunteers. Descriptive scale means increased for both trust (3.11 to 3.84) and authorship perception (3.22 to 3.97). Scale-level paired-samples t-tests showed significant within-participant increases for both trust, t(67) = -25.50, p < .001, d = -3.10, and authorship perception, t(67) = -21.00, p < .001, d = -2.55. Supplementary item-level analyses showed significant increases across all trust and authorship items. Across 2,040 feedback-response instances, students most often modified suggestions (56.0%), followed by direct acceptance (29.0%) and rejection (15.0%). Qualitative analysis identified critical filtering, empowered revision, and ethical caution. The findings suggest that explanation-based automated writing feedback was associated with selective, inspectable revision practices rather than simple compliance. The study contributes to writing research by showing how learners negotiate trust, agency, and authorship through observable revision decisions in AI-mediated L2 writing.

Academic writing is a fundamental skill in higher education, particularly for EFL learners; however, many students continue to face difficulties across different stages of the writing process, including understanding genres, generating ideas, organizing content, and revising effectively. While previous studies have explored the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT in language learning, limited research has examined how ChatGPT supports students throughout the academic writing process in the Vietnamese context. This study addresses this gap by investigating students’ perceptions of using ChatGPT as a support tool in academic writing. A mixed-methods approach was employed with 100 intermediate-level students at a university in Vietnam, using a Likert-scale questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The study focuses on ChatGPT’s role in pre-writing and revising stages. Quantitative results revealed generally positive perceptions of ChatGPT’s usefulness in supporting different stages of the writing process, specifically in terms of generating and outlining content, improving organization, vocabulary use and grammatical structures. Interview findings further suggest that ChatGPT was particularly effective in the pre-writing stage, where it helped students generate and develop ideas for challenging topics. With appropriate guidance on genre criteria and prompt use, students engaged critically with AI outputs, improving performance. However, concerns were also raised regarding the accuracy of information due to limited AI literacy and the risk of over-reliance. These findings highlight the pedagogical potential of ChatGPT in supporting academic writing development while emphasizing the need for sufficient knowledge related to specific genres of writing, critical evaluation, and relevant instructional support about AI literacy.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has increased university students’ use of AI-generated content, raising concerns about academic integrity, authorship, and ethical decision-making. This study examines the ethical awareness, attitudes, and behaviors of 253 language students at a language-training university in Vietnam regarding AI-generated writing. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to explore students’ perspectives and practices. Grounded in Rest’s model of moral awareness and the Theory of Planned Behavior, the study analyzes how students perceive ethical issues related to plagiarism, academic honesty, transparency, and behavioral intentions. Findings reveal generally ambivalent attitudes toward AI-generated writing. While many students frequently use AI tools, their understanding of ethical concerns, particularly plagiarism, content reliability, and appropriate use, remains limited. The results underscore the need for clearer institutional guidelines and targeted instruction to support the ethical use of AI and uphold academic integrity.

As Vietnam shifts from traditional EFL toward more communicative ESL-oriented English education, there is a growing need for practical tools that help learners move from passively receiving feedback to actively self-regulating their language development. This presentation introduces a bespoke AI-mediated mobile application designed and developed by the presenter to support self-regulated speaking practice. Grounded in Zimmerman’s cyclical Self-Regulated Learning framework, the app engages EFL learners in structured monologue tasks followed by immediate AI-generated feedback that prioritizes clarity, coherence, and interpretability in line with English as a Lingua Franca principles. The system guides learners through a complete learning cycle: goal setting, monologue recording, feedback review, selection of cognitive, social, and affective strategies, re-recording, and guided reflection. A small-scale four-month longitudinal study with five participants investigated how learners’ strategy use evolves, the extent to which they apply app-provided feedback in subsequent performances, and the development of their feedback literacy behaviors as measured by Dawson et al.’s Feedback Literacy Behavior Scale. This presentation discusses the theoretical foundations, the accessible no-code development process, key classroom findings, and practical implications for EFL-to-ESL transitioning contexts. Participants will gain concrete insights into designing similar AI-supported systems without formal programming experience and will experience a live demonstration of the monologue-based feedback cycle. The session highlights how GenAI tools can effectively foster learner autonomy and feedback literacy in mobile-assisted language learning.

Transitioning from EFL to ESL demands more than communicative competence — it requires English to function as a genuine cognitive operating system. Yet in an era of generative artificial intelligence, polished student writing increasingly masks gaps in authentic thinking, making it difficult for educators to assess whether learners truly own the ideas they present. This presentation introduces a three-layer project-based learning framework designed to reveal this gap. The first layer provides structured input through sixteen scaffolded sessions integrating business content and language at B1+/B2 level. The second layer engages students as active thinkers by using artificial intelligence as a thinking partner, with chatlog documentation serving as a transparency tool that captures how students filter and adapt AI-generated language. The third layer — a one-hundred-percent oral defense — functions as the ultimate filter, requiring students to defend their ideas in real time without prepared scripts. Drawing on evidence from twenty-one student submissions and a final grade sheet from a university ESP course in Vietnam, this presentation examines the "5.5 Thinking Plateau" — a pattern in which Risk Awareness scores remained at 5.5 across nearly all students despite strong oral delivery. Three contrasting cases illustrate how the framework distinguishes language performance from genuine cognitive ownership. Practical implications for rubric design and assessment are discussed, alongside limitations and directions for future inquiry.

Aligned with the 2018 General Education Program’s shift toward competency-based teaching, this study addresses the persistent challenges in rural Mekong Delta: students’ passivity, mixed-ability constraints, and limited parental support. Implementing a multi-layered pedagogical framework on 374 students across An Ninh D and My Thuan A Primary Schools, the authors propose five integrated solutions. These include institutionalizing English via mandatory classroom instructions, utilizing the "Think-Pair-Share" technique for peer-mentoring in mixed-ability settings, and scaffolding public speaking through "Show and Tell" to mind-mapping. Furthermore, the integration of role-plays and the innovative "Home Teaching" model—where students act as tutors for their parents—repositions English from a classroom subject to a functional communicative resource. Preliminary results indicate significant improvements in students' intrinsic motivation and interactional effectiveness. By fostering collaborative linguistic growth and community-based learning, this approach offers a sustainable model for transitioning from EFL to ESL in Expanding Circle contexts. The findings provide practical insights for educators designing inclusive, socially-embedded English instruction within resource-constrained environments, directly contributing to Vietnam’s national ESL roadmap.

To empower learners’ critical awareness of gender balance and create progressively inclusive classrooms, educators have a significant role in curating learning materials that serve as catalysts for change (Alameddine & Chehimi, 2024). Gender socialisation’s impact is evaluated by the level at which it is integrated into the learning materials as Hoang and Tam (2026) explain. According to Njeri Muasya (2021), facilitating gender equality and equity is realised with proper gender-related inclusion subjects, courses or units. The Vietnamese government’s national strategy on Gender Equality for the period 2021-2030 commits on reforming and embedding gender equality content in education (Dang et al., 2024). This session focuses on supporting this strategy by inspiring educators to advocate for valuing gender diversity in developing inclusive ESL materials. A detailed guide that I have developed will be shared. It demonstrates methods of identifying the influential factors, key steps to formulating content objectives and selecting resources, in addition to means of evaluating impact. The guide supports developing multi-lesson unit or stand-alone lesson materials; hence, it could be easily adapted to different lesson formats. The session is valuable for educators who are keen on exploring ESL material development and creating inclusive learning environments where learners are encouraged to value gender balance and champion for their rights.

This study analyzes grammatical errors encountered by Vietnamese EFL learners in IELTS Writing Task 2 at an English center. By employing a mixed-methods approach, the paper examines a corpus consisting of 65 essays composed by 21 intermediate-level students. A five-step error analysis model was used together with a Linguistic Category Taxonomy, which was incorporated into the analysis framework of the data collected, consisting of nine error types classified into three broader categories: (1) Noun Phrases, (2) Verb Phrases, and (3) Sentence Structure. The findings reveal a total of 420 grammatical errors, with Noun Phrase errors accounting for the majority, including Pluralization (33.3%) and Articles (20.7%). The qualitative findings from 8 participants in semi-structured interviews reveal a notable misalignment between learners' perceptions and reality; while students identified tenses as their main struggle, the quantitative data showed a much higher frequency of misused basic word endings and plural forms, and confirmed that these grammatical errors mostly resulted from L1 interference. Beyond analysis, the study concludes with its limitations, recommendations for further studies, and practical implications to address these persistent grammatical challenges.

The integration of artificial intelligence tools into primary ELT has gained significant attention globally, yet evidence-based practice in rural Vietnamese contexts remains scarce. This action research study investigates how artificial intelligence tools — specifically generative artificial intelligence and intelligent note-taking platforms — can be purposefully integrated into Grade 3 English lessons to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. The study spanned one semester across six Grade 3 classes at a rural primary school in Vietnam. A cyclical action research design was adopted, comprising four phases: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Artificial intelligence tools were integrated into weekly English lessons to support vocabulary instruction, listening activities, and guided speaking tasks. Data were collected through classroom observation checklists, pre- and post-intervention vocabulary assessments, and student engagement rating scales across all six classes. Findings indicate notable improvements in both dimensions. Student engagement increased markedly following the integrated lessons. Vocabulary retention scores showed a positive trend in the post-intervention assessment. Notably, 14 students qualified for the provincial-level English competition and three students achieved national recognition in the Internet Olympiads of English, suggesting a positive impact on learner motivation and proficiency. The teacher also reported greater confidence in delivering technology-enhanced instruction. This study contributes classroom-level evidence to the discourse on artificial intelligence-enhanced ELT in Vietnamese primary education. It demonstrates that even in resource-constrained, rural settings, artificial intelligence tools can be meaningfully integrated with limited infrastructure. Practical recommendations are offered for primary ELT teachers and school administrators.

This study applies the language ecology framework and the translanguaging approach to explore the linguistic interactions among mother tongues, Vietnamese, and English within the multilingual language ecology of ethnic minority students in Vietnam’s northern mountainous region. The main objective is to analyze the current situation and propose solutions for repositioning English from a formal foreign language subject to a meaningful second language in higher education. The research was conducted at Tan Trao University and Thai Nguyen University of Education. A mixed-methods approach was employed, including a large-scale survey of 1,124 ethnic minority students (Tay, Nung, Mong, Dao, Thai, Pa Then, Muong, etc.), in-depth interviews with 32 students and 12 lecturers, classroom observations, and curriculum document analysis. The findings reveal a highly imbalanced multilingual language ecology. Mother tongues and Vietnamese dominate daily communication (over 85% of language use), while English is used only 2.1 hours per week outside class. Notably, only 18.4% of students reported high motivation to learn English, and 67% considered English “irrelevant” to their lives and future careers in mountainous areas. However, students with strong multilingual awareness achieved 28% higher English scores and demonstrated significantly greater communication confidence compared to others. The study proposes a repositioning model for English based on multilingual integration, using students’ mother tongues as a bridge, aiming to improve English teaching and learning effectiveness and promote educational equity for ethnic minority students in northern Vietnam.

There has always been a discrepancy in technology application among teachers in rural and urban schools. Therefore, professional development (PD) relevant to teachers in rural schools can improve the application of technology in their classrooms. This research aims to formulate a PD proposal for technology applications in rural schools by exploring teachers’ preferences for PD and the challenges they experienced when using technology in teaching. For this purpose, 36 rural school English in-service teachers who have participated in technology-related PD in Indonesia were interviewed to determine how PD can be conducted to help them improve their knowledge of technology application. The interview also looked at the potential problems that prevented these teachers from using technology in their classrooms. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis, drawing on Desimone’s framework of five core features of teacher PD. The results show that the PD programs these teachers attended were not relevant to the rural school context, and many factors prevented them from applying what they learned in PD to their classrooms. They proposed a PD program where they learn technology tools applicable in rural schools. They proposed that this PD does not take too much time, such as once a week, but it should be long-term, and their use of technology during and after the program should be monitored and supported when necessary. Based on the results of this study, we recommend a PD program relevant to these teachers, taking into account their preferences and challenges in using technology in their school context.

As the demand for English proficiency in legal professions continues to increase, particularly in
the field of international commerce, English for Legal Purposes (ELP) has emerged as a critical
area within English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This paper reports a classroom-based study on
the use of flipped learning to improve Legal English writing in a Vietnamese ESP course on
international commercial contract drafting. As Vietnam moves toward broader and more
functional uses of English in higher education and professional settings, students need greater
support in producing specialized texts that are accurate, purposeful, and professionally
relevant. The study examined a 12-week intervention with 36 third-year students who engaged
with pre-class video lectures, annotated contract samples, and guided vocabulary tasks before
participating in in-class drafting workshops, peer review, clause analysis, and teacher feedback.
Using a mixed-methods design, the study drew on pre- and post-course writing assessments,
classroom observations, student reflections, and focus group interviews. The findings showed
clear improvement in students’ genre awareness, clause organization, legal vocabulary use,
grammatical control, and stylistic appropriateness in contract drafting. Students also reported
stronger autonomy, confidence, and engagement, particularly because class time was used for
authentic practice rather than lecture. The report argues that flipped learning offers a practical
model for supporting ESP writing development and for making English instruction more
professionally responsive in contexts where English is increasingly used beyond the traditional
foreign language classroom and hence can contribute significantly to both language acquisition
and disciplinary knowledge development.

Though it is generally understood that students need some form of preparation before embarking on a study abroad program, it has been found that many programmes only focus on administrative matters such as insurance, visas, and personal safety. In addition, students are often positioned as ‘passive vessels’ (Jackson, 2007), having little to no input in their own preparation. Considering this, the speaker has worked with a colleague to develop a bespoke study abroad preparation class for Japanese university students to address these criticisms, and provide attendees with some practical tips on how to promote student agency in study abroad preparation. This presentation will begin by outlining the programme in full, including the theoretical framework and independent research supporting the design. It will then focus on ways in which student agency is promoted during the course of their preparation, specifically through goal setting and promoting independent research. The presentation will end with some updates from an ongoing research project using thematic analysis of student interviews and how this research project is reshaping the preparation program as a whole.

Vietnam’s 2025 policy move to position English as a second language in schooling recasts the task of English teacher education. The issue is no longer only whether pre-service programmes prepare future teachers to teach English effectively as a school subject, but whether they prepare them to support broader, more regular, and educationally meaningful uses of English across teaching, communication, and school life. This article addresses that question through a qualitative case study of an undergraduate English teacher education programme at a public teacher education university in Vietnam. Drawing on qualitative document analysis of the programme curriculum and relevant policy texts, followed by semi-structured interviews with five academic staff members involved in programme design and delivery, the study examines how readiness for this emerging policy shift is currently structured, interpreted, and constrained. The findings show that the programme already provides substantial foundations in English proficiency development, ELT pedagogy, practicum, assessment, communication-oriented coursework, and digital preparation. However, it remains more strongly organised around preparing student teachers to teach English lessons in classrooms than around preparing them to support wider English use across school life, work across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and exercise pedagogically grounded judgement in digitally mediated contexts. The article argues that the key challenge is therefore not wholesale replacement but selective redesign: strengthening coherence across courses, practicum, and programme outcomes while expanding attention to wider English-use ecologies, school-purpose communication, cross-disciplinary participation, and digital pedagogy.

This presentation discusses the conference theme, "Repositioning English," by analyzing Japan’s efforts and experiences through the integrated paradigm of Global Englishes, with an emphasis on the concept of English as an International Language. Despite its status as an Expanding Circle country with limited intranational functions for English, Japan developed an aspiration for the ownership of English as early as the 1970s, subsequently facing various challenges. Japan’s failures in repositioning English include the setbacks in designating English as "a second official language," the persistent belief in native-speaker norms, and the slow progress in constructing an original model of Japanese English for international communication. On the other hand, Japan’s successes are exemplified in the adoption of locally-appropriate pedagogy, the pluralization of cultural content in teaching materials beyond Anglo-American values, the employment of teachers from the Outer and Expanding Circles, as well as the inclusion of non-native phonology in a high-stakes national English examination. In this presentation, the decades of negative and positive experiences of Japan in redefining the nature of English are analyzed to extract administrative and educational implications for other Expanding Circle countries in Asia, including Vietnam. In conclusion, repositioning English in the Expanding Circle does not require the acceptance of English as a second language as if it were in the Outer Circle. Rather, the crucial point for Expanding Circle users of English is to gain agency as owners of English as an international language.

As artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools become increasingly integrated into language learning, understanding how learners strategically employ these technologies and how such use relates to their motivation and engagement is essential. This study (n = 390) investigates students’ strategic use of AI and its relationship with their attitudes toward English learning and intended learning effort. Data were collected through a 45-item questionnaire measuring AI-assisted learning strategies (Liu et al., 2025) as well as attitudes and intended effort in learning English (Dörnyei, 2009). Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling were employed to examine patterns of AI use and the relationships among the variables. The findings indicate that students frequently use AI tools for planning and task performance, product refinement, and language compensation. Strategic AI use was positively associated with more favorable attitudes toward English learning and stronger intended effort. In particular, metacognitive regulation and self-monitoring emerged as significant predictors of learners’ attitudes and their willingness to invest time and effort in language learning. These results suggest that the strategic integration of AI can strengthen learners’ self-regulation, motivation, and engagement in English learning. The study underscores the pedagogical potential of AI-supported learning environments in fostering active participation and sustained learning effort. Implications are discussed for English language instruction, learner training, instructional design, and the responsible integration of AI in education.

Translanguaging has become one of the most influential ideas in TESOL, but its conceptual scope, pedagogical functions, and institutional viability remain under debate just as Vietnam embarks on a national project to reposition English from a foreign to a second language across 2025 to 2035. This presentation reports a systematic literature review with thematic synthesis of empirical post-2020 TESOL research on translanguaging, conducted in line with established systematic-review reporting principles. Twenty-nine peer-reviewed empirical studies were synthesised, comprising eighteen international and eleven Vietnam-context studies set in primary, secondary, tertiary, and teacher-education contexts, and spanning EFL, ESL, EAP, ESP, and English-medium instruction. Thematic analysis identified five patterns: plural and slippery conceptualisations of translanguaging; convergent but methodologically thin claims about cognitive scaffolding; recurring but unreplicated affective benefits; institutional constraints described rather than theorised; and teacher agency more often asserted than evidenced. The Vietnam-context evidence is small-scale and descriptive, and substantially overlaps with strategic L1 use under a new label. The presentation discusses what these findings imply for Vietnam's ESL agenda across teacher education, classroom language policy, curriculum design, assessment alignment, English-medium instruction, and equity for ethnic-minority languages, and closes with conservative design moves and a research roadmap that translanguaging-aware policy in Vietnam will need before any scale-up.

The development of English oral proficiency has been strongly emphasized in tertiary education, particularly among English majors. While learners may possess solid grammatical knowledge, applying a wide range of grammatical structures in spontaneous speech remains a significant challenge, which is yet to be extensively investigated in the Vietnamese context. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the range and use of grammatical structures in the spontaneous speech of 40 English-majored undergraduates in a Vietnamese university, thereby identifying patterns of overuse or underuse in different structure types. Using the English Grammar Profile (EGP) as an analytical framework, this research employed a mixed-methods approach, combining an impromptu speaking test for quantitative analysis and semi-structured interviews for qualitative insights. The findings show that the most frequently used structures include modals, coordinating and subordinate clauses, gerunds, and relative clauses. Despite a relatively wide range of 41 structures, advanced structures were rarely observed, with participants tending to rely heavily on familiar forms while avoiding cognitively demanding ones. The study sheds light on the gap between learners’ grammatical knowledge and their actual application in real-time communicative situations. Alongside its theoretical contribution, pedagogical implications from this study highlight the importance of integrating activities that foster spontaneous speaking ability and expand learners’ grammatical repertoire in spoken English instruction grammatical repertoire in spoken English instruction.

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into education has created new opportunities for language assessment development. In Vietnam, recent educational reforms and changes to the Vietnamese National High School Graduation Examination (VNHSGE) have increased the demand for high-quality reading assessment materials. This study investigates the use of Claude.ai in AI-assisted reading test bank development for Vietnamese Grade 12 students in the EFL context. A descriptive mixed-methods design was employed. A six-stage framework based on structured prompt engineering was developed to generate VNHSGE-oriented reading tasks, including cloze tests, gap insertion tasks, and reading comprehension exercises. The generated materials were evaluated by 21 English teachers and 83 Grade 12 students through questionnaires and open-ended responses. The findings revealed positive perceptions of the AI-generated materials regarding format alignment, clarity, and usefulness for examination preparation. Teachers highlighted the potential of Claude.ai to reduce workload and support assessment design, while students appreciated the practicality of the exercises. However, several limitations were identified, including inconsistent difficulty levels, overly academic vocabulary, and weaknesses in distractor quality. The study concludes that Claude.ai has considerable potential as a supportive tool for reading test bank development in Vietnamese secondary education. Nevertheless, human supervision and expert validation remain essential to ensure assessment quality and pedagogical appropriateness.

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has opened new possibilities for personalized and flexible vocabulary development beyond the traditional classroom. This study investigates the effectiveness of AI-supported out-of-class mobile learning as a supplementary strategy for improving technical English vocabulary among A2-level cadets at the Naval Technical College, Vietnam. Given that cadets have limited access to mobile phones during formal instruction, the study positions AI-supported mobile practice not as a replacement for classroom teaching but as a structured, learner-directed tool for vocabulary reinforcement during break times and self-study periods — a design that is both institutionally manageable and pedagogically responsive to the restricted-phone-use context of military education. A quasi-experimental design was employed over six weeks with 40 cadets assigned to either a control group, which followed conventional self-study methods, or an experimental group, which additionally completed short AI-supported mobile vocabulary tasks outside class, including word explanation, technical example-sentence generation, pronunciation practice, and self-quizzing. Data were collected through pre- and post-vocabulary tests, a learner questionnaire measuring engagement and perceived usefulness, and classroom observation notes. The findings indicate that the experimental group demonstrated significantly greater vocabulary gains than the control group, alongside higher levels of learner engagement and autonomy. The study concludes that a carefully structured model of AI-supported MALL can effectively extend technical vocabulary learning beyond the classroom in specialized military education settings. Implications for technology-enhanced pedagogy, responsible AI use, and learner autonomy in technical English instruction are discussed.

Vietnam's national plan to reposition English as a second language (2025–2035) places significant expectations on learner autonomy and technology integration, with AI tools promoted as vehicles for extending speaking practice beyond the classroom. Yet whether AI‑supported self‑regulation actually reduces the affective barriers constraining Vietnamese learners' oral performance remains uncertain. This quantitative cross‑sectional study examined the associations among metacognitive awareness of speaking strategies (MASQ), self‑regulated learning with AI tools (SRL‑AI), and public speaking anxiety (PSCAS) among 230 English‑major undergraduates at a Vietnamese university. Three validated instruments were administered, and data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and bootstrapped mediation analysis. Participants reported frequent metacognitive strategy use and active AI engagement, yet speaking anxiety remained moderately high. Metacognitive awareness showed no direct association with anxiety but was positively linked to AI‑supported self‑regulation, which was in turn associated with higher anxiety. Mediation analysis revealed a significant positive indirect effect, suggesting that strategic learners' intensive AI use may amplify rather than alleviate evaluative pressure. These findings carry direct implications for the EFL‑to‑ESL transition: if technology integration is to serve Vietnam's repositioning agenda, pedagogical designs must attend to the learner effect rather than assume that increased AI‑mediated practice automatically reduces anxiety. Combining metacognitive training with explicit anxiety management may be essential for realizing AI's full pedagogical potential in sustainable English language development.

This study examines whether English-mediated social media use is associated with measurable English achievement and self-concept outcomes among Vietnamese university EFL students. While platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook provide frequent exposure to English, it remains unclear whether time spent using social media in English corresponds to externally anchored language outcomes. Data were collected from 115 university students who reported their weekly hours of English social media use, self-rated English proficiency, English confidence, subjective socioeconomic status, and most recent valid English test result. Test results were mapped onto CEFR levels and analysed using ordinal logistic regression. The findings showed that weekly hours of English-mediated social media use did not significantly predict CEFR-based achievement, self-rated English proficiency, or English confidence. Gender and subjective socioeconomic status were included as control variables to account for learner background differences. Overall, the results suggest that exposure quantity alone is too coarse to explain informal digital English learning. For teachers and researchers, the findings highlight the need to distinguish passive scrolling from language-rich engagement, interaction, output, and feedback. The study contributes to technology-enhanced language learning research by showing that social media may support English learning, but its educational value cannot be inferred simply from the number of hours students spend using it.

In Vietnamese English teacher education contexts, pre-service teachers have limited opportunities to engage with the wider international ELT community and to access current pedagogical discussions beyond textbooks and lectures. The increasing availability of open educational resources (OER) such as webinars, talks, interviews, and online lectures by leading ELT scholars offers new possibilities for connecting student teachers to wider ELT communities. However, practical models for integrating OER in ELT teacher education remained underexplored. This study therefore explores how pre-service English teachers engaged with major ELT theories through a multimodal video project entitled Big 10: Learning from ELT scholars. Drawing on accessible online resources from influential ELT authors, the project required students to create 90-second videos about key pedagogical ideas and their application into classroom practice. The study aimed to explore how participants reinterpreted ELT theories through multimodal video creation and how they connected theory to practice within the Vietnamese teaching contexts. Employing a qualitative classroom action research design, the study collected weekly student-created videos over a 12-week period, together with end-of-project reflective writings. The findings from thematic analysis of student reflections and multimodal analysis of videos show that student teachers experienced a shift from traditional teacher-centered views toward more communicative and learner-centered approaches to language teaching. The process of creating short videos encouraged participants to critically interpret and apply theoretical concepts in meaningful and contextually relevant ways. The study highlights the potential of OER and multimodal digital projects to support theory and practice integration.

