VietTESOL International Convention 2025

As English-Medium Instruction (EMI) becomes a dominant approach in higher education across Southeast Asia, cross-border students face complex linguistic and cultural landscapes. This study explores how Lao undergraduate students majoring in Economics at a public university in Ho Chi Minh City navigate EMI learning environments, where English is the medium of instruction and Vietnamese is the dominant peer and institutional language. The research focuses on how these students make sense of their academic and linguistic experiences while operating across three languages including Lao, English, and Vietnamese.

Using a narrative inquiry approach, data were collected from three Lao students through in-depth interviews and language lifelines, which allowed participants to map their multilingual trajectories and reflect on significant turning points in their academic journeys. The narratives reveal layered challenges, including difficulties in understanding subject-specific English, feelings of exclusion in Vietnamese-dominant peer interactions, and pressure to conform to implicit linguistic norms. At the same time, students demonstrate agency through translanguaging practices, such as using Lao for internal reasoning, relying on bilingual peers, and switching between languages during self-study.

The findings offer insights into the lived experiences of underrepresented transnational learners in EMI contexts. They highlight the need for more inclusive EMI pedagogies that acknowledge and support multilingual meaning-making, especially for students navigating beyond the dominant linguistic and cultural group.