VietTESOL International Convention 2025

English has become an indispensable language for communication with foreigners in Vietnam. However, most undergraduate students from rural areas of Vietnam have low English proficiency as they have limited opportunities to practice listening and speaking English with eloquent English speakers. To provide rural Vietnamese students an opportunity to learn English with educators from Australia, since January 2018 we have taught over 200 students from small towns in Vietnam as extracurricular activities for free of charge. The positive effects of Reflective Learning (RL) and Self-Recording Videos (SRV) in teaching English have been widely reported, however little research attention has focused on the effectiveness of RL and SRVs on foreign language development of undergraduate students from socially and economically disadvantaged background. Through an eight-year collective case study we address this important gap. In this presentation, we provide the rationale for educators of English as a Second Language to integrate RL and SRVs into learning activities and explain how we integrate RL and SRVs into lessons. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data collected from nine cohorts: 65 first-year students and 87 second-year students between 2018 and 2025, we demonstrate that by integrating RL and SRVs into learning activities, educators from English speaking countries can motivate Vietnamese rural students to learn English online for at least one hour every day over a period of ten weeks as extra-curricular activities, and we report students’ reflection on their progress and experience. Finally we offer our reflection on our experience and recommendations for future research.