Vietnam's transition from English as a Foreign Language to English as a Second Language depends on more than well-designed policy, it depends on whether policy is implemented with fidelity as it moves through multiple levels of the system, from government to university faculties and primary and secondary classrooms. At each level, well-meaning people are frequently asked to enact reform they have not been adequately prepared to lead, resulting in inconsistent interpretation, uneven practice, and a widening gap between policy intention and everyday teaching. This presentation examines why that gap persists, drawing on empirical work supporting governments and education systems across the Pacific region as they have worked to translate national policy into practice at every level, from higher education through basic education. The presentation identifies barriers to policy implementation and discusses how people-centred leadership offers a way to improve this common challenge. It considers what leaders need to interpret reform accurately, build the capability and confidence of those asked to enact it, and keep people affected by policy at the centre of its implementation rather than treating them as recipients. The presentation also considers how the growing presence of generative artificial intelligence adds further complexity to this challenge. The presentation will offer practical strategies for strengthening implementation fidelity across levels. The session is applicable to system leaders, university leaders, school leaders, and policymakers engaged in education reform.

Online higher education has expanded rapidly in Vietnam, offering flexible pathways for working adults to pursue degrees. However, as they have to balance professional and family responsibilities, persistence remains a significant challenge. This qualitative multiple case study explores the persistence strategies of seven Vietnamese adult learners enrolled in an online Bachelor's degree program in English Language at a Vietnamese university. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis, findings reveal that persistence emerges from a complex interplay of self-regulation strategies, peer support networks, technology-enhanced learning, and identity-based motivation. Informal peer groups filled the gaps left by institutional support, while AI tools supported learners by helping them understand, organize, and manage their learning tasks. These findings are interpreted through a conceptual framework that synthesizes Tinto's Student Integration Model, Self-Determination Theory, Knowles' Andragogy, and the Community of Inquiry framework, with Vietnamese cultural values as moderators. The study contributes to the literature by extending Western persistence theories to a non-Western, adult online context. It also highlights the critical role of culturally sensitive design elements. Practical recommendations include flexible pacing, required class communication channels, increased teaching presence, and an explicit integration of supplemental tools to more adequately assist Vietnamese adult learners.

Mentoring is increasingly recognized as a central practice in teacher education, yet most research has focused on Western and resource-rich contexts. Limited attention has been given to mentoring in low-income and post-conflict settings, where resources are constrained and sociocultural norms strongly influence professional relationships. This study examines mentoring in Cambodia as a case study offering intercultural perspectives on teacher education, particularly within the teaching practicum as a key site for professional growth. Using a qualitative cross-case study design across three teacher education institutions, the research draws on interviews, classroom and mentoring observations, and institutional documents to explore how mentoring practices are enacted in different practicum contexts. Findings indicate that mentoring in Cambodia is not primarily structured through formal frameworks but functions as a hybrid practice combining emotional support with varying levels of instructional guidance. These practices are shaped by sociocultural norms such as collectivist values, hierarchical relationships, and respect for authority, which influence feedback, reflection, and professional dialogue. Emotional support consistently strengthened pre-service teachers’ confidence, sense of belonging, and emerging professional identity. However, instructional development depended on more structured mentoring interactions, including observation-based feedback and guided reflection. Conceptually, the study reframes mentoring in low-resource contexts as a socioculturally mediated emotional–instructional hybrid rather than a deficit form of formal mentoring. The findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive mentoring approaches that balance relational support with feasible instructional guidance throughout the practicum.

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been advocated as a potentially effective approach in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in Asian contexts, including Vietnam. However, little is known about perceptions of tasks used by teachers in actual classroom practices at highschool education. Furthermore, in the context of Vietnam, where TBLT is claimed to be adopted in the current national English curriculum and textbooks, a few studies have been carried out to investigate the extent of orientation of the teachers toward TBLT. This study therefore examines teachers’ perceptions about Task-Based Language Teaching in EFL classes. The research project included the participation of thirty teachers from various high schools in Bac Ninh. The convenience sampling method was used to collect the study sample. A questionnaire and a follow-up interview were used to collect data from the study subjects. Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated the questionnaire's internal consistency and reliability. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods were used. The questionnaire results were analyzed using SPSS version 29. The statistical data analysis was descriptive. Mean scores, frequency analysis, and percentage analysis were used. A qualitative analysis was done on the information gleaned from the interview. Exploratory and interpretive qualitative data were produced by the analysis. Findings of the study revealed that the participating teachers had positive perceptions of TBLT, recognizing its communicative and goal-directed nature, its potential for promoting language development, and its alignment with student-centered approaches. However, some teachers expressed concerns about implementing tasks solely in pairs or groups and excluding explicit grammar and form instruction. Several factors were also identified as influencing teachers' willingness to implement TBLT. Drawing on the findings, several recommendations can be made to improve the implementation of TBLT in high schools in Bac Ninh.

As English is repositioned as a broader educational, academic, and communicative resource in Vietnam, English teachers face substantial changes in how their professional roles are defined and enacted. This shift, conceptualized as an EFL-to-ESL-oriented educational transition rather than a completed sociolinguistic movement, not only alters curriculum goals and classroom practices but also reshapes how teachers understand and negotiate their professional identities. While previous studies in Vietnam have largely examined curriculum reform, teaching methods, language proficiency, and learner autonomy, limited attention has been given to how teachers perceive assigned professional roles and desired future roles in this changing context. Addressing this gap, the present qualitative study explores the assigned and desired professional roles identified by 15 Vietnamese English teachers at upper-secondary, college, and university levels in Ho Chi Minh City. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically. Informed by teacher professional identity as dynamic, context-sensitive, and negotiated, and by Positioning Theory (Kayi-Aydar, 2019), the study examines how teachers are positioned by institutional expectations and reposition themselves through professional aspirations. Findings reveal assigned roles as implementers of educational reform, creators of English-use environments, professionally accountable practitioners, supporters of learners’ holistic development, and balancers of innovation and contextual constraints. Desired roles included facilitators of meaningful English use, adaptive professionals, learner companions, members of professional communities, and sustainable professional selves. The study suggests that the space between assigned and desired roles is a key site of identity negotiation in policy- and pedagogy-driven language transition. It offers implications for teacher development in Vietnam.

This study explores the use of creative writing and children’s literature to enhance English for Specific Purposes (ESP) competence among graphic design students. English proficiency is an essential competence in the creative industries. This study investigates the integration of creative writing and children’s literature as innovative approaches in ESP learning. Using a qualitative descriptive method, the research examines students’ participation in creating a children’s storybook. This activity includes story writing, visual storytelling, and message delivery for children readers. The findings reveal that the integration of creative writing and children’s literature improves students’ writing skills, vocabulary mastery, and creative expression in English. This study concludes that creative writing and children’s literature can serve as effective pedagogical tools for enhancing ESP competence among graphic design students. These approaches foster language development, creativity, and writing skills relevant to the creative industry. Integrating literary and creative practices into ESP instruction offers meaningful and engaging learning experiences for students in visual communication and graphic design programs.

This study investigates pre-service teachers’ perceptions and readiness for English-medium instruction in Vietnam’s emerging second-language policy context. Focusing on full-time undergraduate students, the study is expected to survey 200 pre-service teachers at the University of Danang – University of Education. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior, teacher cognition, and EMI/CLIL perspectives, the study adopts a mixed-methods design using a Likert-scale questionnaire and follow-up open-ended responses. The questionnaire examines seven dimensions: policy awareness, attitudes toward English-medium instruction, self-perceived English proficiency, pedagogical readiness, institutional support, anxiety and concerns, and intention to use English in future teaching. Expected findings may reveal generally positive attitudes toward the policy, but moderate levels of instructional readiness due to concerns about English proficiency, classroom communication, learner comprehension, and unequal learning conditions. The study is expected to offer implications for teacher education, particularly EMI/CLIL training, bilingual pedagogy, practicum design, and institutional support.

For many Vietnamese students, speaking English remains one of the most challenging aspects of language learning. Despite years of studying grammar and vocabulary, many learners still feel anxious, afraid of making mistakes, or reluctant to speak in front of others. In public-school classrooms, limited speaking opportunities and fear of embarrassment often result in low participation during speaking activities. This study investigates how AI-supported learning tools can create a more supportive environment for speaking practice among Vietnamese EFL learners. The study was conducted with 80 Grade 10 students at Bac Lieu High School over a ten-week period. Students participated in blended learning activities using AI-powered tools such as chatbots, pronunciation feedback applications, speech recognition features, and AI-generated speaking prompts. Data were collected through speaking assessments, classroom observations, questionnaires, and student reflections. The findings revealed improvements not only in students’ fluency and pronunciation, but also in their confidence and willingness to communicate in English. Many students reported feeling less anxious when practicing with AI tools because they could repeat activities, make mistakes freely, and learn at their own pace without fear of judgment. Even quieter students gradually became more willing to participate in speaking activities. This study provides practical pedagogical implications for integrating accessible AI-supported tools into English speaking instruction, particularly in Vietnamese public-school classrooms where opportunities for authentic communication remain limited. The findings also suggest that AI is most effective when combined with supportive teaching practices and emotionally safe learning environments that encourage students to use English with greater confidence.

This study examines the grammatical cohesion of fifteen fishermen-turned-tour guides from Camarines Norte, Philippines, through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Grounded in Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion taxonomy and focused on the textual metafunction, it analyzes how cohesive devices are manifested in spoken tourism discourse, what errors are most commonly produced, and how those errors affect clarity, coherence, and communicative effectiveness. Data were generated through a researcher-developed, expert-validated set of spoken elicitation tasks and analyzed using SFL-informed coding and cohesive chain identification. While all five device categories were attested, deployment was uneven. Reference and lexical cohesion dominated, conjunction was largely limited to temporal and additive forms, and substitution was nearly absent. Three error types were most pervasive: incomplete clauses, overuse of conjunctions in serial temporal chaining, and unrecoverable ellipsis, all of which clustered in safety-critical and procedural contexts where precision matters. The effects on communication were direct. Clarity broke down when propositional content was lost in abandoned clauses, leaving tourists with warnings that carried no actionable information. Coherence weakened when logical relations between steps were reduced to a single temporal connector, requiring listeners to infer meaning without support. Communicative effectiveness was most affected when aesthetic description replaced procedural explanation, a genre-level issue that generic language training may not fully address. These findings suggest that the core communicative gap lies not in vocabulary but in discourse organization, pointing to the need for genre-based instruction targeting conjunctive range, referential tracking, and clause completion in professional tourism contexts.

This study explores the relationship between growth mindset and English speaking performance among university students in a Vietnamese EFL context. While mindset has been widely studied in general education, its role in speaking development remains underexplored in Vietnam. Using a mixed-methods design, the study collected quantitative data from 169 English-major students and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal a positive correlation between growth mindset and speaking performance. Students with a stronger growth mindset tend to participate more actively, persist through difficulties, and view errors as opportunities for learning. The study also identifies key factors and learning strategies that support the development of growth mindset, including encouraging teacher feedback, a supportive classroom environment, and opportunities for frequent speaking practice. These findings provide practical implications for English language teaching in Vietnam, suggesting that integrating mindset-oriented approaches can enhance both learner engagement and speaking development.

As higher education in Vietnam repositions English from a foreign language to a second language, culture courses remain an underexplored space for fostering intercultural competence and ESL identity. This study examines how a Western culture course shapes ESL identity and global citizenship readiness among third-year English majors. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, quantitative data were collected from 62 students via a validated 15-item Likert scale survey (overall α = .903). An ESL Identity Index (α = .855) was constructed as the primary dependent variable and correlated with final examination scores, which were selected a priori as the measure of end-of-course learning outcomes. The correlation was positive but non-significant (r = .16, p = .23), consistent with the study’s exploratory framing and sample size constraints. A group comparison between high and low performers yielded a medium effect size (d = .58). Qualitative analysis of 40 open-ended responses identified three themes: identity shift, intercultural awareness, and global readiness. These themes were further explored in eight semi-structured interviews. One critical case—a student with the lowest exam score but an almost perfect ESL Identity Index—suggests that identity investment and academic success can operate independently. These findings carry implications for curriculum redesign and institutional internationalization in Vietnamese higher education.

Because of profound linguistic and cultural differences, literary translation from Vietnamese into English remains challenging, as expressive nuances, metaphorical imagery, and culture-bound elements are difficult to render fully and adequately. In this context, this study employs contrastive, descriptive, statistical, and qualitative methods to examine loss and gain in the English translation of the novel Số đỏ by Vũ Trọng Phụng. It adopts Baker’s (2011) categorization of equivalence to classify loss and gain across three linguistic levels and Newmark’s (1988) translation procedures to account for their occurrence. The findings indicate that loss is mainly associated with functional equivalence, reduction, and transposition, whereas gain primarily arises through expansion and paraphrase. The results further show that loss and gain often coexist within a single translation unit. This helps maintain naturalness in the target language and clarify implicit meanings, while still preserving the content and communicative effect of the source text. The study provides a basis for literary translation training and practice.

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.

This study investigates the role of multilingualism in shaping the position of English within diverse linguistic ecologies. As globalization intensifies, English functions simultaneously as a global lingua franca and a local communicative resource, creating tensions between language policy, cultural identity, and pedagogical practice. Using qualitative case studies and policy analysis, the research explores how governments and institutions balance national language preservation with the increasing demand for English proficiency. Particular attention is given to code-switching and translanguaging as everyday strategies employed by learners and educators to navigate multilingual classrooms. Findings reveal that identity negotiation is central to language learning, as students construct cultural belonging while engaging with global citizenship. The study contributes to debates on linguistic justice and cultural sustainability, proposing context‑sensitive frameworks that integrate policy, pedagogy, and identity to support equitable and inclusive language education.

Vietnam's national language plan (2025–2035) signals a paradigm shift in English language education, repositioning English from a foreign language to a second language in schools. While this policy carries profound implications for classroom practice, little research has examined how pre-service English teachers, who are the future implementers of this shift, perceive and respond to it. Grounded in Borg's (2003) teacher cognition framework, McKay's (2002) conceptualisation of teaching English as an international language, and Bandura's (1997) self-efficacy theory, this qualitative study investigates the perspectives of third- and fourth-year pre-service EFL teachers at the University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang. Semi-structured interviews with 20 purposefully selected participants explore three dimensions: their understandings of the EFL-to-ESL shift as reflected in Vietnam's current language education policy; their attitudes toward the feasibility and relevance of this repositioning to their future teaching careers; and their evaluations of both their teacher education program and their own readiness to enact ESL-oriented classroom practice. Thematic analysis of interview data is expected to generate nuanced insights into the relationship between institutional preparation and pre-service teachers' personal sense of readiness. Findings are expected to inform ongoing discussions around teacher education reform and offer context-specific insights for institutions navigating the EFL-to-ESL transition in Vietnam and beyond.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is critical for second language (L2) acquisition, especially in collaborative learning settings emphasizing autonomy. Prior research has inspected factors affecting SRL individually within general learning contexts through variable-centered methods that disregard individual differences. This study applied person-centered latent profile analysis (LPA) on 373 primary school students to explore how profiles of motivation, anxiety, and proficiency collectively impact SRL in L2 collaborative learning. The LPA results favored five profiles: very-motivated-with-high-proficiency-and-low-anxiety, very-motivated-with-low-proficiency-and-high-anxiety, unmotivated-with-average-proficiency-and-average-anxiety, average-motivated-with-low-proficiency-and-average-anxiety, and average-motivated-with-high-proficiency-and-low-anxiety. Students’ profiles significantly affected their SRL strategy use, with more motivated profiles showing more frequent use of SRL strategy use. Interestingly, compared with very-motivated-with-high-proficiency-and-low-anxiety group, the very-motivated-with-low-proficiency-and-high-anxiety group used more goal-setting and planning strategies and self-evaluation strategies but less behavioral regulation strategies. These findings challenged the oversimplified correlations previously assumed between these variables, underscoring the complex motivational and emotional experiences of L2 learners within collaborative learning contexts and the need to consider individual differences in SRL across learner groups.

Language assessment literacy relates to the practical skills, theoretical knowledge, social context, and classroom impact of language assessment. A lack of language assessment literacy among teachers is a common concern for language teaching institutions. To address this, the presenters used an established language assessment literacy framework to identify five domains as particularly important for teachers: developing and administering language assessments; assessment in language pedagogy; assessment policy and local practices; assessment principles and interpretation; scoring and rating. To strengthen language assessment literacy across these areas, the presenters developed a series of face-to-face training sessions, self-access training materials, and opportunities for teachers to contribute to assessment development. These initiatives are ongoing, but early feedback suggests they have helped teachers to build a greater understanding of assessment processes and challenges, evaluate teaching materials more critically, and apply marking criteria with increased confidence. The session will briefly introduce key concepts in language assessment literacy before describing the professional learning journey undertaken by the presenters in collaboration with teachers in their institution. Participants will consider how a similar process of identifying teachers’ assessment literacy needs, mapping them onto an established framework, and developing targeted professional learning could be applied in their own contexts.

Vietnam's 2025 National High School Graduation Exam (NHGE) shifted from decontextualised discrete-item and grammar- and vocabulary-focused testing to discourse-embedded reading comprehension and cohesion tasks. This reform of the high-stakes exam aims to increase alignment with the 2018 General Education Curriculum and the Vietnamese Government’s 2025-2035 plan to reposition English as a Second Language (ESL) in educational institutions. The new format was announced just eight months before the official June 2025 exam, creating immediate pedagogical turbulence. This qualitative study investigated how seven EFL teachers from large urban and rural (provincial) settings perceived and responded to the reform. Data were collected through two group interviews and two individual follow-up interviews, then analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Three themes emerged, with urban-rural context serving as a key analytical axis. Urban teachers, supported by students’ greater familiarity with international standardized tests and stronger institutional networks, adapted through dual-track instruction and genre-appropriate supplementation. Rural teachers, without comparable resources, retreated to grammar-translation methods and experienced professional identity disruption. Across both contexts, responses concentrated on test-item construction rather than the pedagogical theories underpinning the new exam format, leading to what we termed technical washback: a surface-level format compliance without sufficient theoretical and conceptual transformation of pedagogy. As perceived by teachers, the reform generated aspirational washback at the national level in the short term, with English remaining the most commonly chosen optional language; however, an increasing number of students, especially in rural areas, opted for other subjects instead. The findings suggest that the reform may have reinforced rather than reduced pre-existing structural inequalities, with direct implications for professional development design under Vietnam’s national teacher-retraining long-term commitments.
Keywords: technical washback; NHGE reform; discourse competence; teacher agency; educational equity; Vietnam

Recent educational reforms and increasing orientations towards EMI and internationally-oriented English education have intensified discussions surrounding Vietnam’s emerging EFL-to-ESL transition. Within this context, teacher’s books accompanying official textbooks function not merely as instructional materials, but as policy-mediated pedagogical artefacts that construct particular expectations of English teachers’ classroom roles, practices, and identities. This study compares an older Grade 10 English teacher’s book and the newer Global Success 10 teacher’s book to examine how teacher roles and identity positioning are discursively constructed across textbook generations. Drawing on discourse analysis and positioning theory, the study focuses on Unit 1 of both teacher’s books as representative entry points that establish pedagogical routines, lesson procedures, and classroom interaction patterns for the rest of the series. Particular attention is paid to instructional discourse, including action verbs and pedagogical directives such as "ask students to", "call on students", and "draw students’ attention to", to analyse how teacher actions, authority, agency, and classroom responsibilities are constructed through the text. Preliminary findings suggest a shift from stronger emphases on explanation, procedural control, and knowledge transmission in the older textbook towards greater emphases on task organisation, communicative interaction, and facilitation in Global Success 10. However, strong forms of teacher authority and classroom management remain evident across both textbooks. The study contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding language teacher identity, educational reform, and changing expectations of English teachers within Vietnam’s EFL-to-ESL transition discourse.

In the context of Vietnam’s test-oriented education system, where English writing is often disregarded due to its exclusion from national graduation exams, teachers face considerable emotional challenges in teaching this skill. This qualitative study explores the emotional experiences and emotion regulation strategies of Vietnamese high school English teachers when teaching writing. Grounded in Cross and Hong’s (2012) ecological model of teacher emotions and Gross’s (1998, 2005) process model of emotion regulation, the research investigates three main questions: (1) What emotions do teachers experience when teaching writing? (2) How do they regulate these emotions? and (3) How contextual factors influence their emotional experiences and regulation? Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 English teachers working at high schools in the Mekong Delta region, categorized by teaching experience. The findings reveal that student engagement is a key source of emotional responses and that teachers develop emotional maturity over time. Emotion regulation strategies, particularly cognitive reappraisal through reframing expectations, are shaped mainly by personal experience rather than formal training. Contextual constraints, such as time pressure, curriculum requirements, and the absence of writing in national graduation exams, also significantly affect teacher emotions.The study offers valuable implications for English writing teachers, teacher training programs, school management, and education policy, particularly regarding teacher well-being. It also provides a foundation for future research on teacher emotions in the underexplored area of teaching EFL writing skills in Vietnam, due largely to the influence of contextual factors.

Light from electronic devices has very negative effects on the nervous system, often resulting in reduced and poor quality sleep. Poor sleep and sleep deprivation have a significant effect on the brain and behavior. Sleep deprivation degrades the connection between the prefrontal cortex (executive decisions) and the amygdala (fear and emotions), making people more impulsive and prone to depression. Sound decision-making plummets. The symptoms of sleep deprivation and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are strikingly similar. It has become quite common to misdiagnose sleep deprivation as ADHD and to begin medicating children and adults for what is actually the negative after-effects of excessive exposure to electronic light. This presentation will introduce and explain this poorly understood yet very common problem affecting our society, particularly with respect to education. Approaches for correcting and reversing these negative effects will be introduced. As educators, we should understand this critical issue and educate our learners and parents about it.

Understanding the economic and social value of English remains a critical yet underexplored dimension of language policy and planning. The Economic Value of English (EVE) project builds on the Future of English: Global Perspectives to examine how English contributes to economic and social development, and how this value is articulated across policy, education, and lived experience. Drawing on a mixed-methods design - including literature review, policy analysis, stakeholder interviews, and surveys of young adults (18–23) across Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam - the EVE project examines how national strategies align with societal expectations and labour market demands. It explores learners’ motivations, patterns of use, and perceptions of English in relation to employment, mobility, and participation in digitally mediated, internationally engaged environments. This paper presents preliminary findings from Vietnam, focusing on how young adults in higher education conceptualise the role and relevance of English. As Vietnam repositions English from a foreign language subject towards a more functional second language, the paper highlights implications for educators and next steps in language policy, educational practice, and future research in Vietnam’s evolving economic and linguistic landscape.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been increasingly promoted in Vietnam’s education system as part of broader efforts to strengthen learners’ English proficiency. However, teachers report ongoing challenges in integrating subject content and language meaningfully within exam-orientated and resource-constrained contexts. This doctoral study examines how participation in the Change Laboratory impacts upon CLIL teaching practices in two Vietnamese primary schools and identifies mediating conditions shaping these impacts. Grounded in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, this study engaged maths–English teachers and other stakeholders in activity system analysis across three phases with four Change Laboratory workshops and one joint training workshop. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, reflective journals, workshop recordings and other documents and artefacts, the study found that the Change Laboratory played a significant role in facilitating teachers’ pedagogical renewal. They developed a more robust understanding of CLIL and its dual focus on content and language integration. The findings also indicate expanded use of mediating tools, including the 4Cs framework, for lesson planning and delivery together with the emergence of a collaborative and reflective professional learning culture. However, the impacts of the intervention were uneven and shaped by systemic factors, including limited CLIL preparation, uneven leadership engagement, and workload pressures. This study contributes new empirical evidence on the application of Change Laboratory as a bottom-up, intervention-based approach in CLIL settings and discusses implications for designing context-sensitive professional development to strengthen CLIL teachers’ capacity in Vietnam and similar EFL–ESL transition contexts.

In the context of Vietnam’s national English as a compulsory Second Language Plan (2025–2035, vision 2045), English curriculum reform has become a central priority. It is therefore critical to examine how other countries conceptualise and implement English within their curricula — from policy to classroom practice — and, crucially, how these reforms are experienced by teachers. This presentation reports key findings from the Curriculum Comparison Project, part of the British Council’s Future of English research programme. The project examines recent reforms in English language curricula at primary and secondary levels in China, Korea, and Japan. The research design for the project is grounded in O’Sullivan’s (2021) Comprehensive Learning System (CLS), which emphasises alignment between curriculum, delivery, and assessment within a shared learning philosophy. The project is structured by these components: curriculum (Part 1), delivery (Part 2), and assessment (Part 3), with an added focus on monitoring, evaluation and learning (Part 4). The presentation focuses on findings from Part 1 and, in particular, Part 2. Part 1 maps reform trends using national curriculum guides and expert input, highlighting common priorities and context-specific differences. Part 2 investigates how reforms are interpreted and enacted by teachers through a mixed-methods approach, including a survey of 639 teachers, 14 focus groups, and 31 classroom observations. The findings shed light on teachers’ preparedness, understanding, and implementation practices across China, Korea and Japan. The session concludes by considering implications for Viet Nam, with particular attention to how teachers from China, Korea and Japan experience and respond to curriculum reform, and potential lessons learnt. Situating the findings within broader global trends in English language education, the presentation offers insights for curriculum reform and development.

This study examines the ideological and discursive functions of Disclaim resources in the 2024 U.S. presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris using Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2010). It explores how linguistic features interact with discursive practices and broader social structures to construct ideological meanings and negotiate power relations. The dataset comprises 1,431 clauses from the official debate transcript, including 976 clauses produced by Trump and 455 by Harris. A mixed-methods approach combining quantitative frequency analysis and qualitative interpretation is employed. The findings show that Disclaim resources function as major mechanisms of dialogic contraction, with Deny overwhelmingly dominating Counter in both candidates’ discourse (Trump: 77.72%; Harris: 78.30%). However, their use differs significantly across CDA dimensions. Trump employs frequent and intensified negation to construct categorical rejection and delegitimize opposition, whereas Harris adopts more selective and context-sensitive forms that embed evaluation and legitimacy. At the discursive and social levels, these strategies reflect contrasting ideological orientations and communicative styles: Trump reinforces authority, certainty, and polarization, while Harris emphasizes democratic values, accountability, and collective alignment. The study contributes to CDA by demonstrating how micro-level linguistic resources realize macro-level ideological meanings in real-time political interaction. Practically, it offers insights into persuasive strategies and stance construction in political communication, media literacy, language education, and discourse studies.Keywords: Disclaim; Deny; Counter; Debate; Critical Discourse Analysis

Artificial Intelligence-assisted speaking platforms are increasingly used in workplace English training to offer flexible speaking practice. However, it remains unclear how adult learners engage with these platforms, especially when their learning is shaped by work schedules, confidence, and limited time for practice. This study examines adult learners’ engagement in AI-assisted English speaking practice in a corporate training program, focusing on platform-based learning behaviors and learners’ explanations of those behaviors. Using an explanatory mixed-methods case study design, data were collected from 26 adult learners through platform analytics, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The platform data, collected between April and June 2025, included goal completion, time on task, videos watched, task completion, and spoken lines. Drawing on Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris’s engagement framework, the study examines behavioral engagement through platform analytics and explores cognitive and emotional engagement through learners’ feedback use, repeated practice, confidence, and anxiety. Learners were grouped based on their learning time, speaking output, goal completion, and regularity of practice. The findings show that learners engaged with the platform in different ways, from sustained and active participation to more irregular or limited use. The interviews also suggest that work demands, trust in artificial intelligence feedback, speaking confidence, and learners’ ability to manage their own practice played an important role in shaping their engagement. The study argues that artificial intelligence-assisted speaking platforms can support oral practice in corporate English training, but their value depends on structured guidance, meaningful feedback use, and task designs that reflect adult learners’ work-based realities.

This study investigates the effectiveness of applying the flipped classroom approach in teaching speaking skills for Business English 2 to first-year students at College of Foreign Economic Relations. The research aims to examine whether the flipped classroom model can improve students’ speaking performance, classroom engagement, and learning motivation. A quasi-experimental methodology was employed involving two groups of first-year students in non-major classes. The experimental group was taught using the flipped classroom model, in which students studied instructional videos, vocabulary, and speaking materials before class, while in-class time focused on collaborative speaking activities, discussions, and role-plays. Meanwhile, the control group received traditional teacher-centered instruction. Data were collected through pre-tests and post-tests of speaking performance, classroom observations, and students’ academic scores. The findings revealed that students in the flipped classroom group showed significant improvement in their speaking scores compared to those in the traditional class. In particular, students demonstrated better fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary usage, and confidence in business communication tasks. Furthermore, the flipped learning environment increased students’ participation and encouraged greater learner autonomy and active interaction during speaking lessons. The study concludes that integrating flipped classrooms into teaching Business English 2 can positively impact students’ speaking achievement and learning attitudes at the higher level education. The research also provides pedagogical implications for English lecturers seeking innovative methods to enhance students’speaking skill at colleges and universities in Vietnam.

AI-supported tools are increasingly integrated into academic and professional workflows, providing teachers and researchers with information retrieval, content generation, and AI-assisted knowledge work. However, many current systems remain oriented toward short-term productivity and isolated interactions, offering limited support for sustaining reflective inquiry and professional learning over time. This limitation is particularly significant in teacher development, where pedagogical insights emerge from everyday practice but often remain fragmented or insufficiently developed into longitudinal inquiry trajectories. Following the PRISMA-ScR framework, this scoping review maps existing AI-supported reflective, research, and knowledge-management environments relevant to teacher professional learning. Synthesizing perspectives from Cognitive Load Theory, self-regulated learning, distributed cognition, and reflective practice, the review evaluates how current systems support or inhibit five critical affordances: low-friction idea capture, reflective continuity, epistemic structuring, guided critique, and longitudinal inquiry development. Particular attention is given to tensions between efficiency-driven AI designs and the productive metacognitive friction required for deep professional learning. Ultimately, the review identifies persistent conceptual and functional gaps within current AI-supported environments and discusses implications for designing inquiry-oriented systems that better sustain teacher inquiry, reflective practice, and professional learning in Vietnam’s evolving ESL context.

Vietnam’s recent policy to promote English as a second language in school settings (MOET, 2025) has created an urgent need for teacher-education programmes that align with national curriculum reform and emphasise communicative, content-integrated pedagogy. Yet few studies have systematically examined teachers’ actual needs regarding TESOL curriculum design within this reform context. Existing short-term programmes remain largely theory-oriented and insufficiently contextualised. Drawing on a nationwide needs analysis of 207 current and prospective English teachers across public, private, and international schools, this study identified key needs in curriculum design, classroom management, and assessment literacy. Participants valued practical, mentoring-based training that embeds TESOL principles and integrates CLIL approaches relevant to Vietnam’s educational realities. The findings inform the development of a 120-hour TESOL program responsive to local contexts and policy priorities. This equips teachers to implement communicative and content-based instruction effectively in Vietnam’s language education reform.

While pronunciation is vital for successful oral communication, it remains largely marginalised in general English programmes at Vietnamese universities, where non-majors often suffer from limited instructional time. This mixed-methods study investigates the effectiveness of an eight-week video-based shadowing intervention designed to improve the pronunciation of target codas (/t/, /s/, /n/, /d/, /z/) and consonant clusters (/nt/, /nd/, /st/) among 20 non-English major students at a regional university in Vietnam. The blended pedagogical framework combined 30-minute weekly guided online sessions with autonomous mobile-device practice using subtitled authentic videos. Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-test speech samples, evaluated by two independent raters, demonstrated statistically significant advancements in phonological accuracy. The participants exhibited a steady upward trend in correctly producing single target codas, alongside a moderate but clear improvement in executing complex consonant clusters. Qualitatively, thematic analysis of post-intervention interviews indicated substantial gains in learners’ speaking confidence, fluency, and self-monitoring capabilities. The findings demonstrate that shadowing serves as a highly effective, low-resource pedagogical tool for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. The paper concludes with practical pedagogical implications for integrating short, autonomous shadowing tasks into general English curricula to maximize learning outcomes within credit-constrained contexts.

Digital formative assessment (DFA) has become increasingly integrated into tertiary EFL classrooms due to its potential to enhance student engagement, provide immediate feedback, and support ongoing learning. However, while previous studies have highlighted the benefits and challenges of DFA, less is known about how teachers adapt their practices to sustain DFA implementation in authentic tertiary EFL classrooms. Guided by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, this study explored how tertiary EFL teachers adapted their classroom practices to address these challenges. A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted with six EFL teachers over one academic semester. Data were collected through classroom observations and multiple rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted throughout the semester. The findings revealed that teachers encountered various technological, pedagogical, and contextual constraints, including unstable internet access, uneven student participation, limited class time, and students’ low English proficiency. In response, teachers employed a range of adaptive strategies, including integrating gamified digital platforms, scaffolding assessment tasks, and combining digital and immediate verbal feedback. In addition, teachers selectively used AI-assisted tools while maintaining pedagogical control. The findings highlight the role of teacher adaptability in sustaining DFA implementation across technological, pedagogical, and contextual constraints. Overall, the study offers practical insights for EFL teachers and educators seeking to implement DFA in similar higher education settings.

The concept of Functional Load has been increasingly applied in research on English language teaching and assessment, with many studies using it as a primary theoretical framework to examine L2 speech intelligibility and listeners’ perceptions of foreign-accented speech. However, learners’ own perspectives on pronunciation priorities have received relatively little attention. Drawing on responses from 240 undergraduate students majoring in English at a university in Vietnam, the present study examines learners’ priorities in acquiring segmental and suprasegmental features, and their perceptions of factors affecting intelligibility in relation to Functional Load theory. The results showed that participants placed greater emphasis on segmental rather than suprasegmental features, and their perceptions of the effect of some phonemic contrasts on speech intelligibility were not always aligned with their Functional Load values. Furthermore, linear regression analysis revealed that Vietnamese learners’ perception of factors influencing L2 speech intelligibility significantly predicted their pronunciation learning priorities. The findings have important implications in pronunciation teaching and curriculum design for English language education in Vietnam, particularly from an intelligibility-oriented perspective.

In Vietnamese upper-secondary English classrooms, speaking practice is often constrained by large classes, limited lesson time, and learners’ fear of public error. This study examines a structured generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) feedback model designed to support Grade 10 students’ monologic English speaking. The model was organized around three connected phases: preparation, guided practice, and reflection for self-regulation. It was grounded in communicative competence, self-regulated learning, mastery learning, foreign language anxiety, and technology integration in language education. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control-group design was adopted within a mixed-methods explanatory framework. Sixty-four students participated, with 33 students in the experimental group practicing speaking through a GenAI platform for six weeks, while 31 students in the control group completed conventional speaking activities. Data were collected through speaking tests, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The results showed that the experimental group made stronger progress than the control group in fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Students also reported greater confidence, lower anxiety, and clearer awareness of how to set goals, monitor progress, and revise their speaking after feedback. The findings suggest that GenAI feedback can work as a practical extension of classroom instruction, supporting EFL speaking performance and learner autonomy without replacing the teacher’s pedagogical role.

Limited opportunities for authentic interaction and sustained speaking practice remain significant challenges for Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). This study examined the effects of AI voice chatbots on developing speaking skills for English-major students at a Vietnamese university. The research was theoretically grounded in Social Constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) and Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987) and adopted a mixed-methods quasi-experimental design. 49 participants engaged in regular speaking practice with AI voice chatbots, including Replika, Andy, and Google Assistant, both within and beyond classroom settings over the course of one academic semester. Quantitative data were obtained through pre- and post-speaking tests and perception questionnaires. Qualitative data were collected from open-ended questionnaire responses and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed a statistically significant improvement in students’ overall speaking performance following the intervention, particularly in pronunciation, fluency, grammatical accuracy, and lexical use. Students were reported to hold positive perceptions towards the use of AI voice chatbot for improving their speaking skills. They perceived AI chatbots as accessible, flexible, and effective tools for enhancing not only their speaking competence but also their confidence and motivation. Specifically, students valued the immediate interaction and individualized speaking support provided by the chatbots. Nevertheless, several limitations were identified, including occasional irrelevance or repetitiveness in chatbot responses and difficulties in interpreting users’ intended meanings. Recommendations for improving the effectiveness of integrating AI voice chatbots into the teaching and learning of speaking skills in EFL higher education contexts are proposed.

The fast growing development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has given rise to new possibilities for promoting English speaking as a medium of instruction at an enhanced level in EFL classrooms. We’re seeing chatbots like ChatGPT and AI speaking assistants for interactive speaking practice, instant feedback and personalized learning with chatbots more and more heavily supported by AI. This transformation indicates the increasing move from the conventional EFL to the technology-enhanced teaching approach for ESL. However, there has so far been limited research investigating the impact of AI-supported speaking practices on EFL learning among high school students. Employing the mixed-methods study design, this study explored the practices of AI-supported speaking in EFL classrooms according to the viewpoint of high school students. The quantitative data was collected through questionnaire surveys from 110 high school students, whereas qualitative data was obtained using semi-structured interviews with ten selected respondents. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The results indicated that students generally interpreted AI-based speaking activities positively regarding engagement, speaking confidence, interaction opportunities, and motivation for learning. The researchers additionally found that AI tools provided more adaptable and student-centered speaking experiences as well. However, the fears of overdependence on AI alongside decreased face-to-face communication emerged as well. The findings offer implications for how to work with AI-assisted speaking practices within EFL classrooms in the digital age.

This study aims to explore English learning motivation among non-English major students at a private university in Vietnam. Drawing on the “L2 Motivational Self System” framework of Zoltán Dörnyei, it examines the influence levels of the three core components in constructing students’ English learning dynamics. A quantitative research method was employed with a questionnaire administered to approximately 300 students, using five-point Likert scale. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The results reveal a distinct difference among the three affecting factors in which Ought-to L2 Self emerges as the strongest predictor of English learning motivation, suggesting that students are primarily driven by external requirements such as examinations, course completion, and certification demands. In contrast, Ideal L2 Self appears to be relatively weak, indicating that students have not yet developed an obvious image of themselves as future users of English. L2 Learning Experience exerts a moderate impact and seems to rely heavily on classroom practices and teaching-related aspects. The findings emphasize that it is necessary to shift learners from obligation-driven learning to stronger intrinsic motivation by enhancing classroom experiences and developing students’ Ideal L2 Self through vision-building activities, meaningful communication tasks, and career-oriented learning situations.

As Vietnam strives to transform English into a second language within national schools, a paradox remains: students often master complex grammar yet remain silent during daily classroom activities. This study argues that the core barrier is not unwillingness to communicate, but a systematic lack of accessible functional language resources retrievable under real-time class interactions. Grounded in Conversation Analysis and functional language theory, the study investigates recurring classroom interaction patterns among 220 students from Grades 5, 6, and 7 across three schools in both urban and rural Vietnam, using naturalistic classroom observations and semi-structured teacher interviews as primary data sources. The analysis identifies six recurring interactional situations - opening routines, individual task management, behavioral coordination, collaborative work, learning assessment, and lesson closing - and bridges the gap between students' existing L1-dominant communication habits and their target EFL functional language needs. Findings show that students across all observed contexts demonstrate clear communicative intent and task engagement, yet consistently conduct participation in L1 due to the absence of short, ready-to-use English expressions suited to real-time classroom demands. In response, the study develops a context-embedded, comic-based classroom language handbook that organizes functional scaffolds by interactional situation and communicative purpose, designed for immediate use across multiple subjects. This resource offers both teachers and learners a practical, low-pressure tool to gradually normalize English as a working language beyond formal language instruction.

As Vietnam moves toward an EFL-to-ESL transition, learners are increasingly expected to use English beyond the classroom in academic and global communicative contexts. While Willingness to Communicate in English has been widely examined in formal classroom settings, less attention has been paid to non-English majored students’ willingness to communicate outside the classroom where authentic communication occurs. This study was conducted with the participation of 150 non-English majors who study in various faculties. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data about participants’ willingness to communicate and the effect of two factors namely language anxiety and international posture on their willingness to communicate. Semi-structured interviews were followed to investigate this more in depth. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation also were used in this study. Results indicated that most students hold a generally high level of willingness to communicate outside the classroom. While language anxiety affected students differently depending on individual experiences, international posture showed a strong positive correlation with willingness to communicate, emphasizing the importance of global orientation in promoting learners’ confidence and motivation to use English. Qualitative findings further indicate that students with strong international posture tend to perceive English as a valuable tool for international and intercultural communication, whereas highly anxious learners often avoid spontaneous interaction due to fear of making mistakes. From the findings, suggestions are made on how to enhance students’ willingness to communicate and foster an environment conducive to effective communication in language learning for non- English majors.

Since the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching has undergone profound transformations. However, there remains a lack of empirical research on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of ethical AI use in Vietnam. Drawing on the Technological Pedagogical Content Ethical Knowledge (TPCEK) framework, this study investigates pre-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of AI ethics and its implications for teaching practices. Employing a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, quantitative data were first collected through a survey of third-year students (N = 36), followed by semi-structured interviews (N = 12) to provide deeper insights. The quantitative findings indicate that participants hold positive attitudes toward the educational potentials of AI and report high levels of self-perceived readiness regarding the TPCEK framework, while also expressing moderate to high levels of concern regarding ethical risks in classroom contexts. Qualitative analysis further reveals a lack of formal training frameworks, resulting in uncertainty when implementing technology responsibly. Based on these empirical findings, the study proposes the systematic integration of AI ethics training into teacher education programs, aiming to equip future educators with both technological competence and strong ethical awareness in the digital era.

The aim of this study is to analyze the pragmatic function and interactional authenticity of dialogues contained in the “Every Day English” section of Global Success textbooks for Vietnamese highschool students (grades 10-12). A mixed methods approach has been adopted in this study. A quantitative study was carried out based on 336 utterances using two frameworks: Searle's (1976) Speech Act Theory and Wong & Waring's (2021) Conversation Analysis Framework. The results of the quantitative part of the study indicated an asymmetrical representation of speech act types: Representative (32.1%), Expressive (36.9%), Directive (25%), Commissive (6%), and Declaration (0.0%). Qualitative results indicate that 45% of dialogues were interactionally truncated by the omission of the critical opening and closing sequences. Researchers also demonstrated that although the dialogues represent numerous speech acts, they typically do not include enough interactionally complex elements to accurately model what occurs in real EFL contexts. For example, there were no instances of repair; topic-management markers rarely occurred; and students’ responses when receiving compliments lacked praise downgrades, and referent shifts. In addition, many responses to dispreferred statements did not contain sufficient reluctant markers or prefaces to indicate polite disagreement. The data obtained from this study suggests the dialogues presented in the textbooks are somewhat scripted and limit students’ opportunities to develop their interactional competence. Finally, several suggestions to help ELT practitioners develop pragmatic markers that will enable them to present more authentic dialogues and several recommendations for textbook authors to improve the interactional authenticity of their series are provided.

In the context of digital transformation and the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), English self-directed learning activities in higher education are shifting from traditional learning models toward more personalized, flexible, and learner-autonomous approaches. Although studies on AI-assisted language learning have increasingly attracted scholarly attention, limited research has examined how AI is reframing English self-directed learning activities in highly disciplined and centralized educational environments such as Public Security Universities. From an educational perspective, this study investigates how AI is transforming the organization and development of English self-directed learning activities among cadets in Public Security Universities within the current context of digital transformation. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, surveying 1,000 cadets from first-year to fourth-year levels across four Public Security Universities, combined with semi-structured interviews with eight English lecturers, eight educational managers, and eight cadets. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were examined through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that AI is shifting English self-directed learning from teacher- and textbook-dependent practices toward more personalized, adaptive, and self-regulated learning processes by providing immediate feedback, expanding opportunities for language practice, and diversifying learning resources. However, the study also identifies challenges related to technological dependence, reduced critical thinking, and academic integrity. Based on these findings, the study proposes educational implications for restructuring English self-directed learning activities in response to digital transformation within Public Security Universities.

As Vietnam continues shifting from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) toward English as a Second Language (ESL), English education is often framed around Vietnamese as the common language of schooling and English as the second language to be developed. This frame, however, does not fully reflect the experiences of many ethnic minority learners. For these learners, an indigenous language may be acquired first, Vietnamese is often learned and used as an additional national language, and English becomes a third or further language. Drawing on language policy documents and existing discussions of multilingual education, this paper examines how English is positioned in relation to ethnic minority learners in Vietnam’s ESL transition. Using a qualitative and interpretive approach, the paper argues that viewing English only through an ESL framework may overlook the multilingual realities, identity-related experiences, and educational challenges faced by minority learners. It highlights the need for a more inclusive approach to English education, one that recognises the interaction among indigenous languages, Vietnamese, and English in learners’ educational experiences. The paper contributes to current discussions on language policy by suggesting that Vietnam’s ESL transition should take greater account of linguistic diversity and the learning experiences of ethnic minority communities.

The national initiative to reposition English from a foreign language to a second language in Vietnamese education has created important implications for universities under the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Traditionally, English instruction in these institutions has mainly followed an EFL-oriented approach emphasizing language knowledge and examination performance. However, growing demands for international law enforcement cooperation, academic mobility, and digital transformation require more communicative, intercultural, and professionally oriented uses of English in public security education. This paper discusses the development of a second-language ecosystem in MPS universities within the broader context of educational reform and international integration. Drawing on perspectives from TESOL, intercultural communicative competence, and technology-enhanced language learning, the paper examines challenges related to curriculum design, assessment practices, teacher development, and institutional language environments. Particular attention is given to preparing future security officers for intercultural communication in international professional contexts where English functions as a lingua franca for cooperation, negotiation, and information exchange. The paper also highlights the role of blended learning ecosystems in extending English learning beyond traditional classrooms through online platforms, AI-assisted tools, multimedia resources, and digitally mediated communication. It is argued that repositioning English in MPS universities should move beyond curriculum reform toward the creation of an integrated linguistic, intercultural, and digital ecosystem supporting communicative competence and international readiness in Vietnam’s public security education sector.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using simulation in improving cadets’ oral communication skills in Military English at the Military College of Special Forces. The research employed a quasi-experimental design involving 30 third-year non-English major cadets with an English proficiency level equivalent to A2 CEFR. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire, pre-test and post-test speaking tasks, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The findings show that cadets experienced difficulties in all four components of oral communication competence. The post-test and paired-samples t-test results demonstrate statically significant improvements in all competencies after the intervention, particularly strategic, discourse, and sociolinguistic competence. The semi-structured interview findings also reflect that simulation activities can boost cadets’ confidence, interaction management, and flexibility in military contexts. The study suggests that simulation can provide a practical and effective approach to developing oral communication skills in Military English through realistic learning activities. At the same time, the results further encourage the use of simulation as a useful communication teaching method for designing military English training programs.

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 align with cognition levels, classroom tasks, and evidence of student learning. Participants will first analyse the relationship between content and language demands required for learners to engage successfully in the lesson and analyse the key concepts and cognitive demands involved before writing aligned objectives that connect these key elements. The workshop then clarifies what constitutes a content objective and a language objective in CLIL and how they differ from objectives typically used in subject-only or language-focused lessons. Using sample materials, participants will practise writing content objectives that align with the language focus and cognitive target. They will also practise writing language objectives that specify language functions, relevant linguistic forms, and expected learner outputs. They will then connect these objectives to classroom activities and interactional opportunities. Finally, participants will consider what forms of classroom evidence can demonstrate whether the learning opportunities support the intended objectives and whether students have achieved the expected outcomes. The session concludes with collaborative discussion, questions and answers.

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 how teachers can use GenAI tools, alongside their own informed knowledge of TBLT, to support them in creating tasks to enhance learners' active language use. The workshop will be conducted following a Teacher Activity Group (TAG) Approach, which highlights reflection, peer collaboration, and teacher identity. Specifically, participants will reflect on their self as a teacher and their teaching experience in connecting English language learning with authentic language use to promote their learners' communicative competence. Then, they will engage in collaborative and hands-on activities, exploring the core features of TBLT, evaluating sample materials, and adapting tasks of different types to teach their particular groups of learners. By the end of the workshop, teacher participants are expected to be inspired to reimagine their beliefs and practice about English teaching and learning alongside their colleagues, taking into consideration their teacher identity and the specific social, cultural, and political features of their teaching practice.

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 modify these outputs, yet limited preparation time, restricted institutional access, and complex academic jargon make principled revision difficult, leaving teachers reliant on intuition rather than informed judgment. To address this, the workshop introduces a teacher-centred triadic negotiation framework, positioning the educator as the central mediator among three elements: automated lesson plan drafts, classroom realities, and research findings synthesis. The framework uses TESOLgraphics as a visual research broker, converting secondary research into accessible visual summaries and researchers' suggestions. The workshop then guides participants through a four-stage process. First, participants generate an automated draft for an upcoming lesson. Second, they apply their pedagogical knowledge to analyze, identify, and note areas requiring modification. Third, they compare these evaluations against TESOLgraphics visual summaries, determining where evidence and suggestions align with, conflict with, or add to their judgments. Fourth, they synthesize these perspectives into a final contextualized lesson plan. Participants then complete a structured reflection journal, documenting how they negotiated between automated content and research knowledge, explaining why specific automated suggestions were rejected and how evidence validated their final decisions. Ultimately, this workflow equips teachers with a transferable evaluation protocol and reflective mechanism to maintain professional agency over automated tools while protecting instructional integrity.

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 linked to everyday preschool educational activities, thus allowing English to be part of children’s daily routines, play, movement, and interaction. Grounded in play-based learning, Total Physical Response, and activity-integrated language learning, the workshop demonstrates how AI-generated songs are especially suitable for ESL-oriented preschool education, given their benefits for repetition, emotional involvement, classroom participation, pronunciation development, and low-anxiety language exposure for very young learners. Participants will discover concrete tactics to link AI-generated songs with engaging preschool activities, including early math, movement, art, science exploration, and social-emotional learning, thereby transforming current classroom routines into chances for English language learning. In the session, a live demonstration shows how teachers can use AI prompts to go from selecting a preschool activity and target language to creating lyrics, melodies, and songs ready for the classroom in minutes. Participants will then participate in hands-on group activities to create their own AI-generated preschool songs, learn classroom interaction techniques using gestures and movement, and share practical ideas for using songs in everyday preschool teaching. Finally, the workshop introduces the role of AI in supporting sustainable teacher creativity, optimizing preparation time, and creating ESL-oriented preschool learning environments in Vietnam.

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 communicative use of grammar into the pedagogical practices of the classroom․ This interactive workshop will introduce communicative grammar tasks suitable for teaching grammar to Vietnamese primary school students․ Based on CLT and meaning-focused instruction‚ these tasks model ways to develop and present grammar via pair work‚ movement‚ information gap‚ story-telling‚ and collaborative task-based activities․ The goal instead is to draw attention to and use the target structure in meaningful communication situations rather than translate into Vietnamese․ The workshop consists of trying out the chosen activities as learners‚ understanding the theory behind them‚ and brainstorming how they might be adapted for different classes and learners․ It also covers potential problems teaching English for primary‚ such as mixed ability‚ lack of learner confidence‚ and promoting the use of English during interaction․ By the end of the session‚ teachers will have some ideas about how to offer communicative grammar instruction and rich English learning environments in Vietnamese primary classrooms․

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 NotebookLM offers exactly that — a low-cost, replicable model for building English language proficiency that any teacher with a smartphone can begin using today. Specifically, this workshop demonstrates how NotebookLM's dual-speaker Audio Overviews can train top-down listening comprehension while simultaneously positioning students as active producers of language, not passive consumers. Participants will experience the full workflow firsthand: curating a NotebookLM source set around a target listening topic, generating and critically evaluating an Audio Overview for immediate classroom use, and adapting the same production pipeline to at least one additional language skill. A brief orientation situates AI as a personalized linguistic partner across all four skills before the group moves into extended, guided practice with listening as the central example. Attendees will leave with three transferable outcomes: a ready-to-deploy listening activity built during the session, a replicable content-creation workflow adaptable across skill areas, and a practical understanding of how to transform static curricular inputs into dynamic, multi-modal learning environments. Participants can complete the exercise on a smartphone, though a laptop or tablet is preferred. These are the classroom-level building blocks for operationalizing Vietnam's national bilingual vision — accessible, immediate, and scalable.

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 Facilitator Capacity Building and Teacher Strength Enhancement (see more at www.tag-vietnam.com),this hands-on workshop translates research into teacher training and lived experience into practical steps that teachers can use and adapt to build supportive professional Communities of practice. The workshop will focus on how Communities of practice support, enhance and enrich professional experience through mentoring, inclusive practices, decentralised knowledge exchange, and mutual learning (Wenger, 1999; Lamb, 2012; Herrero, 2016; Herrero and Spence, 2023; Berbain and Polastri, 2025; Hoan Le et al., 2025). In the first part of the workshop, we will define Communities of practice and explore Vietnam-relevant scenarios emerging from our project. The second part of the workshop is a practical session. Participants will be guided to co-design a plan for creating a Community of practice and/or a Special Interest Group tailored to their own contexts. Participants will receive resources and templates for running teacher development sessions (a Community of practice Canvas, Special Interest Group template, mentoring and peer-observation models) and a list of low-/ or no tech tools to keep communities growing both online and offline. We will also share successfully tested facilitation techniques for teacher development that balance structure with teacher voice and suggest realistic ways to ensure professional development via local networks, Zalo groups, and micro-professional development routines.

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 neurobiological impairment. In consequence, inclusive teaching gains insights into identifying and supporting every learner inside the classroom. Thus, this interactive workshop, titled “Informal Strategies for Identification of Dyslexia in the Language Classroom’’, strives to empower English language teacher educators about the informal strategies and the practical application tools that can be used inside the language classroom for identification of “Dyslexia” in students. The workshop covers the fundamental remedies for the identification of ‘Dyslexia’ in classroom settings. This session will follow these stages: (1) Reflective task (2) Provide a brief overview of ‘Dyslexia’, define ‘Dyslexia’ and common characteristics (3) Facilitate group discussions (4) Introduce the informal strategies (5) Demonstrations. Thus, the participants will engage in different interactive activities to explore the informal strategies that they can integrate into their pedagogical practices to identify the ‘Dyslexia’ of learners. The educators will equip them with the confidence and skills to recognize the signs of Dyslexia. Eventually, the Professional Development of educators will happen. This workshop titled ‘Exploring Informal Strategies for Identification of Dyslexia in the Language Classroom’ will provide a comprehensive and practical understanding of Dyslexia identification through informal activities for educators in the English language teaching context.

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’ confidence in speaking. As a result, many students see English mainly as a subject they need to pass rather than a tool they can use to express themselves and connect with others. This workshop focuses on practical strategies for transforming traditional textbook activities into engaging communication tasks that encourage student engagement, interaction, and purposeful language use. Drawing on classroom experience, the session demonstrates how grammar drills and scripted speaking exercises can be redesigned into group discussions, problem-solving tasks, presentations, interviews, and personal opinion-sharing activities. Particular attention is given to creating low-pressure speaking activities that help students build confidence and develop greater willingness to communicate in English. Participants will experience sample activities, analyze examples of lesson adaptation, and collaborate to redesign textbook tasks into more meaningful experiences for communication. The workshop aims to provide teachers with practical and adaptable approaches for increasing learner engagement while helping students see English as a relevant and useful part of their future lives.

This study advances corpus-based critical discourse analysis by integrating corpus-based analysis with Fairclough’s three-dimensional model to examine hedging in English diplomatic discourse. Two research corpora are compiled, comprising over 200,000 words of American and British ambassadors’ speeches delivered to Vietnamese audiences. By integrating quantitative statistical tools from WordSmith 8.0 with qualitative linguistic analysis, the study investigates how American and British ambassadors utilize modal lexical verbs, modal adjectives, intensifiers, downtoners, and patterns of mitigation markers functioning as hedges. The findings reveal significant cross-cultural differences: American ambassadors show more personal and direct communicative styles using more patterns of hedges in the sense of strong commitment, intensifiers and downtoners, whereas British ambassadors are more tentative and indirect, employing higher frequencies of hedges conveying weak commitment with modal lexical verbs, modal adjectives, and mitigation markers. Hedges in ambassadorial speeches operate simultaneously at multiple levels: at textual level, it encodes degrees of commitment and stance; at discursive practice level, it mediates the production and interpretation of diplomatic communication; and at social practice level, it contributes to the negotiation of power relations and the articulation of ideological positions. The study also underscores the effectiveness of corpus linguistics and corpus-based approach to providing empirically grounded, objective insights into the relationship between language use and social interaction.

This study examines how gendered voice is constructed in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and reshaped in two Vietnamese translations: Diep’s (2002) and Nguyen’s (2020). The study analyzes gendered-language features from dialogues in Chapters 1–23 of the English source text and compares their equivalents in the two Vietnamese versions. The analysis focuses on five interpersonal feature groups: lexical hedges, empty adjectives, tag questions, superpolite forms or indirectness, and intensifiers. The findings show that female characters use more of the selected features than male characters, especially lexical hedges and intensifiers, while superpolite forms and indirectness are distributed more evenly across genders. The comparison also reveals clear differences between the translations. Diep’s 2002 version more often neutralizes, reduces, or omits features related to hesitation, evaluation, politeness, and emphasis, whereas Nguyen’s 2020 version more frequently preserves or reconstructs them through Vietnamese linguistic features. The study indicates that translation may reshape the voices of male and female characters through subtle shifts in hedging, politeness, evaluation, and emphasis. It further highlights the need for translators to consider not only the content of characters’ speech, but also the manner in which their voices are constructed in literary dialogue.

Abstract: Developing English speaking skills poses a significant challenge for vocational students in Vietnam due to performance anxiety and a lack of authentic and, transactional communicative contexts. Grounded in Game-Based Learning (GBL) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this study investigates the dual impact of gamified role-playing activities under the mechanics of constraints (such as budget limits and time pressure) on both learners’ speaking performance and intrinsic motivation. Employing a quasi-experimental mixed-methods design, the research involved 80 pre-intermediate students at a vocational school in Da Nang over an eight-week intervention. Data were collected through paired speaking tests, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), and reflective journals. The findings suggest that the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in overall speaking proficiency compared to the control group, with notable gains in fluency and strategic interaction, while maintaining linguistic accuracy under cognitive load. Furthermore, qualitative and quantitative data indicate a profound enhancement in intrinsic motivation, as authentic game constraints successfully satisfied students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Consequently, this study advocates for a pedagogical shift from traditional scripted dialogues to gamified tasks, providing a practical framework to foster both communicative competence and psychological engagement in vocational EFL contexts.

The study focuses on the teaching purposes and language choices of teachers’ embedded commentary on upper secondary school EFL students’ writing within a test-oriented Vietnamese context. Well-grounded in an adapted classification framework (Derham et al., 2022; Hattie & Timperley, 2007), the research explores how educators balance the dual roles of judging and guiding. To achieve this, a quantitative document analysis was conducted on 1,434 comments extracted from 55 students’ essays, utilizing the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) software. The findings reveal that feedback is predominantly concentrated on surface-level editorial corrections, heavily overshadowing self-regulatory guidance. Linguistically, however, teachers shift from detached, impersonal phrasing when evaluating to more personalized, insight-driven language when providing developmental feedback. These results highlight a critical need for professional development that prepares teachers to implement cognitively engaging feedback.

While an increasing number of studies have examined textbook images and gender representation in educational materials, fewer studies have investigated how gender is visually represented in English textbook images through Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar. This study aims to examine gender representation in the American Language Hub Starter and American Language Hub Level 1 textbooks through Visual Grammar framework by investigating how male and female participants are visually represented and exploring how they are positioned in relation to viewers. This study focuses on images containing gender-identifiable human participants, while images with unclear gender cues were recorded but excluded from gender-specific analysis. Methodologically, the study employs a visual grammar-based content analysis, focusing on two metafunctions: representational meaning and interactive meaning. The images were coded in terms of participant gender, process type, activity type, gaze, social distance, horizontal angle, and vertical angle. Quantitative coding was combined with qualitative interpretation to identify recurrent patterns of gendered visual representation. The findings reveal that female participants are more frequently represented in passive or display-oriented images, while male participants show a slightly stronger association with physically active or action-oriented activities. In terms of viewer engagement, male participants tend to establish more direct visual engagement with viewers, whereas female participants are more often positioned as objects of observation through indirect gaze. The findings suggest a shift from overt gender underrepresentation to more subtle forms of gender differentiation in visual roles, activities, and interactive positioning.

As Vietnam transitions from an EFL to an ESL-oriented context, there is a growing need for sustainable models of teacher professional learning beyond traditional workshop-based approaches. This presentation reports on the design and evolution of a three-year Action Research Program implemented within the tertiary English language context. Our program positions teachers as autonomous practitioners, supporting them to identify classroom challenges, engage in inquiry, and develop context-specific solutions through individual action research cycles and teacher-generated outputs. Drawing on three years of implementation, this session highlights key lessons learned in designing and sustaining the program. These include the need for flexible timelines; a shift from synchronous delivery to fully asynchronous learning supported by individualized mentoring; and the importance of maintaining a non-prescriptive approach that accommodates diverse teacher starting points while preserving autonomy and ownership. Building on these insights, the program is now evolving to include teacher mentoring pathways and communities of practice organized around shared interests. The session offers practical insights for institutions seeking to complement one-off training with inquiry-based, teacher-led professional learning. Attendees will leave with a clear, adaptable model for designing action research programs, concrete strategies for balancing flexibility and accountability, and practical approaches to supporting teacher autonomy within their own institutional contexts.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has gained increasing attention in Vietnam as an approach to enhance both subject knowledge and English proficiency. Grounded in CLIL theory, particularly the 4Cs Framework (Content, Communication, Cognition, Culture) proposed by Coyle et al., this study examines how content-language integration is enacted in practice. It aims to (1) examine differences in CLIL implementation between public and private schools in Vietnam and (2) propose implications for improving its effectiveness in public education. The study adopts a comparative qualitative approach based on documentary analysis of existing research and policy materials, drawing on five primary analytical studies selected through systematic screening. Data are analyzed thematically to identify key patterns in CLIL implementation across the two contexts. Findings show that CLIL in Vietnam remains in an early stage and tends to prioritize language learning over content integration. In public schools, challenges include a mismatch between policy expectations and classroom practice, limited or poorly adapted teaching materials, and strong exam-oriented pressure combined with rigid curricula, leading to vocabulary-focused instruction. In contrast, private schools implement CLIL more flexibly due to greater access to resources, imported materials, and supportive professional environments, enabling more balanced integration of content and language. Based on these findings, the study proposes several implications for public education, including curriculum integration, development of standardized CLIL materials adapted from international models, a separate assessment framework to reduce exam pressure, and continuous teacher training to support effective implementation.

Vietnam's National Plan 2025–2035 repositions English as a second language and a strategic driver of economic competitiveness, yet military training environments remain a significant gap in the blended learning literature. This paper presents the design and implementation of a locally networked blended learning framework at the Naval Technical College, a military institution preparing navigation, marine engineering, and naval electrical specialists for the Vietnam People's Navy. Unlike civilian settings, the College operates under strict information security protocols that prohibit external internet connectivity, making cloud-based educational technology solutions institutionally inapplicable. Grounded in learner agency theory and offline-first instructional design principles, the framework integrates an offline Moodle-based learning management system, purpose-built Maritime English content aligned with International Maritime Organization and watchkeeping standards, and a locally deployed artificial intelligence language assistant — all within a closed local network. The framework was implemented across two to three parallel classes spanning multiple technical specializations. Pre- and post-test results, system activity logs, and learner surveys collectively indicate measurable gains in English proficiency, a notable increase in voluntary out-of-class self-study, and consistently positive learner feedback. These outcomes challenge the assumption that security-driven constraints inevitably restrict learner autonomy, demonstrating instead that a deliberately designed offline architecture can cultivate self-directed learning habits. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for adapting this model to other security-sensitive or low-connectivity educational contexts, contributing to the broader conversation on equitable and context-responsive English language teaching in Vietnam.

In today’s technology-driven world, digital video communication plays an increasingly important role in students’ academic and social lives. However, many secondary school students still experience anxiety and low confidence when speaking English in front of cameras. Teacher-supported video production activities can provide meaningful opportunities for speaking practice, creative language use, and the development of on-camera presentation skills. This presentation reports on a classroom-based instructional project conducted with students from a Grade 9 class at a public lower secondary school in Vietnam during the 2025–2026 academic year. The project aimed to enhance students’ speaking confidence through collaborative video production activities integrated into speaking lessons and project-based learning tasks. Working in groups with teacher support, students planned, rehearsed, recorded, and edited short English videos related to lesson topics closely aligned with the Global Success textbook series and real-life communication contexts. Data were collected through classroom observation, student surveys, and comparisons of students’ speaking performance and participation before and after the project implementation. The findings indicate that the video production activities increased students’ willingness to speak English, reduced anxiety when speaking in front of cameras, and promoted greater learner engagement and autonomy. In addition, the project contributed to the development of a digital video resource bank that can support future speaking instruction. The presentation discusses practical implications for technology-mediated speaking instruction and learner confidence development in secondary English education contexts.

A move that was proposed by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training to change English from a foreign language to a second language during the period of 2025–2035 is a remarkable move towards improving their global competitiveness. This strategy is based on the assumption of the existence of a universal way of learning that favors metropolitan areas with enough educational resources. In such a case, the strategy is likely to have negative effects on rural, isolated, and marginalized learners, particularly those from ethnic minorities for whom English is a challenging third language. Using Spolsky's three-dimensional language policy model, the presentation critically discusses how language policies at the macro level and language practices at the micro level can be conflicting, particularly when implemented in resource-limited environments. Such a forceful imposition could make English a stumbling block to learning and further perpetuate inequities among disadvantaged learners. In this context, the discussion focuses on modifying policies and making sure they cater to the specific situations of different linguistic ecologies, with phases of implementation. Attendees will analyze concrete cases of this issue as well as other alternative ways of implementing the strategy. After the presentation, people will have very practical recommendations to enable the strategy to serve as a tool of inclusion rather than exclusion among rural and disadvantaged learners in Vietnam.

Refusal is a face-threatening speech act that requires a high level of pragmatic competence influenced by sociocultural factors. While L1 speakers navigate these nuances intuitively, L2 speakers often face pragmatic failure due to cross-linguistic interference. This study employs discourse completion tasks, role-play scenarios, and semi-structured focus group interviews to collect data from 20 L1 speakers from the United States and 60 L2 speakers at Tien Giang University. Situations were designed to vary according to key social variables: Power Relations (P), Social Distance (D), and Rank of Imposition (R). The primary objective is to explore and compare the refusal strategies utilized by L1 speakers and L2 speakers and to investigate how social factors influence their linguistic choices. The findings reveal differences in the frequency and types of refusal strategies. While L1 speakers favored indirect strategies to maintain solidarity, L2 speakers tended to rely on more direct refusals or inappropriate shifts in politeness markers, especially in high-imposition scenarios. The analysis suggests that L2 speakers often lack sociopragmatic awareness. However, L2 speakers, lecturers of English can use English with a level of fluency comparable to that of L1 speakers. This comparative analysis highlights the critical gap between grammatical competence and pragmatic competence in second language acquisition. Consequently, the study suggests implementing explicit pragmatic instruction and cultural-awareness training in L2 language teaching to foster effective intercultural communication.

Social task engagement has been extensively explored within task-based language teaching settings. However, research on this construct situated within a text-driven, task-based (TDTB) approach remains an emerging strand. Adopting a descriptive quantitative research design with supplementary qualitative insights, the current study aimed to examine fifty Vietnamese English-majored students’ social task engagement in the TDTB approach. The participants engaged in two 50-minute TDTB lessons designed around two engaging texts. Their social engagement in the two text-driven tasks was measured using an adapted five-item dimension of a task engagement questionnaire. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a subset of participants to gain deeper insights into their interactional experiences. With reference to Oxford’s (1990) framework, the findings revealed that students demonstrated a high level of social engagement in both tasks. Notably, a higher level of engagement was recorded in Task 1, which was driven by a text about a Monkey bridge. This quantitative finding was supported by interview data, in which several students reported that the familiarity and relevance of the topic encouraged more active peer interaction and idea sharing. Furthermore, student–student engagement was found to outweigh teacher–student interaction in both tasks; interview responses also indicated that learners felt more comfortable negotiating meaning and expressing ideas with peers in a collaborative setting. The study concludes with further discussions, limitations, and suggestions for future research.

Teaching practicum plays a significant role in preparing pre-service teachers for professional teaching contexts. However, the transition from practicum experience to full-time teaching remains challenging for many early-career ESOL teachers in Vietnam. This presentation explores how novice teachers perceive the influence of teaching practicum on their professional development during the early stages of their careers. Using a qualitative approach, the study collected data through semi-structured interviews with early-career ESOL teachers who had recently entered the teaching profession. The findings indicate that teaching practicum provided valuable opportunities for classroom observation, lesson planning, classroom management, and interaction with learners in authentic educational settings. Participants reported that these experiences contributed positively to their teaching confidence and professional identity formation. However, the study also reveals several difficulties encountered during the transition into professional teaching, including workload pressure, classroom realities, institutional expectations, and gaps between university training and actual teaching practice. The presentation discusses implications for teacher education programs and highlights the importance of mentoring, reflective practice, and practical support for novice teachers in Vietnam’s evolving ESOL context.

In the era of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT has been utilized for various purposes, including writing instructions in contexts such as the IELTS test. Acknowledging such importance, this study aims to investigate how IELTS teachers currently use ChatGPT for IELTS Writing Task 2 essay feedback. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, with triangulation from a questionnaire, interviews, and chat log observations, the study looks into 229 IELTS teachers’ actual ChatGPT usage along with their perceived training needs. In terms of usage, findings demonstrated that the teachers assigned lower-order concerns in students’ essays to ChatGPT, which include Grammatical range and accuracy and Lexical resources, while relying on their own expertise to deal with higher-order concerns, namely Task response as well as Coherence and cohesion. Data also revealed that heavy workloads hinder the teachers’ determination to check AI-generated output before handing it to their students. Consequently, in terms of training needs, the participants expressed a strong desire for practical prompt templates and more strategic feedback cycles. This study suggested that trainers and institutions should support prompt templates for teachers and work on developing AI-human work ethics for long-term collaboration that lasts. The study also proposed a set of standardized prompts as the research product and recommended an AI competency framework improvement for teacher training.

Against the backdrop of the National Foreign Languages Project and the growing internationalization of higher education in Vietnam, English-Medium Instruction (EMI) has emerged as a significant educational phenomenon in Vietnamese universities. Despite the rapid expansion of EMI, research on how students strategically cope with learning disciplinary content through English remains limited, particularly in the Vietnamese context. Drawing on the EMI-specific strategy framework proposed by Macaro (2021), this study explores the strategies Vietnamese undergraduate students employ to navigate EMI learning environments. The study focuses on four dimensions of coping strategies, including content comprehension, listening and classroom interaction, note-taking practices, and vocabulary management. Adopting a qualitative approach, the study collects data from semi-structured interviews and reflective journals involving twelve undergraduate students enrolled in English-medium disciplinary courses at a Vietnamese university. The findings reveal that students primarily prioritize disciplinary content comprehension over language development and employ a range of compensatory strategies to overcome linguistic and psychological challenges in EMI classrooms. Students also strategically utilize technological tools, contextual inference, and first-language (L1) support to facilitate understanding and participation. The study contributes to the growing body of EMI research by offering context-specific insights into students’ strategic adaptation in Vietnamese higher education and providing pedagogical implications for EMI teaching and learning in similar EFL contexts.

The research surveys the processing factors, including level of confidence and familiarity, as well as learner strategies in biblical idiom comprehension on adult EFL learners in Vietnam. The data is collected from 253 participants, divided into three groups: non-Christian, Christian, and members of Christian religious orders, via an online survey consisting of 20 biblical and non-biblical idioms, and a Likert scale (1-5) to measure the level of confidence and another 14-item Likert scale (1-5) to explore the learner strategies. The expected analysis includes descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation between confidence/familiarity and idiom comprehension, cluster analysis to identify learner strategic groups, and comparison of effectiveness between strategic groups. Based on the results from what have been done so far (ρ = 0.40, p < 0.001), the study expects to find a positive correlation between confidence and accuracy, while detecting overconfidence in the non-Christian group. In terms of strategies, it is expected that three to four strategic clusters will be identified, and the group using strategies based on biblical knowledge would score the highest in idiom comprehension. These findings are expected to contribute to the pedagogical intervention design, aiming to improve idiom learning strategies for EFL learners in Vietnam.

Early-career EFL teachers often enter the profession under considerable pressure as they move from pre-service preparation into full professional responsibility. In Vietnam, these pressures are shaped by rising expectations for English teaching and the complex realities of school-based work. Against this background, this presentation reports a qualitative narrative inquiry into the professional challenges and resilience of early-career EFL teachers working in five schools in Hanoi. Specifically, it identifies the most significant challenges these teachers face, examines how they respond through personal and contextual resources, and considers how these experiences shape their intentions to remain in the profession. Grounded in a process-focused framework of teacher resilience, the study involved five early-career EFL teachers who participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews with embedded critical incident accounts. The data were analysed through a narrative-informed thematic approach combining within-case narrative reconstruction and cross-case interpretation. The findings show that participants’ challenges clustered around workload and organizational demands, classroom and pedagogical demands, emotional and relational demands, and performance pressures. Resilience emerged as a dynamic and negotiated process shaped by the interaction of personal resources, contextual resources, and practical strategies. Intentions to remain in teaching were conditional, depending largely on whether the work could still be experienced as manageable, meaningful, and professionally livable. The presentation offers implications for teacher education, school-based induction, and early-career teacher support.

Integrating disciplinary content into English language teaching has gained increasing attention as universities seek innovative approaches to preparing graduates for successfully thriving in a highly professional global environment. Amidst the gradual shift of English instruction from a foreign language towards a second language orientation, Vietnamese universities are making initiatives to mainstream Content Language integrated Learning (CLIL) into their instructional and curricular practices. This study examines how CLIL has been implemented, using Project-Based Learning (PBL) as a pedagogical approach in an English language programme at UD-UFLS. The study explores the integration of business content and multimodal literacy in Business Communication and Translation & Interpretation courses where students can develop their business English awareness, translation competence, media literacy through project-based tasks. The study adopts a mixed-methods design. Qualitative data was collected from content analysis of student-generated artifacts, classroom notes and semi-structured interviews while quantitative data was gathered through learner perception questionnaires administered to around 190 English majors. The findings show that PBL facilitates the alignment of the 4Cs of CLIL - content, communication, cognition, and culture - by engaging students in authentic, multimodal tasks requiring extensive practice of domain knowledge as well as communicative and translation skills. Student-produced business and media projects demonstrate their enhanced competencies in persuasive communication, content mastery, and multimodal output production. The study provides empirical evidence for positioning PBL as an enabler for CLIL implementation and offers pedagogical insights for English language curriculum design in contexts seeking deeper diffusion of content-language integration.

Student engagement plays a crucial role in determining the effectiveness of teacher feedback in writing. Despite the increasing interest in student engagement with feedback, limited research has examined how students behaviorally engage with teacher digital feedback during the revision process. This study traced students’ behavioral engagement with teacher digital feedback and explored the engagement patterns that emerged from their interactions with feedback during revision. The study employed a qualitative research design, involving 30 English majors in an EFL writing course at a Vietnamese university. Data were collected through screen-recorded revision sessions using word-processing software, accompanied by think-aloud protocols and stimulated recall interviews. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify patterns of behavioral engagement. The findings revealed considerable variation in how students engaged behaviorally with teacher digital feedback during revision. Several distinct behavioral engagement patterns emerged, ranging from extensive uptake with active text modifications to more selective engagement with teacher comments. The study provides critical insight into students’ behavioral engagement with teacher digital feedback as it occurs in real-time. The findings also offer pedagogical implications for promoting more effective engagement with teacher digital feedback in EFL writing contexts.

Morphemic analysis is considered a useful strategy for inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words through prefixes, suffixes, and roots. However, students’ perceptions and experiences of using this strategy in Vietnamese high schools remain underexplored. This study aims to investigate high school students’ perceptions of morphemic analysis strategies and explore the benefits and challenges they experienced when applying them in vocabulary learning. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was adopted. Quantitative data were collected from questionnaires completed by 150 Grade 10 students at a public high school, while qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with 20 students. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 16.0, whereas qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The findings revealed that students generally had positive perceptions of morphemic analysis. They believed that the strategy helped them remember vocabulary, infer word meanings, and expand vocabulary through word families. However, an unexpected finding was that positive perceptions did not always lead to regular strategy use. Although students recognized the usefulness of morphemic analysis, many still preferred using dictionaries, translation apps, or guessing from context when encountering unfamiliar words rather than analyzing prefixes, suffixes, or roots. Students also experienced moderate difficulty and limited confidence when applying the strategy independently. The study suggests that teachers should provide explicit instruction and guided practice, while administrators should support the integration of vocabulary learning strategies into English instruction.

The rapid development of generative AI is reshaping the knowledge base and professional practices of language educators. This presentation examines how AI can support ESP (English for Specific Purposes) educators in developing hybrid expertise that extends beyond traditional content knowledge. The discussion is grounded in the redesign of English courses for students in a Bio-Health Convergence program, where the educator faced challenges related to limited disciplinary knowledge, the lack of suitable teaching materials, and the need to connect language learning with disciplinary learning. Rather than using AI solely as a source of information, the presentation illustrates how AI functioned as a teaching partner in instructional design. AI-supported processes included the development of reading materials, TED-Ed-based learning resources, vocabulary activities, comprehension tasks, and project-based learning experiences. Through these processes, AI enabled the educator to create learner-centered learning environments while maintaining pedagogical control and disciplinary relevance. Drawing on classroom practices implemented between 2023 and 2025, the presentation demonstrates how AI-assisted instructional design promoted student engagement, supported meaningful participation, and connected English learning with the construction of academic and professional knowledge. A product development project is presented as an example of how students integrated disciplinary knowledge, language skills, and AI tools within an authentic learning context. The presentation argues that generative AI is not merely transforming instructional materials but also redefining what it means to be an ESP educator. Effective ESP teaching in the age of AI requires the development of hybrid expertise that integrates pedagogical knowledge, instructional design expertise, discipline-informed teaching, and AI-supported material development. Implications are discussed for professional development, curriculum innovation, and AI integration in educational contexts undergoing rapid linguistic, curricular, and technological change.

Language education in Vietnam is undergoing a major transformation to establish English as a second language through a comprehensive, school-based ecosystem. While content-based approaches like CLIL and EMI have gained substantial attention, achieving this ambitious national agenda requires curricular innovations that align with the fundamental principles of second language acquisition (SLA). This remains a critical issue in Vietnam, where many educators continue to rely on traditional grammar-translation or mechanical behaviorist methods in language teaching. This presentation argues that building a sustainable ESL ecosystem requires shifting away from teaching isolated linguistic structures and instead embracing academic content and target tasks as primary curricular units. To operationalize this shift, the session outlines a cohesive pedagogical framework by connecting the high-impact elements of a U.S. content-based sheltered instructional model, the communicative authenticity of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), and the scalable power of AI-learner interactions. This presentation will clarify how operating within content-based classrooms requires planning dual content and language objectives alongside "rich tasks" that promote “substantive conversations” conducive to both content and language learning. Because content serves as the foundational meaning students comprehend and communicate, it aligns perfectly with the core criteria of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), where a focus on meaning is essential. Furthermore, learners’ need for content mastery naturally generates the target tasks that guide curriculum development. The session concludes by providing educators with a cohesive framework to turn content standards into communicative opportunities, bridging the gap between theory and classroom practice within the emerging ESL ecosystem in Vietnam.

As English increasingly becomes a tool for learning across subjects, teachers need practical ways to support both language development and content understanding. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) helps learners use English to investigate topics, express ideas, solve problems, and demonstrate understanding. Using examples from primary and pre-primary materials, this workshop explores how global citizenship themes, nature and science topics, project work, and future skills can create meaningful, content-rich English lessons. Participants will examine how to plan intentional CLIL pathways with clear content aims, language support, learner interaction, and age-appropriate outcomes. By positioning CLIL as a bridge toward content learning through English, the workshop highlights classroom routines, scaffolding techniques, and confidence-building strategies teachers can apply in their own contexts.

As Vietnam repositions English from a foreign language to a second language and expands English-medium instruction (EMI), educators face a critical question: how can technology enrich learning without weakening the core skills learners must develop for themselves? This issue is especially important at a time when digital tools and AI can improve access, feedback, efficiency, and engagement, but can also reduce opportunities for students to build authentic language ability, writing competence, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and learner agency. This session examines how educators can distinguish between technology that supports learning and technology that diminishes skill development. It offers principles and practical suggestions for designing tasks, classroom interaction, and assessment in ways that preserve authentic student thinking, communication, and independence while making purposeful use of digital and AI tools. The session concludes with recommendations for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers seeking to support Vietnam’s ESL transition in ways that are pedagogically sound, contextually appropriate, and sustainable.

As Vietnam moves toward an ESL-oriented future, English language teachers are expected to respond to rapidly changing demands in communication, technology integration, and classroom pedagogy. However, many teachers, particularly freelancers and teachers outside major institutional systems, continue to experience limited access to sustained professional development and professional support. In response, English language teaching associations and communities of practice in Vietnam have increasingly become collaborative spaces where teachers share knowledge, develop new teaching practices, and strengthen professional identity. This presentation explores how teacher-led communities of practice can support sustainable professional learning beyond one-off workshops and short-term training models. Drawing on survey and interview data collected from 63 online and hybrid professional learning events conducted between 2021 and 2025, the presentation examines how communities such as Communities for ELT Practice and Twinkl Vietnam Community supported teacher growth through collaborative learning, reflective discussion, technology integration, and peer-led innovation. Findings suggest that community-based professional learning can foster not only pedagogical development but also teacher agency, leadership, and long-term professional engagement. The presentation discusses how collaborative teacher ecosystems may play an increasingly important role in supporting Vietnam’s transition from EFL toward more communicative and socially connected models of English language education.

This study investigates how English majors use collocations in speaking and draws practical implications for learning and teaching improvement. In order to obtain the research aim, the study specifically examines students’ understanding of collocations, their ability to use collocations in speaking, and their perceptions of collocation use in spoken performances. The research design is mixed-method, adopting both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The research population were second-year students of English language majors, and the participants were recruited through convenient sampling. Following the data collection procedure, the participating students first completed the Collocation test that measured their knowledge of English collocations to which they had been exposed to throughout their current English integrated skills courses (equivalent to B2 level, CEFR). Next, a subset of those participants responded to a mini Speaking test trying to produce the learned collocations relevant to the speaking prompt, and were then interviewed regarding their opinions of producing the collocations orally. The research findings reveal that there exists a noticeable gap between how much students know and understand English collocations and how able they are to produce them while speaking. In addition, the study sheds light on present challenges that the students have encountered within the effort to use collocations when speaking English, from which learning and teaching activities are proposed for effective acquisition of collocations.

This practice-oriented presentation reports on a teacher-led professional learning initiative implemented to develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-oriented English project lessons in a Vietnamese lower- and upper-secondary school context. The initiative was developed from regular professional meetings of an English group and aimed to make lesson planning, classroom observation, and post-lesson discussion more closely connected with student learning evidence and meaningful English use. English teachers collaboratively selected suitable project lessons, designed real-life learning tasks, conducted a demonstration lesson, observed students’ participation, analyzed classroom products, and revised the lesson after professional discussion. English remained the central subject, while interdisciplinary elements were integrated through local problem-solving tasks, digital tools, group collaboration, product design, quick response codes, bilingual digital maps, posters, slides, and oral presentations in English. Evidence from lesson plans, observation notes, student products, and professional discussions showed that the initiative supported teachers in designing more practical English learning activities and helped students develop collaboration, digital literacy, creativity, problem-solving, and meaningful English communication beyond textbook-based practice. The presentation shares what was implemented, the outcomes observed, the challenges encountered, and practical conditions for adapting this model in similar school contexts.

This study investigates the impact of FrameVR, a metaverse-based platform, on English speaking skills and students’ perceptions in a Vietnamese high school context. The research is theoretically grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model, the Affective Filter Hypothesis, and Social Constructivism. Regarding the research methodology, a quasi-experimental design was employed with 90 Grade 11 students, divided into an experimental group and a control group. While the control group followed traditional instruction, the experimental group engaged in speaking activities through FrameVR. Speaking performance was measured through pre- and post-tests, while a survey was used to examine students’ perceptions of the metaverse-based learning environment. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain deeper insights into the survey findings. The findings suggest that the experimental group experienced statistically significant improvements in speaking performance, with mean score gains nearly three times higher than those of the control group. Survey results indicated that students held positive perceptions of the immersive environment, particularly in terms of engagement, social interaction, and reduced speaking anxiety. These findings were further supported by qualitative data from interviews, which highlighted students’ experiences of increased confidence and more meaningful participation in speaking activities. These results suggest that metaverse-based learning may help address some limitations of traditional classrooms and support the development of EFL speaking skills. The study offers practical implications for integrating immersive technologies into English language teaching and contributes to the growing body of research on technology-enhanced language learning in Vietnam.

This presentation reports on a classroom-based pilot study investigating the use of modular visual grammar instruction to support first-year Vietnamese non-English-major university students with low proficiency in learning English tenses. Drawing on Cognitive Load Theory and modular instructional design, the study reconceptualizes grammar abstractness into a system of visual blocks representing time and action patterns. Over a six-week period, short-form animated lessons, integrated with AI-assisted scripting and prototyping, were implemented with 42 learners. Data were gathered through weekly grammar performance tasks, structured classroom observations, and post-lesson student feedback surveys. Both descriptive and qualitative analyses indicated a marked increase in classroom participation, enhanced immediate recall of tense structures, and highly positive learner attitudes toward grammar activities. The findings suggest that AI-supported modular visual grammar serves as a practical, high-engagement alternative to traditional memorization-based grammar teaching in Vietnamese tertiary contexts. Additionally, pedagogical implications for curriculum design and material development for low-proficiency EFL learners will be discussed.

Vocabulary learning is significantly challenging for vocational college EFL learners, especially in ESP courses where learners are required to understand and use technical terminology in workplace- related contexts. The purpose of this study was to investigate how explicit vocabulary instruction and ChatGPT-assisted practice improve ESP vocabulary learning for vocational college EFL learners. Using a quasi-experimental pre- and post-test control group design, with classroom observations conducted throughout the intervention, the study involved the random assignment of 48 vocational college EFL learners to a control group and an experimental group. Data were collected through ESP vocabulary assessments (pre-test and post-test) and classroom observations. Over a four-week intervention, the experimental group participated in explicit vocabulary instruction integrated with teacher-guided ChatGPT-assisted practice, while the control group received explicit vocabulary instruction without ChatGPT assistance. Quantitative analysis indicated overall improvement in ESP vocabulary performance across both groups following the intervention, with the experimental group showing a slightly greater enhancement in productive ESP vocabulary use and overall test scores, despite no significant between-group differences in ESP vocabulary comprehension. Qualitative findings from classroom observations suggested increased collaborative interaction and more contextualized workplace-related vocabulary use during the ChatGPT-assisted practice. This study contributes to the growing field of AI-assisted language learning by further supporting the pedagogically grounded integration of explicit ESP vocabulary instruction and ChatGPT-assisted practice as a means of facilitating productive ESP vocabulary development in vocational college contexts.

In response to Vietnam’s English-as-a-Second-Language policy, the development of university lecturers’ pedagogical readiness for English-medium instruction (EMI) has been provided with greater attention. Existing EMI research in Vietnam, however, has largely conceptualized readiness as an individual matter, primarily emphasizing lecturers’ language proficiency and pedagogical competence through survey-based or perception-oriented approaches (Ngo, 2019; Tri & Moskovsky, 2019; Vo, 2023; Vu & Burns, 2014). Such perspectives may overlook the complex realities in which EMI is enacted in higher education. This study, drawing on an ecological perspective, reconceptualizes pedagogical readiness as a situated and contextually mediated process shaped by interacting factors across policy, institutional, pedagogical, and classroom domains. Adopting a qualitative multi-site case study design, the study employs semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, post-observation reflections, and policy or institutional documents to examine how lecturers negotiate EMI practices across different higher education settings in Vietnam. Findings indicate that lecturers’ readiness for EMI is shaped by interconnected tensions across these ecological perspectives. At the policy level, a gap exists between national aspirations to promote English as a second language and the perceived social or occupational demand for English, contributing to uneven lecturer engagement with EMI. Institutionally, universities’ ambitions for EMI often remain insufficiently matched by sustained investment in lecturer preparedness. At the pedagogical and classroom levels, rigid curricula, assessment pressures, students’ fragmented English foundations, and disciplinary demands frequently constrain lecturers’ readiness, prompting adaptive practices such as translanguaging, scaffolding, and instructional simplification.

As English education in Vietnam is repositioning from an EFL to an ESL focus, inclusive teaching becomes an essential consideration in promoting equitable participation, especially in mixed-ability classrooms. In many cases, lower-proficiency learners often experience difficulties accessing grade-level reading texts, which can lead to cognitive overload and disengagement. As ELT in Vietnam increasingly integrates AI tools into teaching English, there is a growing need to examine its role in supporting inclusive instruction without lowering academic expectations. This qualitative study explores how pre-service teachers used AI as a tool in designing reading lessons for English language learners with lower proficiency levels in high schools in Vietnam over an eight-week teaching practice. Data were collected through pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, reflective journals, semi-structured interviews, and learner reflection forms. The results showed that scaffolding designed with AI support could promote lexical, procedural, conceptual, and affective access to complex reading texts for lower-proficiency learners. It could also promote behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement while maintaining shared curricular goals. However, the results also highlighted the importance of teacher mediation, professional judgment, and ethics in using AI tools. The study provides classroom-based evidence showing how AI tools can assist pre-service teachers in designing scaffolding for more inclusive reading instruction in Vietnam’s language education context.

In rural Vietnamese high schools, English is frequently taught as a strictly academic subject, leaving students with little exposure to authentic communicative use beyond the classroom. This practitioner-research study explores how AI conversational agents can facilitate a contextual shift from an EFL to a functional ESL orientation by creating an "AI-Powered Sandbox" - a structured digital environment in which students engage with English as a living tool for daily communication. Grounded in Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Second Language Acquisition theory, the study was conducted by the classroom teacher at Cam Khe High School, a rural public school in Phu Tho Province, Vietnam. Approximately 89 Grade 10 students completed daily AI-mediated interaction tasks over a four-week period. Data were collected through AI interaction logs and written learner reflections and analyzed using a mixed-methods approach to capture both language production patterns and attitudinal shifts. Preliminary findings indicate a notable increase in active language output and a measurable improvement in learners' willingness to use English beyond the classroom context. The presentation concludes with practical, scalable recommendations for educators in resource-limited settings who seek to leverage accessible AI tools to reposition English from a subject students study to a language they genuinely use.

This study investigates the readiness of high school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Can Tho City regarding the upcoming policy shift from multiple textbook series to a single, unified nationwide textbook. Utilizing an empirical survey design, data were collected from 55 high school EFL teachers representing various educational institutions across both urban centers and suburban/rural districts within the city. The evaluation framework comprised four primary dimensions: psychological/cognitive perception, pedagogical competence, technological/material autonomy, and institutional support needs. The empirical findings indicate that the participants demonstrated a fairly high level of overall readiness. Notably, the dimension of technological integration and the capacity to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) for material development and restructuring achieved the highest scores, highlighting the strong digital literacy and adaptability of EFL teachers in this key Mekong Delta educational hub. However, the study also unveiled localized professional anxieties, particularly concerning the significant gap in student English proficiency between central urban schools and peripheral districts within a centralized textbook framework. Additionally, concerns were raised regarding the pedagogical burden of adapting supplementary resources to align with national standardized examinations. Teachers expressed a critical demand for transforming professional development models from large-scale theoretical webinars into localized, hands-on, and cross-school collaborative workshops. These empirical insights offer valuable data for the Department of Education and Training of Can Tho City and educational policymakers to establish targeted technical, material, and psychological scaffolds, ensuring a smooth and equitable transition for the upcoming nationwide curriculum reform.

English-medium instruction (EMI) has expanded rapidly in Vietnamese universities, yet much of the existing work focuses on policy, programme-level implementation, or STEM and business subjects, with relatively little evidence from social science classes. This study addresses that gap by examining how students in an English-medium course on Globalization and Global issues perceive their readiness for EMI and the role of scaffolding activities in supporting both language and content learning. Seventy-five undergraduates completed an online questionnaire which combined Likert-scale items and short open-ended questions. The survey is formulated by prior EMI perception and challenge research, targeting four areas: language-related difficulty, content and cognitive load, affective factors, and the perceived usefulness of specific course activities. Three key findings emerged. First, most students self-rated at B2–C1 or higher and generally did not perceive English itself, or the lecturer’s accent and pace, as a major barrier to understanding lectures and readings, suggesting that this proficiency band is adequate for EMI in a social science course. Second, when asked to distinguish sources of difficulty, students attributed remaining challenges mainly to the complexity and workload of course content rather than to their English level, highlighting the need to support disciplinary understanding. Third, across proficiency levels, students rated scaffolding activities and explicit in-class explanations as helpful for managing both academic English and abstract concepts. This suggests that such scaffolding should be treated as core EMI practice rather than remedial support.

This study explores Vietnamese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students’ perceptions and interpretations of person deixis within intercultural pragmatic contexts, focusing on both English and Vietnamese pronoun systems. Using a comprehensive set of questionnaire responses collected from students majoring in English, the research investigates how learners comprehend and differentiate the social and cultural nuances embedded in pronoun use across the two languages. Findings reveal that students often transfer Vietnamese hierarchical and relational norms onto English, leading to variable accuracy in selecting appropriate pronouns in cross-cultural scenarios. Common patterns include overgeneralization of English pronouns, hesitation in using second-person singular forms in formal contexts, and misinterpretation of gender-neutral options. The study also highlights students’ awareness of politeness strategies, power relations, and social distance, suggesting a developing sensitivity to pragmatic rules beyond grammatical competence. While learners demonstrate familiarity with the structural forms of pronouns, their practical deployment in intercultural interactions is frequently constrained by limited exposure and sociocultural knowledge. These insights emphasize the critical role of explicit instruction in pragmatics and culturally informed language practices for EFL learners. By examining student perspectives on person deixis, this research contributes to understanding how intercultural pragmatic awareness can be fostered, offering implications for curriculum design, pedagogical strategies, and teacher training in EFL contexts. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of integrating sociolinguistic and pragmatic dimensions in language education to enhance learners’ communicative competence in both English and Vietnamese.

Debate has long been promoted as a productive task for developing oral communicative competence, argumentation, and higher-order thinking, yet its systematic integration into Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher-education programmes remains uneven and under-theorised. Despite a growing body of research on debate in EFL contexts, few studies have examined scaffolded debate pedagogy as an integrated framework that simultaneously addresses linguistic, cognitive, affective, and procedural support, and almost none have compared lower-year and upper-year preservice teachers in Vietnam. Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, this study is conducted on approximately 150 English-major whose major is English Language Teacher Education. Quantitative data will be collected through a five-point Likert questionnaire adapted from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Willingness-to-Communicate framework, English Debating Self-Efficacy Scale, Facione's critical thinking framework, Toulmin's argument model, and existing EFL scaffolding perception instruments. Qualitative data will be drawn from 20 semi-structured interviews and 6 classroom observations. The findings revealed that preservice teachers perceived scaffolded debate positively overall, with the strongest perceived gains in interactional competence, academic vocabulary, and argumentative fluency, but with weaker outcomes in real-time rebuttal and evidence evaluation. Notably, freshmen and sophomore students reported significantly higher debate anxiety and relied more heavily on linguistic and procedural scaffolding, whereas juniors and seniors demonstrated stronger benefits in critical thinking, counterargument construction, and pedagogical reflection. Teacher and peer scaffolding were found to significantly reduce anxiety and enhance willingness to communicate. These results underscore the necessity of integrating debate into EFL teacher-education curricula as a developmentally differentiated, scaffolded, and reflective pedagogy rather than a one-off speaking activity.

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence has transformed language education by creating new opportunities for interactive and autonomous learning. In English language teaching, AI-powered conversational tools such as ChatGPT have recently gained attention for their potential to support speaking practice beyond traditional classroom settings. Grounded in technology-enhanced language learning and communicative language teaching, this study investigates the effectiveness of ChatGPT-assisted speaking practice among EFL students at Ha Long University, Vietnam. Using a true-experimental design, the study involved 68 undergraduate students divided into an experimental group and a control group over a four-week intervention period. While the experimental group engaged in speaking activities supported by ChatGPT, the control group participated in conventional speaking instruction without AI integration. Data were collected through pre- and post-speaking tests and questionnaires examining students’ learning perceptions and experiences. The findings revealed that students in the experimental group demonstrated significantly greater improvement in speaking performance compared to those in the control group. Questionnaire data further indicated positive learner perceptions of ChatGPT-assisted learning, particularly regarding increased confidence, motivation, learner autonomy, and opportunities for extended speaking practice. The study highlights the pedagogical value of AI-assisted interaction as a supplementary tool for enhancing speaking development and learner engagement in EFL contexts. The findings contribute to the growing body of research on AI-assisted language learning and provide practical implications for integrating AI technologies into speaking instruction. Recommendations for future research include larger-scale studies and longer intervention periods to further examine the long-term effectiveness of AI-supported speaking practice.

This presentation investigates how AI-generated dialogue activities combined with personalized speaking tasks can enhance speaking confidence among Vietnamese EFL learners. Grounded in communicative language teaching, learner-centered pedagogy, and willingness-to-communicate theory, the study responds to the challenge that many students in Vietnamese classrooms experience anxiety, limited spontaneous language production, and fear of making mistakes during speaking activities. The study was conducted with EFL students in MeKong Delta over several weeks of classroom implementation. AI tools such as ChatGPT were used to create level-appropriate dialogues and personalized speaking prompts connected to students’ daily experiences and interests. The instructional procedure integrated guided reading, personalization, and glance-based speaking practice to encourage more natural communication without overreliance on memorization. Data were collected through classroom observations, student reflection responses, and informal speaking performance comparisons before and after the intervention. The findings indicated noticeable improvements in student participation, willingness to communicate, and confidence during pair and group interactions. Students appeared more engaged when speaking activities reflected familiar contexts and allowed opportunities for personal expression. The presentation will provide practical classroom examples, sample AI prompts, and adaptable teaching strategies that participants can apply in their own EFL contexts to promote more confident and meaningful student interaction through AI-supported speaking activities.

Organizational commitment plays an important role in lecturers’ professional engagement, retention, and contribution to higher education institutions. However, little is known about how Vietnamese returnee EFL lecturers perceive their organizational commitment after returning from overseas postgraduate study. This multiple case study investigates the varying levels of organizational commitment perceived by Vietnamese returnee EFL lecturers at four (4) different universities in Ho Chi Minh City. Drawing on the three-component model of organizational commitment proposed by Meyer and Allen (1991), the study specifically examined participants’ affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four (4) Vietnamese returnee EFL lecturers and analyzed thematically to identify participants’ varying levels of commitment across the three dimensions. The findings revealed that participants generally reported moderate to high affective commitment through emotional attachment to students, colleagues, and supportive departmental environments. Continuance commitment was perceived at varying degrees depending on participants’ views toward career stability, institutional opportunities, workload, and professional development conditions. Normative commitment was reflected in participants’ varying levels of responsibility toward contributing to their institutions and supporting students as returnee lecturers. However, the findings also revealed tensions between participants’ overseas-informed professional expectations and the institutional realities of Vietnamese higher education, particularly regarding workload, research demands, and institutional support. These tensions shaped how participants sustained and negotiated their organizational commitment over time. The study offers implications and recommendations for relevant stakeholders in supporting returnee lecturers’ professional engagement and commitment in higher education contexts.

Despite learners’ increasing adoption of AI tools in English language learning, limited attention has been paid to how they relate to the internal structure of deep approaches to learning, particularly the distinction between deep motive and deep strategy. This study examines how Vietnamese EFL students engage with AI across these two dimensions. It draws on data collected from 313 university students, combining survey responses based on an adapted Deep Approach sub-scale of the R-SPQ-2F with open-ended accounts of students’ experiences using AI in learning English. Findings indicate that AI use is more closely associated with deep strategy than with deep motive. Students report using AI to support meaning-oriented practices, yet this engagement is not consistently accompanied by intrinsic motivation. Qualitative responses further suggest that AI is primarily positioned as a tool for task support rather than as a source of motivation, denoting an imbalance between how students learn English and why they choose to learn it. This study underscores the need to support both strategic use of AI and sustained learner motivation, particularly as English use expands beyond classroom settings in Vietnam’s ongoing shift toward an ESL-oriented environment.

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.

As Viet Nam, repositions English from EFL to ESL, the significance of teachers and their professional development has come into sharp focus. Since 2022, British Council in Viet Nam has collaborated with UK and Vietnamese ELT institutions and teachers to pilot an innovative form of Communities of Practice, Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs). Based on previous research (Borg, Lightfoot, Gholkar 2020) into the impact of TAGs around the globe as an effective model, it aligns with the National Foreign Language Project’s (NFLP) goal of supporting foreign language teacher practice and innovation, with teachers encouraged to connect, particularly through professional Communities of Practice. In this symposium, we will showcase the research, practice and impact of this initiative through the practical results of three UK/VN partnerships. The first presentation [ID#2559] highlights the role of TAGs in building teacher facilitator identity, outlining how such a focus can support teachers in their development journey to become TAG leaders. The second presentation [ID#2585] demonstrates how local culture can become a productive resource for teacher development and language learning. The final presentation [ID#2534] highlights the findings of a project which demonstrated how TAGs could be used to create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, leading to shifts in teacher perspectives and practices. Through presentations and discussion among the three project research teams, we shall explore both the timely impact of TAGs and how they could be scaled up through sustainable collaboration between key ELT stakeholders to support teacher professional development in Viet Nam’s emerging ESL era.

#2559 Taking a Leap of Confidence and Competence: The Role of Teacher Activity Groups in Building Teacher Facilitator Identity
Authors: Mai Nguyen, Anthony Picot, Caroline Collier, Marijana Macis, Carmen Herrero, Thi Thanh Huyen Phan, QuynhNhu Phan, Thi Bao Ngoc Phan

What does it take for a classroom teacher to move beyond supporting learners’ English development and become a facilitator of colleagues’ professional learning? What supports teachers in taking this leap of confidence and competence? In many contexts, teacher professional development continues to be led by external experts, often disconnected from classroom realities, focused primarily on pedagogy rather than the teacher as a whole person (including their professional identity), and limited in sustained impact. This paper presents an identity-oriented teacher professional development initiative conducted through Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs), designed to support English language teachers in building confidence, competence, and developing identities as facilitators of teacher learning. Funded by the British Council through the UK-Vietnam Partnership for Teacher Activity Groups initiative, the project involved English language teachers across primary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary levels in Hue and Ben Tre (now part of Vinh Long), Vietnam. We first introduce an identity-oriented TAG model underpinned by three core principles: reflection, collaboration, and identity enhancement. We then present the TAG facilitator competency framework, which outlines key attributes and competencies associated with effective teacher facilitation. Next, we describe the TAG learning cycle through which teachers collaboratively developed facilitation competencies: Self (reflecting on personal and professional beliefs), Experience (drawing on classroom practice), Reflection (analysing experiences), Dialogue (engaging in collaborative discussion), Reframing (reconsidering beliefs and practices), and Action (applying new insights to teaching and professional learning). Finally, we report findings on teachers’ identity development as teacher facilitators across three dimensions: facilitation competence (knowledge, skills, confidence, and strategies for leading TAG sessions), identity internalisation (seeing oneself not only as a classroom practitioner but also as a facilitator of professional learning), and identity enactment (applying facilitation skills through organising meetings, guiding discussion, and fostering collaborative learning). Drawing on survey data from 57 teachers, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 10 participants, and teachers’ written reports post-meetings, findings indicate that TAG participation supported teachers’ development across these areas. All teachers reported growth in their ability to design and facilitate professional learning meetings, with over half reporting substantial development. Around three-quarters described positive emotions, including pride and excitement, associated with their emerging facilitator role. Teachers also reported a shift in orientation from “presenting and sharing knowledge” to “facilitating participation and collaboration” in professional learning spaces. The findings suggest that identity-oriented professional development can support teachers in developing the confidence and capacities needed to lead and sustain professional learning within their own communities of practice.

#2585 Culture as a Pedagogical Bridge in Multilingual English Classrooms
Author: Ngoc Anh Nguyen
Co-author: Hồng Minh Nguyễn Thị

As Vietnam repositions English from EFL to ESL, language classrooms need locally grounded ways of expanding English use beyond textbook knowledge and isolated skill practice. This presentation draws on the design and implementation of Teaching English Multilingually through Art (TEMA), a British Council-supported project in Vietnam, to show how local culture can become a productive resource for multilingual and multimodal English learning. The presentation introduces a practical culture-to-classroom logic developed through teacher development workshops: noticing cultural details, making meaning through multiple modes, and transforming cultural insights into adaptable pedagogical practices. Examples include activities inspired by museum and community resources, such as observational prompts, folk games, food heritage, and sound-based creativity. Moving away from rigid lesson plans, we illustrate how teachers dynamically adapted these resources to foster vocabulary development, language sequencing, speaking interaction, learner reflection, and multimodal outputs across diverse school contexts.
Furthermore, we connect this approach with wider professional learning principles: teachers are not only users of materials but co-designers who interpret local knowledge, learner repertoires, and classroom constraints. In this way, culture becomes a pedagogical bridge between local experience and broader communicative participation. The presentation contributes to the symposium by showing one feasible pathway for supporting Vietnam’s EFL-to-ESL transition through multilingual pedagogy, teacher agency, and context-responsive resource design.

#2534 Teacher Activity Groups for Professional Development in Multilingual Classrooms
Author: Dung Cao

This presentation reports findings from a British Council-funded research project that explored teachers’ perspectives on the effectiveness of Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs) as a professional development model in multilingual classrooms. A total of 45 teachers participated in the project and were organized into 15 TAGs, each consisting of one English language teacher (ELT) and two subject teachers. The project positioned ELTs as key agents in reducing language barriers and supporting multilingualism in schools. Participating ELTs received training on multilingualism, the role of language in education, and TAG facilitation to prepare for the role. Data were collected through interviews, observations of TAG meetings, and reflective journals. The findings indicate that TAGs fostered shifts in teachers’ perceptions and understandings of multilingualism, with some teachers adopting translanguaging and other inclusive pedagogical strategies. TAGs also created opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling teachers to exchange and adapt approaches to linguistic inclusion across subjects. However, the effectiveness of TAGs varied among groups, depending on teacher preparation and the quality of TAG facilitation.

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 with engaging academic and real-world content. At the same time, advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping how teachers design materials, scaffold learning, and support student engagement in English language teaching. Grounded in communicative language teaching and CBI principles, this interactive workshop explores how AI-enhanced CBI can support more learner-centered and communicative English instruction in contemporary classrooms. Participants will examine practical ways AI tools can assist in generating authentic materials, adapting content to different proficiency levels, promoting multimodal learning, and encouraging critical thinking and interaction. Drawing on classroom-informed examples and current literature, the workshop also addresses practical concerns related to AI integration, including overreliance on technology, academic integrity, teacher readiness, and unequal access to digital resources. Participants will engage in collaborative activities and lesson-design discussions to explore how AI can function as a supportive instructional tool rather than a replacement for teachers. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain practical strategies for integrating AI into CBI lessons while maintaining communicative effectiveness, learner autonomy, and meaningful language learning objectives in evolving ESL-oriented educational contexts.

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 workshop draws primarily on classroom context with young learners. The session highlights how visual storytelling helps students comprehend texts more effectively, organize ideas more clearly, and participate more confidently in writing activities. During comic-based tasks, increased learner engagement and willingness to communicate are observed and noted. Although these examples come from younger classrooms, this approach can be adapted for older learners by selecting themes appropriate for their interests and experiences. During the workshop, attendees will complete a short hands-on activity by generating AI-supported visual scenes and arranging them into a simple comic panel sequence using Canva without requiring advanced technical skills. Prompt templates and additional resources will also be shared with participants for their future classroom applications. By the end of the session, participants will leave with a practical workflow and adaptable ideas for integrating AI-assisted visual storytelling into their own teaching contexts with attention to ethical AI use and learner agency perspectives.

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 structures and support. Additionally, in Vietnamese primary ESL classrooms, assessment is often associated with grades, tests, and teacher evaluation, limiting opportunities for learners to recognise and reflect on their own progress. This highlights the need for assessment practices that foster learner autonomy and progress awareness from an early age. This workshop explores outcomes of a classroom-based action research exploring how autonomy-directed assessment and reflective practices can help Vietnamese primary learners better understand their own progress. The study used learner diaries, reflective tasks, and autonomy-directed assessment tools to help learners identify, record, and monitor their progress more effectively. The session introduces key concepts related to assessment, self-regulation, and learner autonomy while encouraging participants to reflect on their own classroom practices. The workshop then discusses findings from a classroom-based action research intervention conducted with Vietnamese learners aged 8-10. Participants will engage in reflective questions, prediction activities, peer discussion, and classroom examples throughout the session and explore ways to apply the strategies to their own context. By the end of the workshop, attendees will leave with adaptable strategies and practical tools that can be implemented in Vietnamese primary ESL contexts to support learner autonomy and progress awareness.

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 Development. Participants will first acquire explicit criteria for selecting narrative-driven magazine sources that stimulate real-world discussion. The session then explores methods to extract high-level lexical chunks and discourse features from these texts. To optimize internalization, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are introduced to convert text into contextual audio and imagery, enabling learners to absorb native-like intonation and visually anchor their ideas. Finally, a comprehensive lesson blueprint featuring interactive tasks and timed fluency techniques (4-3-2 method) will be shared. Attendees will master a well-balanced, tech-enhanced approach to transform static textual input into dynamic, confident spoken output.

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 not always provide sufficient contextual or visual support to help students process information effectively. With the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI), new opportunities have emerged to make reading lessons more accessible, engaging, and learner-centered through AI-assisted reading scaffolding. This hands-on workshop introduces Gemini Storybook as a practical tool for transforming traditional reading passages into visually supported stories that enhance comprehension and contextualized vocabulary learning. Drawing on classroom implementation in Vietnamese urban high school settings, the presenter will demonstrate how teachers can use Gemini Storybook to simplify reading materials, generate visual narratives, and create differentiated versions of texts for learners with different proficiency levels. Through classroom demonstrations, interactive activities, and student learning samples, participants will explore practical strategies for designing visual pre-reading tasks, vocabulary prediction activities, collaborative discussions, and post-reading retelling tasks. The workshop will highlight how multimodal learning and AI-generated visual stories can improve learner engagement, reading comprehension, vocabulary retention, and confidence in reading activities. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain practical strategies for integrating Gemini Storybook into EFL reading lessons to create more supportive, visually enriched, and learner-centered reading experiences that improve learner confidence, comprehension, and vocabulary retention.

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 environment that competes for student attention rather than directing it. This workshop introduces Classroomscreen - a free, browser-based interactive whiteboard - as a unified lesson management dashboard that consolidates essential classroom functions onto a single, customizable screen. Drawing on principles of cognitive load theory, task-based language teaching, and structured classroom management, the presenter demonstrates how combining a visible countdown timer, written task instructions, a live group-maker, and a sound-level monitor into one display can reduce instructional transition time, clarify task expectations, and support a low-anxiety learning environment particularly in remedial and mixed-ability EFL contexts. The 15-minute demonstration models a live screen build for a grammar presentation stage, contrasting it with a conventional slide-based approach. Participants then engage in a structured 40-minute hands-on activity in which they independently design a Classroomscreen dashboard for a 15-minute EFL teaching stage of their own choosing, guided by a lesson design planning protocol and a peer review framework. By the end of the session, participants will have produced a reusable screen template applicable to their immediate teaching context. More broadly, the workshop repositions screen design as a form of lesson planning, one that asks teachers to make explicit decisions about what students see, when they see it, and how that visibility shapes learning behavior.

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 applications used to enhance students’ speaking and writing skills. On the positive side, the integration significantly boosted students’ confidence and provided personalized feedback that was previously difficult to achieve in large classes. However, the implementation also revealed critical drawbacks, such as over-reliance on AI for homework completion and potential threats to academic integrity. To address these "less-than-ideal" outcomes, the session discusses specific strategies used to foster responsibility, including the design of "AI-resistant" tasks and explicit instruction on prompt engineering with ethical boundaries. By analyzing what worked and what failed, the presenter offers a practical framework for secondary teachers to balance AI's efficiency with students' cognitive development. Participants will gain insights into how to guide young learners to view AI as a collaborative partner rather than a shortcut for learning. This session aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of shifting from EFL to an ESL environment where technology is used mindfully and sustainably.

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 facilities, teaching materials, and the perceived time-consuming nature of story preparation and adaptation. This interactive workshop aims to demonstrate that effective storytelling does not necessarily require extensive resources or equipment. In so doing, the workshop will first provide an overview of storytelling and its pedagogical benefits in primary EFL contexts. Participants will then observe a demonstration of a story-based lesson designed for Grade 4 learners, illustrating how a single story can be adapted for different teaching environments, including classrooms with minimal teaching resources. This will be followed by several hands-on activities, in which participants will work to adapt a story script according to their learners’ proficiency levels and contextual constraints. They will explore practical techniques for simplifying language, creating low-preparation teaching aids, incorporating gestures and voice techniques, and maximizing learner participation without relying on expensive materials or technology. The workshop will conclude with a 10-minute reflection and discussion session, providing participants with an opportunity to share insights, discuss potential classroom applications, and reflect on how storytelling can be implemented effectively in their own teaching contexts.

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 backgrounds, design and build their own single-file web applications using artificial intelligence coding assistants. Grounded in constructionist learning theory, the technological-pedagogical-content-knowledge framework, and recent research on teacher agency in CALL and mobile-assisted language teaching, the session argues that teacher-built tools achieve higher contextual relevance and pedagogical alignment than off-the-shelf products, while remaining free, offline, and fully under teacher control. In the first 15 minutes, the facilitator showcases three applications already used in Vietnamese classrooms: a vocabulary studio that turns chatbot output into interactive flashcards, quizzes, and word-match games; an interactive whiteboard with timers and embedded reading materials; and a colour-coded writing feedback annotator built around an evidence-based corrective feedback taxonomy. Each demonstration unpacks the pedagogical rationale, the prompts and design decisions, and the iteration cycles behind the build. In the remaining 45 minutes, participants work in small groups, scope a real teaching problem of their own, draft a structured development prompt, and use a coding assistant on a laptop or projected screen to produce a runnable prototype. Participants leave with their own prototype or detailed blueprint, a curated prompt library, and a sustainable model for ongoing teacher-led tool development.

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 teachers how to design a tailored digital environment for
both learning and teaching English. Personalized pedagogical tools such as
interactive vocabulary flashcards, gamified quizzes, and customized
classroom timers will be created through detailed guidelines. By engaging in
iterative prompt engineering, participants are provided with a prompt template
to design their individualized tools. This will foster teachers’ AI literacy and
enhance their teaching experience in the upcoming lessons.

This study examines how dialogic mentoring conversations support novice teachers’ reflective practice and emerging teacher agency in a Vietnamese TESOL professional development context. Using a qualitative mentoring case study design, the study followed three novice EFL teachers through a baseline interview, three dialogic mentoring sessions, and post-session reflection logs. The analysis focused on the micro-processes through which mentoring talk shaped teachers’ interpretation of classroom challenges, instructional decision-making, and professional self-positioning. Drawing on narrative-informed thematic analysis, the study identified three interrelated findings. First, the mentor’s discourse was organized around six recurrent dialogic moves, with probing questions, reframing, and prioritization thinking forming the core interactional repertoire. Second, participants’ reflection gradually shifted from descriptive and problem-focused accounts toward more interpretive, structured, and forward-directing forms of professional reasoning. Third, teacher agency developed from reactive responses to classroom problems toward more principled, value-anchored decision ownership. The study argues that dialogic mentoring functions as a mediational space in which reflective practice and agency are not simply individual capacities but are interactionally constructed through sustained professional dialogue. These findings contribute to TESOL professional development by showing how mentoring conversations can support novice teachers’ reflective growth and strengthen their agentive participation in pedagogical decision-making.

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, allowing teachers to participate more actively in designing specialized educational technologies. This workshop seeks to explore how educators can use AI to conceptualize and develop personalized learning tools without programming experience. Using NECSpeaking, a specialized, AI-powered speaking assessment application, as a case study, the session demonstrates how challenges in intensive assessment of the National English Competition speaking test can be transformed into practical educational applications. Particular attention is given to the use of AI in analyzing learner performance, generating feedback, and adapting to customizable rubrics and instructional priorities. The workshop also demonstrates how AI-supported tools can assist educators in brainstorming ideas and designing learning workflows. Through discussion and collaborative activities, participants will identify challenges within their own teaching contexts and explore possible technology-supported solutions accordingly. Participants will also experiment with designing AI prompts and a personalized assessment rubric aligned with their teaching objectives. The workshop aims to encourage teacher agency and provide practical strategies for exploring localized, teacher-driven educational innovation in language learning contexts.

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have increased interest in their use for automated writing assessment. Although previous studies have examined the extent to which AI-generated ratings align with human ratings, alignment alone may not adequately reflect effective rating behavior. In rater-mediated assessment, some degree of variation among human raters is expected due to individual differences, whereas LLMs may exhibit more deterministic scoring patterns shaped by their training and model architecture. This raises questions about whether LLMs apply rating criteria with the same flexibility and reliability as human raters. Therefore, this study examines the rating behavior of human raters and publicly accessible LLMs in the analytic assessment of L2 writing using a Many-Facet Rasch Measurement (MFRM) approach. The study uses 60 writing scripts produced by A2-B1 undergraduates at a university in central Vietnam, including 30 email responses and 30 narrative essays. The scripts are evaluated using a five-point analytic rubric assessing content, communicative achievement, organization, and language. Three experienced human raters and three LLMs (GPT, Claude, and Gemini) evaluate the scripts under standardized conditions using identical prompts, rubrics, and essay sets. Essays are evaluated in small batches (i.e., 5-10 scripts) using fresh chat sessions to reduce potential context and memory effects associated with publicly accessible LLM interfaces. Ratings are analyzed using MFRM to compare rater severity, fit, and criterion-level rubric application across human and AI raters. Findings are expected to contribute to discussions surrounding the potential and limitations of LLMs in L2 writing assessment and automated scoring practices.

Argumentative writing is a cornerstone of academic English instruction, yet it remains one of the most challenging genres for EFL learners to master-particularly when it comes to constructing logically sound arguments. This study examines the prevalence, types, and underlying causes of logical fallacies in the argumentative essays of English-major undergraduates at a teacher education university in Vietnam. Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the research analyzed 50 student essays to identify and categorize fallacies, distributed a questionnaire to 83 participants, and conducted semi-structured interviews with five volunteers. The findings reveal that logical fallacies are widespread in students' writing, with hasty generalization, false cause, and either-or reasoning among the most frequently occurring types. Qualitative and quantitative analysis further identifies several contributing factors, including inadequate pre-writing planning, overreliance on personal opinion rather than evidence, limited exposure to formal logic instruction, and time pressure during the writing process. These findings point to a gap between students' theoretical exposure to critical thinking and their ability to apply it in practice. Based on the results, the study puts forward a set of pedagogical recommendations, including the explicit teaching of logical reasoning, structured argument development activities, and peer feedback practices. More broadly, the research advocates for a repositioning of argumentative writing instruction as not merely a language task but a means of developing students' capacity to reason, evaluate evidence, and engage critically with ideas-competencies essential for both academic success and professional life in an increasingly complex world.

Emerging discussion have boomed with respect to the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into academic writing instruction. Despite their increasing accessibility, certain AI-powered writing tools are deployed to facilitate surface-level language correction rather than the entire writing process. Furthermore, research on their implementation seems to be limited in higher secondary education, especially in the context of English-majored learners at Vietnamese high schools for the gifted. This mixed-method study addresses this gap by exploring the effects of an AI-Integrated Writing Cycle implemented with 70 tenth-grade English-majored students at Le Khiet High School for the gifted in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. Grounded in the Process-oriented Approach, the model integrates tailor-made AI chatbots across three stages of writing: brainstorming, collaborative drafting, and revision. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study compared an experimental group receiving AI-integrated instruction with a control group following traditional instruction. After fourteen weeks of instruction, quantitative data were collected through pre- and post-writing tests and analyzed using an analytic writing rubric, an error analysis framework, and coding of supporting examples. Qualitative data were gathered from student perception questionnaires regarding their experiences with the writing cycle. The findings showed the experimental group demonstrated greater improvements in writing performance, particularly in supporting examples and language accuracy. Additionally, the majority of students reported positive perceptions and greater confidence in brainstorming, collaboration, and revision, thus highlighting the potential role of AI-Integrated Writing Cycle in develop learners’ autonomy.

Regarding Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education, a great deal of research has focused on teachers’ beliefs about communicative language teaching, the gap between teachers’ beliefs and practice, and the process of becoming professionals. However, the literature has failed to seriously address the fundamental question of how teachers’ beliefs about language learning are influenced by their own experiences of language learning over the years spent in formal education. This study is designed to fill this gap by examining the relationship between an individual’s English language history and their beliefs about English language teaching and learning within the in-service context of Vietnamese EFL teachers. To address this issue, this study used a qualitative narrative inquiry design, collecting written personal reflections from 33 in-service EFL teachers enrolled in a Master of Arts program at a university in Vietnam. The data analysis was conducted using thematic analysis. The results of this study reveal that the three phases of the narrative appeared to have a significant impact on the participants’ pedagogical beliefs: a grammar-translation-dominated formative phase in which the idea of fear of errors occurred; a communicative awakening which was more strongly driven by their instruction at the university than by their informal self-directed learning; and a belief reconstruction phase that was triggered by re-engagement with formal academic study. Therefore, the results of the present study provide empirical evidence for the prevalence of the apprenticeship of observation in the Vietnamese EFL context, with implications for both pre-service and in-service teacher training programs.

Effective vocabulary instruction necessitates that teachers employ questioning techniques to facilitate both meaningful communication and cognitive growth (Chin, 2007; Salmon & Barrera, 2021; Ye et al., 2025). Nevertheless, a discrepancy often arises between teachers’ beliefs and their actual practices in the classroom (Basturkmen, 2012; Borg, 2017; Duong, 2024; Mardali & Siyyari, 2019), especially among less experienced teachers who face particular classroom limitations. This study explores the questioning practices of novice English teachers in teaching vocabulary instruction within the Vietnamese high school EFL settings. This study also investigates their pedagogical beliefs and the extent of alignment between these beliefs and actual practices. Using an exploratory research design, the research gathered data from five novice EFL teachers through video/audio-recorded classroom observations, as well as semi-structured interviews. The observational data were systematically coded and analyzed across four key dimensions: cognitive levels, question formats, question functions, and questioning strategies. The findings revealed that a notable 99% of questions operated at a lower-order cognitive level, reflecting a highly teacher-centered classroom discourse. Teachers relied on closed questions (34%), display questions (43%), and procedural or management questions to assess recall and regulate the lessons’ flow. Although Question-Planning and Question-Controlling strategies were employed, their primary function was to prompt verbal responses and assess fundamental comprehension. The integration of interview and observation data through joint display analysis revealed that while teachers’ beliefs and practices matched regarding checking basic understanding, notable mismatches occurred in scaffolding, building exam skills, and stimulating deeper thinking. The discussion suggests that this disparity between beliefs and practices did not arise from a deficiency in pedagogical understanding; rather, it was a consequence of a “pedagogical compromise” (Ye et al., 2025) necessitated by “ecological constraints” (Ye et al., 2025), including strict time limits, densely packed curricula, and students’ restricted language proficiency.

The role of L1 in EFL vocabulary instruction remains a contested issue in SLA research. While communicative approaches have traditionally discouraged L1 use in favour of immersive L2 exposure, growing evidence suggests that L1-mediated instruction can serve as a meaningful cognitive scaffold. Yet whether this scaffolding produces more durable vocabulary retention than L2-only instruction over time remains empirically underexplored, particularly in the Vietnamese EFL context. This quasi-experimental study compared the effects of Vietnamese-mediated (L1) and English-only (L2) vocabulary instruction on two learning outcomes: meaning recognition, assessed through a multiple-choice test, and controlled use, assessed through a gap-fill task. Sixty Vietnamese university students at B1 level, pre-screened to confirm unfamiliarity with the ten target academic terms, were assigned to two matched groups. Tests were administered immediately after instruction and again one week later as a delayed retention measure. Grounded in Sociocultural Theory (Lev Vygotsky, 1978), translanguaging theory (Jean Conteh, 2018), and the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Jan Hulstijn & Batia Laufer, 2001), this study hypothesises that L1-mediated instruction facilitates higher immediate meaning recognition, while L2-only instruction, by inducing greater cognitive involvement, produces superior delayed retention and controlled use over time. Results revealed statistically significant between-group differences on both measures at the delayed post-test, with the L2 group outperforming the L1 group on controlled use, while immediate recognition scores favoured the L1 group. These findings suggest a meaningful trade-off between comprehension speed and retention depth, with implications for how EFL instructors approach vocabulary instruction in Vietnamese university classrooms.

This study develops and empirically tests a structural equation model (SEM) examining how gamification in mobile-assisted vocabulary learning (MAVL) shapes English learning identity among Vietnamese foundation-level university students. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, the L2 Motivational Self System, and Flow Theory, the model specifies five latent constructs – gamification, learner engagement, self-regulation, learning effectiveness, and English learning identity – connected through seven direct and two serial mediation pathways. A quantitative cross-sectional survey targeting more than 300 foundation-level students was analysed using partial least squares SEM. The measurement model demonstrated acceptable fit, with composite reliability and average variance extracted exceeding 0.80 and 0.50, respectively, across all constructs. All seven hypothesised direct paths were statistically significant (p < .001). Gamification exerted the strongest direct effect on engagement, while learning effectiveness was the primary predictor of English learning identity. Notably, gamification's total effect on identity operated predominantly through indirect pathways via engagement and self-regulation, and the full serial chain through learning effectiveness. These findings confirm that gamified MAVL fosters identity development not only through direct exposure, but also through sustained engagement, self-regulated strategy use, and accumulated competence. Pedagogical implications for curriculum design and mobile application development in Vietnamese higher education are also discussed.

Assessment in Vietnamese university EFL departments is increasingly shaped by standardization requirements, yet the ways lecturers work together to interpret, negotiate, and sustain shared assessment practices remain underexplored. Drawing on the Communities of Practice framework, this qualitative study views EFL departments as professional spaces where assessment knowledge is not only applied individually but also developed through collaboration, discussion, and shared experience. The study has two main objectives. First, it seeks to identify the assessment practices that lecturers perceive as collectively owned, including rubric design, moderation procedures, and feedback expectations. Second, it examines how lecturers’ participation in shaping these practices reflects the dimensions of joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews with 12–15 EFL lecturers from multiple university departments and analyzed thematically in relation to these three dimensions. By focusing on the everyday professional interactions through which assessment norms are formed and maintained, this study contributes to language assessment literacy research from a social and contextual perspective. It also offers practical implications for helping departmental leaders and teacher educators support fairer, more consistent, and more locally responsive assessment practices in Vietnam’s evolving English language education context.

The integration of generative AI into translator education has introduced a productive tension: although AI tools increase access to translation support, interaction designs that provide translations on demand may bypass the communicative reasoning central to translation competence. This study examines translation technique use and functional reasoning among 20 Vietnamese undergraduates completing seven English–Vietnamese IT translation tasks with a purpose-built Skopos-based chatbot designed to withhold translation assistance until learners articulated communicative purpose and target audience. Reflective journals (140 total; 2,591 coded extracts) were analysed using directed content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) with a theory-driven codebook derived from Molina and Hurtado Albir’s (2002) translation technique taxonomy and Nord’s (1997) skopos dimensions. Frequency, co-occurrence, and Shannon diversity analyses were applied to examine the distribution, alignment, and breadth of learners’ technique and reason repertoires. Three findings emerged. First, learners produced substantially more functional reason codes than technique codes per extract (1.841 vs. 1.245), suggesting that the chatbot scaffolded communicative reasoning beyond simple technique identification. Second, co-occurrence analysis revealed systematic alignment between techniques and functional motivations. Third, Shannon diversity analysis showed that learner repertoires remained broad and balanced across participants and tasks (normalized H = 0.851 for techniques; 0.887 for reasons), inconsistent with the strategic uniformity often associated with unreflective AI use. The findings support human-centered AI design in translator education and provide a rare empirical account of technique–reason alignment in AI-mediated English–Vietnamese IT translation.

Professional learning is most effective when it responds to teachers’ immediate contexts, priorities, and constraints. However, in multi-campus institutions, centrally designed professional development may not always align closely with the teaching realities of smaller satellite campuses. This presentation shares the development of monthly teacher-led discussion clubs at RMIT Vietnam’s Danang campus, where teachers deliver programs that differ from those offered at the university’s larger campuses and where institution-wide professional development was not always directly applicable. The discussion clubs were introduced as a locally responsive professional learning model designed to create regular, voluntary, low-pressure opportunities for teachers to discuss classroom challenges, share practical strategies, and build collective knowledge. Rather than positioning professional learning as expert-led training, the model foregrounded teacher voice, peer exchange, and context-specific problem solving. Topics were selected to reflect teachers’ local needs and included, for example, methods for maintaining engagement with teen learners, activities for analysing IELTS texts, and how to incorporate study plans. The presentation will outline what was implemented, including the rationale for a campus-specific model, how the clubs were organised, and how teacher-led discussion supported participation. It will then examine the impact of the clubs, including high repeat participation, stronger collegial exchange, and improved relevance of professional learning to local teaching needs. Finally, the presentation will share lessons learned about sustainability, facilitation, voluntary engagement, and adaptation. Participants will leave with practical principles for developing teacher-led discussion clubs in their own schools, centres, or campuses.

Integrating technology into higher education has shifted the baseline for what makes a competent English teacher. However, the student perspective on this shift remains largely overlooked. We still know very little about how learners evaluate their instructors' digital competencies in practice. This exploratory study aims to fill that void by investigating the contrast between students' expectations and their actual classroom experiences in tech-supported English classes. Based on a learner-centred TPACK framework and a pedagogical appropriateness scale, we gathered data through a Likert-scale survey of 162 undergraduate EFL learners in Ho Chi Minh City. Data revealed largely positive student evaluations. Learners highly valued instructors who could smoothly align digital tools with language content to boost engagement, clarify concepts, and create meaningful practice opportunities. Furthermore, students emphasized the importance of clear guidance, well-paced instruction, and the use of level-appropriate technology. Ultimately, these findings offer practical directions for teacher training, highlighting how educators can more effectively integrate digital tools into university-level language instruction.

This qualitative research investigates how 13 in-service primary and secondary English teachers in Japan make instructional and assessment decisions while addressing tensions between curriculum expectations and students’ actual proficiencies, learning needs, and classroom realities across diverse educational contexts. Grounded in a collaborative action research framework, the research project was conducted with three university educators who participated as participant-observers and co-researchers while mentoring and facilitating teachers’ school-based action research initiatives. The research aims to empower in-service teachers to engage more autonomously and reflectively in classroom-based inquiry, to identify factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation of action research in school settings, and to clarify the complexity of teacher decision-making processes through qualitative analysis of teachers’ reflective practices and pedagogical adaptations. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured focus group interviews and reflective discussions conducted throughout the research project and subsequently analyzed inductively and thematically. The findings reveal that teachers continuously negotiate competing demands among curriculum policy, institutional expectations, learner diversity, and their own pedagogical beliefs concerning learner autonomy, motivation, and self-efficacy. Teachers’ adaptations included shifting from advanced task-based activities to ICT-supported foundational learning and modifying spontaneous oral communication tasks into more structured retelling activities for learners experiencing difficulties in language processing and production. By examining teachers’ ongoing cycles of reflection, inquiry, and pedagogical adjustment, the research demonstrates how classroom challenges and uncertainties contribute to professional learning, teacher agency, identity reconstruction, and the development of more context-sensitive and sustainable instructional practices within Japanese English language education.

The study investigates the challenges faced by teachers in implementing the policy of making English the second language in schools in Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam. From the data collected and theoretical reviews by the author, solutions are suggested in order to overcome these difficulties. The study is primarily an investigation, applying both quantitative and qualitative data collection. A questionnaire is administered to 150 English teachers working in various primary and secondary schools across Thanh Hoa province to identify the major challenges they encounter in carrying out the Decision No. 2371/QĐ-TTg dated October 27, 2025 issued by the Government. In addition, semi-structured interviews are conducted with 10 teachers to gain deeper insights into their experiences, perceptions, and recommendations. The findings reveal several significant challenges, including both teachers and students’ low English proficiency, limited opportunities for authentic language use, inadequate teaching resources, large class sizes, insufficient professional training, and limited access to technology. Teachers also reported pressure related to curriculum demands. Based on these findings, the study suggests several practical solutions to help overcome the obstacles teachers face in the pathway of conducting the above Decision.

This study investigated rater severity, inter-rater reliability, and rating processes in the Writing Task 2 assessment within a high-stakes English proficiency examination context. Conducted at an English center in Hanoi, Vietnam, the study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. In the quantitative phase, seven teachers independently rated ten essays using the official band descriptors. Statistical analyses were conducted to examine scoring consistency, severity patterns, and alignment with official benchmark scores. In the qualitative phase, think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews were used to explore how teachers interpreted the band descriptors and justified their scoring decisions. The findings revealed a high degree of inter-rater reliability in the rank-ordering of essays, indicating broad agreement regarding relative essay quality. However, most teachers demonstrated greater severity than the official benchmark scores, although one teacher showed substantially closer alignment with the benchmark than the others. Severity patterns also varied across essays and scoring criteria. Qualitative findings indicated that teachers generally followed similar rating processes, forming holistic impressions before conducting analytic evaluations and relying on the band descriptors as their primary justificatory framework. Nevertheless, differences emerged in the evaluative weight assigned to format conformity, the interdependency applied across scoring criteria, and the benchmarking practices used to calibrate internal standards. The study potentially contributes to understanding teacher rating behavior in high-stakes writing assessment contexts and offers practical implications for assessment literacy development and professional learning among English teachers in Vietnam.

English language education in Vietnam is expected to move from EFL to ESL, requiring learners to be frequently exposed to large amounts of level-appropriate English input beyond traditional classroom-based textbooks. ChatGPT can be an effective tool to facilitate this transition by producing a large number of extensive reading materials within a short time. However, few studies have examined its potential. This study investigated the lexical profile of ChatGPT-generated texts targeting learners at CEFR levels from A1 to C2. We created six corpora from texts generated by ChatGPT for each CEFR level and analysed their lexical profiles with RANGE (Heatley et al., 2002) and the BNC/COCA 25,000-word lists (Nation, 2012). The results showed that regardless of the target CEFR level, the lexical profile of ChatGPT-generated texts followed typical lexical profile, with high-frequency words constituting the largest percentage, followed by mid and low-frequency words. Moreover, ChatGPT-generated texts for lower levels (A1, A2, B1) were less lexically demanding than those for higher levels (B2, C1, C2). These findings indicate that ChatGPT could be a useful tool for creating extensive reading materials to support language development among students in Vietnam in the transition from EFL to ESL. However, we also found that ChatGPT-generated texts for the A1 and A2 levels required the same vocabulary sizes to those targeting the B1 level, whereas the figures for C1 were slightly smaller than expected. This finding highlights the importance of further checking and adjusting ChatGPT-generated texts to better tailor them to learners’ language proficiency.

The transition towards an ESL-oriented education system should be viewed not merely as a reform of language education, but as a systemic transformation of the wider education system. Its success depends heavily on the coordinated readiness of key stakeholders, including government agencies, educational institutions, school leaders, teachers across disciplines, students, parents, and industry partners. Preparing these stakeholders is, therefore, essential for navigating the complex and long-term transition from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) towards a more English as a Second Language (ESL)-oriented model. At the policy level, the government and educational leaders need to establish clear policies, implementation guidelines, and institutional support mechanisms. Teachers must be equipped with sufficient English proficiency, appropriate pedagogical knowledge, and the ability to integrate English into disciplinary teaching. Students, meanwhile, need opportunities to develop learner autonomy, communicative confidence, digital literacy, and other competencies required to use English effectively in academic, professional, and social contexts. Parents should also be provided with adequate information to strengthen their awareness and realistic expectations of ESL-oriented education. Finally, employers and industry partners can contribute by communicating their actual language needs, collaborating with educational institutions, and creating English-rich environments within their organizations. A whole-system approach is, therefore, essential for translating policy aspirations into sustainable educational practice.

Research on task engagement has suggested that personally meaningful and interactionally demanding tasks may influence the quality of collaborative communication and language use. At the same time, repeated task performance has been shown to support the development of communicative efficiency, collaborative regulation, and procedural control. However, relatively little research has explored how these interactional processes develop in immersive VR environments. This presentation reports an exploratory pilot study investigating communication during repeated VR bomb-defusal tasks using the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. In the task, one participant interacts with a virtual bomb through a VR headset while another participant provides verbal instructions using a printed manual without visual access to the game environment. The task requires participants to negotiate meaning, clarify procedures, manage misunderstandings, and collaboratively solve problems under time pressure. Vietnamese teachers of English participate in repeated task performances with different interlocutors. Audio recordings and transcripts are analyzed qualitatively using thematic and discourse analysis to identify emergent interactional patterns across repetitions. Preliminary findings suggest that repeated collaborative VR tasks may influence communicative efficiency, procedural language development, collaborative regulation, and the emergence of shared shorthand communication strategies. The presentation discusses implications for task engagement, collaborative communication, and technology-mediated interaction in language education and teacher development contexts.

Since 2024, many universities in Vietnam have started adapting to new policies regarding the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in teaching. However, most discussions and guidelines still focus heavily on the public education sector (Cong-Lem et al., 2024). At the same time, private English language centers play a massive role in teaching English to a wide range of learners in Vietnam. Despite their importance, these private centers currently lack clear guidelines on how to use AI properly. This study looks at how using GenAI has changed the daily workload of English teachers in Vietnam's private sector. Based on the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), this qualitative research uses surveys and interviews to understand teachers' real experiences. The main goal is to see if teachers feel that AI helps reduce, changes the nature of, or actually increases their workload in a fast-paced environment without clear rules. Ultimately, these findings hope to contribute to the ongoing discussions about how to effectively and ethically use AI in language education (Vo & Huynh, 2025).

Over the past decades, higher education has become more globalised, leading to the increasing need to run more and more EMI (English as a medium of instruction) courses. This not only helps universities to increase their global rankings but also helps students to be better prepared for the competitive global job market (Ahmed, 2025; Polyakova et. al., 2022). That is why even in the countries where English is used as either a second or a foreign language, EMI courses are gaining more popularity (Tien, 2022). This study was conducted at a university in Ha Noi, Vietnam. The subjects were 90 first-year science-majored students. The study aimed to explore (a) the academic benefits that first-year students gained through EMI science classes, (b) the language challenges they faced during their EMI lectures, and (c) the students’ suggested solutions to more effective EMI science classes. The students were asked to answer survey questionnaires that included both closed-ended and open-ended questions related to the research questions. The findings have revealed that EMI classes helped students to boost their language proficiency, created more chances to be exposed to academic resources in English, and increased career readiness. The study also highlighted challenges in understanding lectures, following different teaching methodologies, and actively participating in class activities due to language barriers. The students also expected more instant and consistent support from the lecturers before, during and after class hours in order to maximise their learning through EMI classes.

This study compares advanced English-major students’ applications of feedback generated by ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in improving language use in college writing essays. It aims to compare the differences across four aspects of language use, lexical accuracy, grammatical accuracy, vocabulary range, and sentence complexity after using ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot feedback in the students’ writing, as well as to explore their engagement with both tools generated feedback during the revision process. A sequential mixed-methods design is adopted. Data are collected from 31 English-major students through a writing task and from 10 representatives through semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using one-way repeated measures ANOVA, while qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify patterns in students’ engagement with AI-generated feedback. The findings indicate significant differences in three out of four language aspects after revision using ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot feedback, except for sentence complexity. Microsoft Copilot post-feedback version shows a stronger difference in terms of lexical accuracy. Regarding students’ engagement, students generally perceive both tools as clear and useful for revision. ChatGPT is valued for providing broader and more varied suggestions but is sometimes cognitively demanding. In contrast, Microsoft Copilot is seen as more concise, focus, and easier to apply. Students also demonstrate active, selective, and context-dependent engagement with both AI tools. The study suggests pedagogical implications at the local level for students and teachers, and at a broader level for institutions, curriculum designers, and educational technology developers.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have expanded the use of generative models such as ChatGPT in language assessment. However, there remains a relative lack of empirical research investigating whether these systems can produce consistent and reliable scores comparable to certified human examiners, particularly in contexts where English is increasingly positioned as a second language. This study aimed to examine the extent to which ChatGPT aligns with human examiners in scoring IELTS Writing Task 2 essays. A comparative quantitative design was employed. Ten authentic essays produced by Vietnamese IELTS candidates were analyzed. Each script was scored by certified examiners and independently evaluated by ChatGPT across three repeated runs under standardized prompting conditions. The analysis focused on four criteria: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Statistical procedures included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), and mean difference analysis. The results indicated that ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of internal consistency across repeated evaluations. Positive correlations with human scores suggested a broadly similar ranking tendency between the two raters. However, agreement remained partial, as ChatGPT did not consistently assign identical band scores. Notably, a criterion-specific bias was identified in Grammatical Range and Accuracy, where the model tended to under-score compared to human examiners. These findings suggest that ChatGPT can serve as a relatively consistent and accessible supplementary tool for formative assessment in ESL-oriented learning contexts; however, it is not yet capable of fully replicating human examiner judgment in high-stakes evaluation settings.

As universities globally emphasize international academic publishing, producing quality academic writing has become imperative for EFL learners. Within this domain, lexical richness serves as a critical indicator of writing proficiency and scholarly credibility. This study adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the lexical richness of English majors at the University of Danang, University of Foreign Language Studies (UD-UFLS), across three dimensions: lexical density, lexical sophistication, and lexical variation. Using the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai & Lu, 2010), data was extracted from a corpus of 120 argumentative essays, produced during timed examinations by UD-UFLS students, and benchmarked against 120 native-speaker essays from the LOCNESS corpus. The quantitative findings reveal a notable paradox in the learners' linguistic performance. While students demonstrated significantly higher lexical density than native writers, this was primarily driven by heavy nominalization and a failure to use necessary function words to produce cohesive sentences. The analysis showcased significant deficits in vocabulary depth and breadth with English majors exhibiting substantially lower lexical sophistication, frequently depending on high-frequency vocabulary, and struggling to use diverse action verbs compared to their native counterparts. Additionally, their lexical variation declined markedly in longer texts, indicative of an inability to sustain diverse vocabulary usage. The study suggests that high lexical density alone is an unreliable measure of writing quality in EFL contexts, and academic writing curricula should shift focus from memorizing isolated low-frequency words to developing collocational competence, mastering action verbs, and balancing content words with cohesive functional language to achieve native-like academic discourse.

This paper analyses twelve Vietnamese public apologies from 2021 to 2026, six by commercial entities and six by Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in Vietnam - using Beaudin's (2018) expanded apology taxonomy, Murphy's (2015) revised felicity conditions, Fairclough's (1992) Critical Discourse Analysis, and Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Theory. Four findings emerge. First, participant structure shapes broad patterns, but within-group variation is substantial. Second, three texts from 2025 – 2026 period perform a distinctive sincerity-display: the apologizer constructs a recognisable avoidance strategy and then publicly dismantles it (meta-pragmatic D-cancellation), showing audiences the excuse was available and was refused; this move appears in both corporate/commercial and KOL texts. Third, one commercial text exits the apology genre entirely via an official-information refutation format the imported taxonomy does not accommodate. Fourth, three Vietnamese pragmatic resources - a multi-level apology intensity gradient, the honorific-pronominal system, and bodily performatives such as cúi đầu ('bow head') - strain the taxonomy and require extension.

The Korean Culture Wave or Hallyu, has long been considered as a soft power for constructing national image. To explore Hallyu, researchers adopted corpus linguistics methods to examine representations of Hallyu in various discourse. However, these studies differ in their corpora, time periods, and analytical focus, which makes direct comparison difficult. Also, no review of the corpus-based literature in this field has been conducted. This study reviews the adoption of corpus linguistics of Hallyu and identifies previous studies’ potential gaps. 10 studies were collected from Google Scholar and the Web of Science, in order to be analyzed, in terms of corpora, tools and theories. Results showed these studies, despite using corpus method, took various corpora sources, and they tended to focus on written data. Additionally, these studies used different corpus tools, including quantitative and qualitative ones. They even combined corpus linguistics with theories of other fields. This review shows that corpus methods are valuable for identifying recurring linguistic patterns, but there is still a gap in studies that connect these patterns to broader ideological questions of representation and social actors.

Within the context of globalization, English has become the dominant language in engineering, placing significant pressure on authors to compress dense complex academic knowledge into restricted 150-250 words in abstracts. While previous studies have largely investigated syntactic complexity, especially the exploration of the internal syntactic structures of noun phrases, this study aims to examine the frequency and structural patterns of complex noun phrases in engineering research abstracts; therefore evaluating how grammatical devices facilitate information compression. Through a mixed-methods design, the study manually coded a selected corpus of 26 English engineering abstracts (5,444 words) published from 2015 to 2026. The findings reveal that complex noun phrases are more dominant than simple noun phrases. The use of recursive right-branching complements and adjuncts elements, together with extensive nominalization maintain academic impartiality, while pre-modifiers structures provide information compression to ensure technical accuracy. In addition, pedagogical implications are offered as academic writing instruction in the context of EFL and Content and Language Integrated Learning. Besides, these findings also emphasize the importance of a genre-based approach based on Systemic Functional Linguistics for abstract writing, as well as highlighting the cognitive load caused by excessive structural compression.

The rapid adoption of generative AI tools, particularly ChatGPT and Gemini, has fundamentally changed how students learn English. This study examines how Vietnamese non-English majors integrate these tools into their daily language learning and investigates their understanding of academic integrity. Using a quantitative survey design, we collected data from 200 non-English major undergraduates at TDU in Hanoi. The results show that while students regularly use AI for practical tasks like translation, grammar checks, and brainstorming, a significant "grey zone" exists in their ethical awareness. Many respondents struggle to draw a clear line between legitimate AI assistance and actual academic dishonesty. Furthermore, despite benefiting from AI's efficiency, students express clear concerns about the lack of official university guidelines and the risk of becoming overly dependent on the technology. These findings highlight a critical need for action; higher education institutions in Vietnam should establish clear AI-use policies and introduce AI literacy training to ensure students learn English ethically and effectively.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into education has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with tools such as ChatGPT providing significant support for many academic activities, particularly in English writing. Although these tools show considerable potential for enhancing writing performance, learners’ acceptance of ChatGPT-generated recommendations in writing should be considered. Therefore, this study aims to examine the key factors influencing the acceptance of ChatGPT recommendations in English writing among students at at a University in Vietnam. The study is grounded in an integrated framework combining the Diffusion of Innovation Theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response model. Qualitative and quantitative method have been used; data were collected from third-year English-major students and analyzed with SmartPLS 4.0. The findings reveal that Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, and Social Influence positively influence students’ behavioral intention to use ChatGPT in English writing tasks. In addition, Personal Innovativeness and Information Accuracy were found to play moderating roles in the relationship between behavioral intention and students’ acceptance of ChatGPT recommendations in English writing. This study is expected to contribute to the growing body of research on AI-assisted language learning by offering empirical insights into students’ acceptance of generative AI technologies in higher education. Furthermore, it provides practical implications for educators and institutions regarding the effective integration of AI tools into English writing instruction, thereby enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in the context of rapid technological advancement and global educational integration.

This small-scale classroom study explored how authentic materials could be adapted into higher-order reading tasks for gifted EFL high school students in Vietnam. Gifted learners often need more challenging activities than standard textbooks provide, yet teachers in Vietnam have few research-based examples to draw on when working with them. The researcher therefore developed a framework based on revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to turn real-world texts such as news articles and academic excerpts into tasks that required analysis, evaluation, and creative thinking rather than simple recall. Twenty-seven gifted students took part in an eight-week intervention. Their reading performance was measured before and after using pre- and post-tests that included both lower- and higher-order items. Student questionnaires, interviews, and the teacher’s reflections supplied additional insights into engagement, difficulties, and overall usefulness of the approach. Results showed clear progress, especially on higher-order tasks. Accuracy on these items rose from 54.8% to 72.4%, with a large effect size. Students found the materials more interesting and relevant than usual textbook passages, and most expressed a desire to work with authentic texts more often. The study suggests that thoughtful adaptation of genuine materials, combined with well-designed higher-order tasks and gradual support, can meaningfully strengthen gifted students’ critical reading skills within normal classroom conditions. Practical examples and recommendations are offered for teachers who wish to try similar approaches.

This study examines the persistent challenges of equity and inclusion in English as a Second Language (ESL) education, particularly for ethnic minority students in Vietnam’s mountainous regions. With 20 years of experience teaching in such settings, the author identifies significant regional disparities in access to quality ESL resources and instruction, leading to a critical gap in language proficiency compared to students in urban areas. The core objective is to explore effective strategies for bridging this divide, fostering equitable learning opportunities, and ensuring that all students can achieve meaningful English language acquisition. The research advocates for a multi-faceted approach that acknowledges the unique socio-cultural contexts of ethnic minority communities. Key strategies include culturally responsive pedagogy, which integrates students' linguistic and cultural heritage into the ESL curriculum, and the targeted use of technology to overcome geographical barriers. Particular attention is given to mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) as a viable solution, given the increasing prevalence of mobile devices even in remote areas. The study also emphasizes the importance of teacher training and professional development focused on inter-cultural communication and inclusive teaching practices. Findings suggest that by adopting these inclusive and context-aware methodologies, educational institutions can significantly enhance ESL learning outcomes for ethnic minority students. The research underscores the need for policy interventions that support resource allocation and infrastructure development in underserved regions. Ultimately, this work contributes to a more equitable and inclusive ESL education system in Vietnam.

As Vietnam gradually changes English from a foreign language to a second language, English classes need to become more practical, interactive, and communication-focused for young learners. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and multilingual arts activities can help create an ESL-oriented classroom for Grade 6 students at a lower secondary school in Vietnam. The study used classroom action research and integrated AI-supported tools such as ChatGPT, Canva AI, text-to-image applications, and AI storytelling tools with activities including music, drawing, drama, and bilingual performances. These activities encouraged students to use English in more meaningful and creative ways beyond textbook exercises. The findings show that combining AI and multilingual arts helped improve students’ confidence in speaking English, increased classroom participation, and encouraged creativity and communication. Students became more willing to use English naturally during classroom activities. The approach also created a more inclusive and student-centered learning environment where English was used as a tool for interaction and expression rather than only as a school subject. This paper suggests that AI-supported multilingual teaching can be an effective way to support the transition from EFL to ESL in Vietnamese lower secondary education.

In the era of rapid scientific and technological advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of both everyday life and education. In the field of language teaching and learning, AI has recently enhanced the diversity and effectiveness of both online and face-to-face lessons. At a university in Hanoi, AI is regarded as a supportive tool that helps students tackle challenging questions and tasks in General English (GE), thereby improving their academic performance. This study explores students’ autonomy when using AI during a GE course. A quantitative approach was adopted, specifically through the use of a questionnaire administered to students. The findings indicate that most of the students perceive AI as a helpful partner in addressing difficult English tasks both in class and at home. However, about half of the participants expressed concerns about the accuracy of AI-generated answers and maintained their autonomy by cross-checking information with reference books and reliable dictionaries. These results offer several pedagogical implications for English teaching and learning.
Keywords: AI, GE, questionnaire, implications

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.

This empirical study explores the pedagogical potential of Generative AI (GenAI) as an immediate feedback tool to enhance the linguistic complexity and professional relevance of writing outputs among low-proficiency technical students after an instructional delay. The study focused on the "City Description" writing task from Unit 5 of the English File Pre-intermediate curriculum, a standard topic often perceived as redundant by engineering majors. Adopting a quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design, the author examined the writing artifacts of 46 engineering students (Experimental Group, n=21; Control Group, n=25). To measure delayed language retention, the intervention was administered seven weeks post-instruction. The CG followed traditional drafting, whereas the EG was trained to engineer specific prompts directing ChatGPT/Gemini to provide formative feedback on comparatives, superlatives, and urban infrastructure vocabulary. A double-blind scoring procedure using a standardized analytic rubric was implemented to ensure evaluative objectivity. The results demonstrated that the AI-scaffolded final drafts exhibited a statistically significant improvement in structural accuracy and professional tone compared to the CG ($p < 0.05$). The visual representation on this poster contrasts the raw and refined student artifacts, details the prompt-engineering scaffolding process, and discusses the implications of utilizing GenAI to transition non-English majors from exam-driven learning to functional, career-oriented language application.

This study investigates the extent to which artificial intelligence can support the scoring and feedback of English creative writing produced by learners aged 11 to 14 in international and private schools in Vietnam, particularly Hanoi. In this context, creative writing is increasingly valued for its role in developing students’ expressive, imaginative, and competitive writing abilities, yet its assessment remains time consuming and highly interpretive. To address this issue, the study employs a teacher interpreted rubric adapted from the World Scholar’s Cup collaborative writing scoring guidelines, using four equally weighted criteria: clarity, content, style, and originality, within a 100 point scale. The dataset comprises approximately 100 student texts across multiple genres, including poems, stories, letters, and playscripts. Two selected AI models, GPT-5.4 via ChatGPT Plus and Gemini Pro model via Google AI Pro, are examined through a prompting workflow that combines few shot prompting with prompt chaining. In the pilot phase, selected texts are used to refine the prompting procedure. In the validation phase, AI generated scores are compared with teacher scores and with each other, while a subset of AI generated feedback is evaluated by a teacher using a 5-point Likert scale. The study aims to clarify the practical value and limitations of AI assisted assessment in children’s English creative writing.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into English language teaching has increasingly transformed EFL writing instruction, particularly through AI writing assistants such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, and QuillBot. This study examines the influence of AI writing assistants on academic writing improvement through the mediating role of AI-enhanced learner autonomy among high school EFL learners at Tran Hung Dao High School, Cam Ranh, Khanh Hoa. A quantitative research approach using a cross-sectional survey design was employed, and data were collected from 305 high school EFL learners through structured questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0. The findings revealed that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, AI feedback quality, and writing self-efficacy significantly influenced AI-enhanced learner autonomy, which subsequently had a positive effect on academic writing improvement. The study highlights the important role of AI-supported technologies in promoting autonomous learning and enhancing EFL writing performance. The findings also provide important pedagogical implications for AI integration, learner-centered instruction, and digital transformation in secondary EFL education.

As Vietnam moves toward a more ESL-oriented approach to English education, writing instruction in higher education is increasingly expected to promote learner autonomy and critical engagement with feedback. At the same time, artificial intelligence tools are becoming widely used as sources of writing feedback, offering fast and accessible support for students. Drawing on formative feedback and learner autonomy perspectives, this study adopts an action research approach based on iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting to explore how AI-generated feedback can be integrated into IELTS-oriented writing courses. The study was conducted with 29 third-year English-majored students over eight weeks. During the cycles, AI feedback was introduced and progressively refined through guided use and structured reflection. Data were collected through draft comparisons, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The findings show that students were more likely to take up feedback and make accurate surface-level revisions, while also becoming more aware of their language issues. However, several challenges emerged, including overreliance on AI, uncritical acceptance of feedback, and a tendency to focus mainly on surface corrections. These findings suggest that AI can serve as a useful feedback partner, but its effectiveness depends on how it is guided and integrated into classroom practice. The study offers practical insights for teachers seeking to use AI feedback in a responsible and pedagogically meaningful way.

This pilot research investigates the integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into the self-regulated learning (SRL) processes of non-English majors at a Vietnamese university. Grounded in Zimmerman’s (2002) cyclical model of SRL, the study examines how students employ GenAI across the forethought, performance, and self-reflection phases of their language acquisition. A quantitative exploratory design is adopted, with data gathered via a 5-point Likert scale survey administered to a convenience sample of 120 undergraduate students enrolled in General English courses (1 and 2). The study aims to provide preliminary empirical evidence of student engagement with digital tools to bridge the gap between autonomous learning theory and current AI-driven practices. Expected findings suggest that while participants frequently utilize GenAI for performance-oriented tasks such as linguistic correction and translation, there is a significant lack of application in strategic planning and self-evaluative reflection. These initial results provide a diagnostic foundation for curriculum designers to move toward more structured digital literacy training. Consequently, the study recommends the systematic integration of AI prompting skills into the core curriculum to foster genuine learner autonomy. These insights not only inform immediate pedagogical adjustments but also validate the research instrument for future large-scale investigations into personalized, AI-driven learning models tailored for non-professional English learners.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has gained increasing attention as an innovative approach to fostering deep learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) science classrooms. This study examined the effectiveness of AI-supported CLIL instruction—utilizing AI chatbots and interactive platforms—in improving students’ science learning outcomes, English communication skills, learner autonomy, and classroom engagement in Vietnamese lower secondary education. Grounded in the CLIL framework, TPACK, and Deep Learning Theory, the study employed a quasi-experimental mixed-methods design involving 281 students and 19 science teachers over a 16-week intervention. Participants were divided into an experimental group receiving AI-supported CLIL instruction and a control group receiving conventional instruction. Quantitative data analyzed via SPSS 26 revealed statistically significant improvements in the experimental group’s science achievement and English communication performance compared to the control group (p < .05). Paired-samples t-tests indicated substantial gains in conceptual understanding (M = 68.42 to 84.73), autonomy (M = 3.12 to 4.28), and engagement (M = 3.35 to 4.41). Regression analysis further demonstrated that AI-supported interaction significantly predicted deep learning outcomes (β = .62, p < .001). Qualitative findings confirmed that students became more confident in scientific discussions and demonstrated stronger critical thinking. The study suggests that AI-enhanced CLIL provides an effective pedagogical model for promoting deep learning and technology-integrated science instruction in EFL secondary contexts.

The rapid emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in English language teaching has transformed the dynamics of feedback and interaction in EFL classrooms. Beyond its well-documented role in improving linguistic accuracy and writing fluency, AI-mediated feedback holds promise for shaping learners’ effective and communicative dimensions, particularly their Willingness to Communicate (WTC). Grounded in constructivist theory, which views learning as an active, self-regulated process of meaning-making through social interaction (Vygotsky, 1978; Piaget, 1985), this literature review examines how AI-mediated feedback can function as a scaffold that supports learners’ communicative competence, confidence, and autonomy. Synthesizing findings from recent studies (e.g., Su et al., 2025; Chen, 2024; Yang & Kyun, 2022; Taheri et al., 2025; Jin et al., 2025), the review explores how AI tools—such as conversational chatbots, pronunciation tutors, and automated feedback systems—facilitate experiential and reflective learning processes that enhance WTC. However, despite growing interest in AI-assisted language learning, research remains limited regarding how feedback generated by AI shapes learners’ effective engagement, classroom interaction, and self-perceived communicative agency. This paper proposes an integrative framework linking AI-mediated feedback, learner autonomy, and WTC through a constructivist lens, highlighting implications for pedagogical design and future inquiry in technology-enhanced EFL education.

This study explores the use of AI-mediated monologue speaking activities in promoting learner agency within a university context that is gradually shifting from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to English as a Second Language (ESL). Although artificial intelligence has recently attracted increasing attention in language education, there remains limited research on how AI tools support speaking development and autonomous learning among non-English major students in Vietnam. The study was conducted with 42 B1-level students at Hanoi University of Finance and Banking over a six-week intervention period. During the project, students completed AI-supported monologue speaking tasks related to workplace communication, such as professional self-introductions and finance-related presentations. ChatGPT was used to support idea development, organization of speaking content, and self-reflection after practice. Data were collected through pre- and post-speaking tests using an analytic rubric, a Likert-scale questionnaire on learner agency, and weekly reflective journals. The findings show noticeable improvement in students’ fluency and coherence, together with positive changes in self-directed learning behaviors, particularly goal-setting, self-monitoring, and independent speaking practice outside the classroom. The study suggests that AI-supported speaking activities can create more flexible learning opportunities and contribute to the repositioning of English as a practical means of communication in Vietnamese higher education contexts.

This study examines whether elements of self-directed learning (SDL) emerge in first-year students’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for academic writing. Grounded in the framework of self-regulated learning (SRL), the study categorises AI-assisted writing behaviours into three dimensions: AI-mediated planning regulation, AI-mediated performance regulation, and AI-mediated reflective regulation. It also explores how these behaviours relate to the perceived benefits and negative impacts of AI-assisted writing. A quantitative research design was adopted, and data were collected from 145 first-year university students at Thu Dau Mot University through a structured questionnaire. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyse the relationships among AI usage frequency, AI-mediated regulatory behaviours, linguistic knowledge, language use, and negative impacts. Reliability, validity, and mediation analyses were conducted to evaluate the proposed model. The findings indicate that frequent AI use is associated with all three forms of AI-mediated regulation. Planning regulation showed a moderate positive relationship with language use and linguistic knowledge, while reflective regulation was modestly associated with linguistic knowledge. Performance regulation demonstrated limited influence on learning outcomes and a slight association with negative impacts. Mediation analysis suggested that planning and reflective regulation partially explained the relationship between AI usage frequency and positive learning outcomes. The study contributes to research on AI-assisted language learning by suggesting that the educational value of AI tools depends not only on frequency of use but also on how students regulate their learning through AI during the writing process.

ABSTRACT
This study investigated the effectiveness of Gizmo, an AI-integrated application, in fostering students’ English reading comprehension skills at a high school in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. The study aimed to examine students’ current reading difficulties, evaluate the impact of Gizmo on students’ reading performance, and explore students’ attitudes toward AI-assisted learning tools. The study follows a pre-experimental one-group pretest–posttest design. The participants included 25 eleventh-grade students who participated in an eight-week Gizmo-based reading intervention. Data were collected through pre-questionnaires, post-questionnaires, practice test results, and pre-test and post-test scores. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and paired samples t-tests. The findings revealed that students initially faced several difficulties in English reading comprehension, particularly in vocabulary, identifying main ideas, making inferences, and understanding complex texts. After the intervention, students’ reading performance improved considerably, with the mean score increasing from 1.98 in the pre-test to 2.64 in the post-test. The paired samples t-test also indicated a statistically significant difference between the two test results. In addition, students expressed positive attitudes toward the Gizmo application, especially regarding vocabulary improvement, reading confidence, and engagement in reading activities. The study suggests that AI-integrated applications such as Gizmo can serve as effective supplementary tools for improving English reading comprehension in EFL high school contexts.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, Gizmo application, reading comprehension, EFL learners, AI-assisted learning.

The research project explored how AI-enhanced tech could help with English speaking assessments for sixth graders in a Google Digital Classroom, using an Action Research methodology at a lower secondary school in Hanoi, Vietnam. Practical problems that led to this study were the inability to individually provide students with written feedback on their speaking skills; low confidence and motivation of many students in speaking English; and challenges in tracking the students' progress over time. To address these challenges, the researcher introduced new technology-combined ways for the students to improve their speaking skills during the 8-week research period, including ELSA Speech Analyzer, SpeakEasy, and Edcafe AI chatbot. The researcher used mixed-methods to collect data about student speaking behaviour, including pre- and post-test assessments of students' speaking abilities, questionnaires, classroom observations, and group interviews. As for quantitative data, it was indicated that students improved their pronunciation, fluency, interaction, and overall speaking ability. Qualitative findings further revealed increased learner confidence, higher participation rates, and more positive attitudes toward speaking English. The study also highlights the potential of AI-supported assessment to foster students’ digital competencies within the framework of DigComp Vietnam and the 2018 General Education Programme. The findings suggest that AI can serve as an effective pedagogical support tool while maintaining the central role of teachers in facilitating learning and assessment.

This study investigates the AIM Model, which integrates artificial intelligence (AI), mind mapping, and explicit instruction in teaching English vocabulary to Grade 12 students at Tuy Phuoc No. 3 High School. The study arose from a context in which vocabulary learning remained considerably limited: 74.9% of students relied mainly on rote memorisation, and 100% of the teachers interviewed reported that many students still had serious gaps in their basic English knowledge. Against this background, the study sought to identify a more suitable way of organising vocabulary instruction within the wider context of educational reform and digital transformation. The research was carried out over eight months with 159 out of 327 Grade 12 students, accounting for 48.6% of the whole cohort. Pre- and post-intervention results showed improvement in vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, contextual vocabulary use, and overall performance. In particular, the overall mean score increased from 4.36 to 6.45, with a very high level of statistical significance (p < 0.05). In addition, student survey data and teacher observations collected towards the end of the 2025 - 2026 academic year indicated positive changes in students’ learning interest, level of participation, and sense of initiative. These initial findings suggest that the AIM Model is a promising approach worth considering for the development of English vocabulary at upper secondary level.

First-year non-English majors are under more pressure to use English for discipline-based academic instruction due to the expansion of EMI-oriented programs. This study reports an action research experiment conducted in the classroom that transformed an ESP course into an ESP-to-EMI curriculum pathway for first-year accounting students. In order to meet the needs of disciplinary communication, the curriculum included task-based and project-based cycles. These cycles included financial report interpretation, case study discussion, investment proposal presentation, and source-based academic writing. To support mixed proficiency cohorts, the syllabus incorporated staged scaffolding and guided peer collaboration aligned with EMI classroom participation. Data were collected through surveys, classroom observations, student assignments, and interviews. The results show that while structured cooperation encouraged participation in big classrooms, discipline-relevant assignments boosted interest and confidence in academic interaction. There were still issues with matching content depth with language support and aligning communicative assessment with exam-oriented expectations. The study proposes practical curriculum design principles for ESP programs preparing students for EMI under EFL-to-ESL transition conditions.

In response to the calls to integrate the changing sociolinguistic landscape of the English language into pedagogical strategies, educational textbooks emerge as a powerful tool for equipping learners with proficiency in diverse English varieties and intercultural communicative competencies. This study undertakes an evaluative examination of how two English textbook series designed for sixth-grade students in Vietnam help prepare secondary school students for effective English communication within an international and global context. Adopting the 2014’s analytical framework for EIL material evaluation by Hu & McKay and Nguyen et al. (2020)’s coding framework for patterns of communication, the findings indicate while international communication necessitates engagement with a broad spectrum of global English users, the textbooks predominantly concentrate on equipping students for communication with Anglophone English users, thereby addressing only a fraction of learners' multiple communicative needs in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, the study underscores a marked prevalence of British English norms, alongside an excessive portrayal of characters with light skin tones. Similarly, minimal exploration of accommodation strategies in intercultural encounters are depicted in both textbooks. These findings underscore the need for ELT materials to more effectively integrate collaborative learning methods and diverse cultural perspectives to better prepare learners for communication in a globalized world. The lack of communicative strategies also prompt more investigation into how the textbooks can prepare students for effective interactions in intercultural communication.

This study investigated English teachers’ motivation in implementing gamification in language classrooms through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). It aimed to explore how different types of motivation influenced teachers’ use of gamification and to identify the internal and external factors shaping these motivational patterns. A qualitative research design was adopted, involving asynchronous interviews with eight English teachers working at private language centers. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis tool named QDA Miner Lite. The findings indicated that teachers’ motivation was largely shaped by external regulation, particularly institutional expectations, time constraints, and classroom conditions. Although intrinsic motivation was present, it tended to be reactive and dependent on students’ engagement. Identified regulation emerged as the dominant driver, suggesting that gamification was mainly used as a pedagogical tool to support learning rather than as an intrinsically valued practice. However, the limited presence of integrated regulation showed that gamification had not been fully internalized into teachers’ professional beliefs. In addition, a lack of competence, including limited technological skills and insufficient training, contributed to amotivation. Results were discussed, and implications for enhancing teachers’ motivation in implementing gamification, along with recommendations for future research, were presented.

Developing functional writing skills remains a challenge for many English-major students, who often struggle with grammatical accuracy, lexical choice, and communicative appropriateness in authentic contexts. This study investigates the effectiveness of an auction-based approach in enhancing English majors’ functional writing skills through the integration of gamification, collaborative learning, and communicative practice. The study involved 44 first-year English-major students at Quang Nam University who participated in a series of auction-based activities requiring them to analyze, evaluate, and bid on language expressions before applying them in email and letter-writing tasks. Data were collected through classroom observations, student feedback surveys, and comparative analyses of writing samples produced before and after the intervention. The findings indicate that the approach increased student engagement and participation, improved learners’ ability to identify grammatical, lexical, and tone-related issues, and enhanced the overall quality of their written products. Students also demonstrated greater coherence, accuracy, and communicative appropriateness in their writing and reported higher levels of motivation and confidence. The study suggests that auction-based learning can serve as an effective pedagogical strategy for developing functional writing skills for English learners.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) has become an integral part of modern language education. This mixed-methods study examined the perceptions of third-year English-major students at the University of Foreign Languages, Hue University, regarding the use of mobile devices for autonomous English vocabulary learning. Data were collected from 202 valid questionnaires and eight interviews. The findings reveal that MALL offers notable benefits, including flexibility, improved pronunciation, better vocabulary retention, and increased learning motivation. However, challenges such as social media distractions, limited self-discipline, and the cost of paid applications remain. The study highlights the need for collaboration among learners, instructors, and application developers to enhance vocabulary self-learning through effective guidance and improved digital learning platforms.

Interaction in foreign language classrooms, particularly in English language teaching, plays a pivotal role in shaping both instructional effectiveness and learners’ communicative competence. In recent years, the rapid development of information technology has created new opportunities for educators to enhance the quality of online instruction. English language teachers can now design more innovative and flexible lessons by integrating a variety of digital tools into their teaching practices. These technological applications not only support content delivery but also contribute to the creation of interactive, engaging, and learner-centered environments. As a result, students are more motivated to participate actively in learning activities, which fosters sustained engagement and improves overall interaction during online classes. Moreover, tools such as Padlet, Kahoot, H5P, and Flipgrid offer diverse functionalities that facilitate collaboration, instant feedback, and meaningful communication among learners. When effectively incorporated into pedagogical strategies, these tools can transform traditional teaching approaches and promote more dynamic forms of interaction. Consequently, the integration of information technology serves as a key factor in enhancing interaction and improving learning outcomes in online English language classrooms.

As Vietnam’s English education increasingly moves toward a second-language-oriented model, learners need not only lexical knowledge but also the ability to interpret figurative expressions in culturally appropriate ways. Among these, English animal idioms denoting human personality remain challenging for Vietnamese ESL learners because their meanings are shaped by culturally embedded metaphorical associations rather than literal translations. Grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study explores how cognitive-linguistic insights can be applied to teach English animal idioms, thereby enhancing Vietnamese learners’ personality vocabulary. Specifically, it examines cross-linguistic metaphorical mappings between English and Vietnamese and identifies shared conceptual models, such as HUMAN DILIGENCE IS A DRAFT ANIMAL and HUMAN IGNORANCE IS A FARM ANIMAL. By systematically analyzing these mapping models, the study provides evidence that many animal idioms across both languages share comparable cognitive mechanisms, ecological experiences, and sociocultural observations. Exploiting such conceptual similarities can be pedagogically effective in reducing learners’ cognitive load and moving idiom acquisition beyond rote memorization. Based on these cross-linguistic findings, the paper proposes a conceptual-metaphor-based instructional framework consisting of five stages: awareness raising, metaphor mapping, cross-cultural comparison, contextualized practice, and communicative production. Expected participant outcomes include a deeper understanding of how animal imagery structures personality meanings, resulting in improved vocabulary retention and advanced idiomatic competence. Ultimately, the study demonstrates how theoretical cognitive mapping can be practically translated into effective ESL classroom strategies for Vietnamese learners.

This study details an action research initiative that combines experiential learning activities with the STEAM model to improve English speaking and presentation skills for 10th-grade students through interdisciplinary themes. Recognizing that high schoolers often struggle with pronunciation, structural organization, and communicative confidence, this classroom methodology transitions from traditional template-based dialogue drilling toward contextual real-world performance. Grounded in David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory and integrated education models, the pedagogical framework consists of five interrelated pedagogical measures. First, teachers establish competency-focused, multi-disciplinary presentation rubrics that guide group orientation and student self-assessment. Next, students engage in hands-on classroom mini-projects where they apply scientific, environmental, or artistic concepts to construct visual products alongside targeted spoken outcomes. Furthermore, the methodology leverages structured presentation video models, such as historical and technical TED-Ed lessons, to develop logical speech design. To enhance voice quality and fluency, students utilize Google AI Studio text-to-speech tools for dedicated phonetic imitation and intonation marking. Finally, the framework culminates in physical gallery walk exhibitions combining interactive project displays with spontaneous speaking opportunities. Statistical assessments gathered across a study involving 90 students demonstrate substantial growth in public-speaking confidence, organizational clarity, and collaborative skills. Participants will gain practical strategies for embedding integrated multimedia assets and task rubrics into foreign language speaking classrooms.

Vocabulary plays a central role in second language acquisition, yet in many Vietnamese classrooms instruction continues to rely on rote memorization, with limited opportunities for meaningful use. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Gen-AI-assisted Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC) tasks in improving vocabulary knowledge among Grade 9 EFL students in Vietnam and to explore learner perceptions of this approach. A mixed-methods design was adopted. Thirty-six students participated in a five-session intervention, with one group completing Gen-AI-assisted DST projects and a comparison group receiving traditional instruction. Data were collected through pre- and post-tests of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, alongside semi-structured interviews with students in the treatment group. Results showed that the treatment group achieved significantly greater vocabulary gains than the comparison group, with improvements evident in both receptive and productive measures. Interview data indicated that students valued AI-generated feedback and creative support, which enhanced contextual understanding and recall, though some concerns about time demands and overreliance on AI were noted. These findings suggest that Gen-AI-assisted DST can be an effective and engaging approach to vocabulary instruction in Vietnamese secondary schools. The study contributes theoretical insights into technology-mediated vocabulary learning and offers practical implications for teachers and policymakers. Future research should involve larger samples, longer interventions, and more comprehensive assessment tools.

This study explores the application of the PEEL/PETAL framework to enhance paragraph writing skills for Grade 10 students using the Global Success curriculum. Addressing common challenges such as fragmented ideas and lack of coherence in Vietnamese EFL classrooms, the initiative was implemented during the 2025–2026 academic year. Methodologically, the research employed a mixed-methods approach, including pre- and post-writing tasks, observations, and student questionnaires. Key pedagogical interventions involved model analysis, guided planning with scaffolds, and peer feedback integrated into diverse writing genres. Results indicate significant improvements in students’ logical organization, evidence integration, and cohesive linking. Furthermore, the framework notably boosted learners' writing confidence. The findings suggest that PEEL/PETAL serves as a practical, scalable scaffold for developing structured writing skills in secondary EFL contexts, offering valuable insights for teachers navigating the new national curriculum requirements.

The context in which the implementation of the ESL model is becoming an urgent requirement for educational institutions in Vietnam (with at least 20% of educational institutions nationwide planning to implement ESL) necessitates significant innovation in policies, learning materials, and the learning environment. This research focuses on analyzing the feasibility of applying the Flipped Classroom model combined with technology-integrated teaching methods. In this model, learners proactively access learning materials, video lectures, and pre-class assignments through a learning management system (LMS) and digital platforms; class time is focused on language practice activities, interactive communication, discussion, and problem-solving; after class, learners continue to reinforce, provide feedback, evaluate, and expand their knowledge in an online learning environment. The entire process before, during, and after class, as well as assessment and grading, including the management of the entire teaching and learning process and archiving, is organized synchronously through a digital learning resource ecosystem and supporting technologies, thereby enhancing the continuity, personalization, and effectiveness of the ESL-oriented learning process.

Vocabulary, which is vital for second/foreign language (L2) learning, has recently gained traction in L2 research. However, most research focuses on vocabulary learning from different modes of input while textbooks, a potential source for L2 vocabulary learning, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, receive scant attention. Even less attention is paid to textbooks in primary schools. Little is also known about teachers’ perspectives. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the aspects of vocabulary knowledge addressed in primary school English textbooks in Vietnam and Vietnamese EFL teachers’ perspectives. The vocabulary activities in eight primary English textbooks titled Global Success (Grades 1-5), published by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training, were analyzed. Each activity was assigned an aspect of vocabulary knowledge, which was further distinguished as either receptive knowledge or productive knowledge. Following this comprehensive analysis, 100 Vietnamese EFL teachers completed a survey on the textbooks as well as these aspects of vocabulary knowledge. The findings will reveal which aspects of vocabulary knowledge receive the most and least attention in textbooks and among teachers. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.

The emergence of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools is rapidly redefining the boundaries and practices of English language classrooms around the world. There have been many studies focusing on teachers’ perceptions of AI-supported learning and their readiness to integrate AI and digital technologies into their classroom practices. However, there remains a gap in understanding EFL teachers’ digital competence as well as their professional needs, especially in the Vietnamese context. This study addresses this gap by exploring pre-service English language teachers’ competence and confidence in using AI, and their perceived needs for training and support. Conducted at a local university in Vietnam, the study involved 200 students who participated in a survey questionnaire, followed by in-depth interviews with a group of 10 students. Results revealed that pre-service English language teachers have good competence in AI tools and digital technologies but need additional training and support to implement these tools effectively in their classrooms. Recommendations for policymaking and curriculum development are provided.

As Vietnam repositions English from a foreign to a second language, programmes that integrate content and language are expanding rapidly in primary schools, placing complex new demands on teachers who must assess subject knowledge and language development at the same time. Teachers' capacity to design, enact, and interpret such assessment-often termed assessment literacy-remains poorly understood, especially at the primary level and in systems transitioning toward second-language instruction. This scoping review maps existing research on teachers' assessment literacy in Content and Language Integrated Learning, organised around three dimensions: beliefs, classroom practices, and professional development needs. Following an established scoping review framework, peer-reviewed studies from the past decade were systematically searched across major databases, screened against transparent inclusion criteria, and analysed thematically. The synthesis reveals an emerging but uneven evidence base in which secondary and tertiary settings dominate, while primary classrooms and Asian contexts remain markedly underrepresented. Recurring patterns include a gap between teachers' integrative beliefs and their largely separated assessment of content and language, limited training for dual-focus assessment, and contextual constraints such as washback, large classes, and unclear policy guidance. The review further exposes fragmented understandings of what assessment literacy means in integrated settings. These findings identify priorities for teacher preparation and justify context-sensitive research in Vietnamese primary classrooms, offering a foundation for professional development as the country advances its second-language agenda.

Vietnam's national plan (2025–2035) to reposition English from a foreign to a second language assumes a transition led mainly by formal schooling. Yet recent survey evidence suggests English has already entered everyday Vietnamese communication through informal, peer-mediated channels, especially among Generation Z. This study draws on a quantitative survey of 401 Vietnamese Gen Z students (born 1998–2009) across secondary and tertiary education in the Mekong Delta, examining their code-mixing practices and language attitudes through a 30-item questionnaire. Results show that English-Vietnamese code-mixing is widespread, with around 89% of respondents reporting some mixing in daily speech, though mostly at low intensity. A clear attitude-behavior gap emerges: among students who agreed with the media claim that mixing English reduces the purity of Vietnamese, nearly 89% still reported mixing in practice. One-way ANOVA shows that the most frequent mixers express the strongest agreement with the purity discourse, with the effect significant at the conventional level. Three mechanisms appear to drive this gap: linguistic automaticity, communicative accommodation to interlocutors, and in-group marking among Gen Z peers. The findings suggest Vietnam's EFL-to-ESL transition is already partially underway through bottom-up multilingual practice, and point to a pedagogy built around metalinguistic awareness rather than purity-based prescription.

This qualitative interview study examines how linguistic insecurity shapes the emotional experiences and professional identities of nine high school EFL teachers in Vietnam’s Central Highlands amid growing pressure to teach English through English. Situated in a resource-constrained region where many students are from ethnic minority communities and have limited exposure to English outside the classroom, the study explores how teachers navigate expectations for communicative language teaching in large and linguistically diverse classes. Drawing on a poststructural-discursive perspective on emotion, the study approaches teacher anxiety not as an individual weakness, but as a response to reform-driven expectations surrounding English-medium instruction. Data were generated through in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Song’s framework of sacred, cover, and secret stories alongside Benesch’s concepts of feeling rules and emotion labor. Findings indicate that teachers’ insecurity centered less on general English proficiency than on the demands of using English spontaneously and continuously in classroom interaction. Participants described anxiety about giving unscripted explanations, responding to unexpected student questions, sustaining English-medium interaction, and maintaining professional authority while speaking English. To manage these pressures, many relied on scripted classroom language, reduced open-ended interaction, switched strategically to Vietnamese, and narrowed communicative activities that might expose perceived linguistic limitations. The study argues that teachers’ emotion labor emerges from the mismatch between national reform expectations and the realities of under-resourced provincial classrooms. It calls for teacher development policies that move beyond general proficiency benchmarks and address the emotional and interactional demands of English-for-teaching in local school contexts.

While research on Global Englishes in Vietnam has focused heavily on well-resourced urban universities and policy analysis, the beliefs of stakeholders at regional universities - especially where English-major education is only just emerging - remain under-examined. This qualitative case study explores the Global Englishes beliefs of 11 first-year students and 9 lecturers in a newly established English-major program at a regional technical university in the Mekong Delta. Framed around a Global Englishes Language Teaching perspective, together with teacher cognition and learner beliefs theory, the study drew on semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis. Participants remained strongly oriented toward native-speaker norms, though they showed early signs of awareness of global varieties. Lecturers, however, reported a gap between their pedagogical beliefs and classroom practices, which they attributed to institutional and assessment pressures. Both groups also viewed English primarily as a route to socioeconomic mobility, while their views remained constrained by limited exposure to varieties of English beyond the textbook. The study extends Global Englishes research to this under-examined context and offers practical insights for developing curricula that reflect the global diversity of English.