University English classrooms in Vietnam

“Only When I Am Not Ashamed of Myself Can I Teach Others”: Preservice English-Language Teachers in Vietnam and Code-Switching Practices

“…Despite the recognized inadequacy and irrelevance of preservice training, most of these student teachers are expected to commence work at secondary schools right after graduation. However, little access to professional development is available there due to the lack of dialogues with their colleagues and the heavy workload imposed on them by the school curriculum (Le, 2012;Pham, 2005). From Le's (2012) description, of particular interest to this article is the lack of preparation for these preservice teachers to deal with sociocultural issues related to their English-language-teaching profession within and beyond the curriculum.…”

“…While Phan (2008) suggests that there could be different levels of "mixture between the common and the personal" in reconciling conflicting identities (p. 111), all the participants in her illustrative case studies claimed to find a resolution to their conflicts in a "harmonious" and "efficient" manner. As these "happy" resolutions have been questioned by Pham (2005) in his critique of Phan's study, exploring the possibilities of confusion, trauma, and even failure to resolve identity conflicts constitutes a significant theme of this article.…”

“…On the other hand, it departs from Phan's studies by delving into the confusion, trauma, and even failure to resolve identity conflicts. As pointed out by her critics (see Pham, 2005), these themes are often absent or underrepresented in Phan's empirical findings as almost all of the participants in her case studies seemed to resolve their identity conflicts in a "harmonious" and "efficient" way (Phan, 2008, pp. 112-113, 116).…”

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“…As a result, learners are more concerned about their immediate goal -to pass exams rather than to widen their knowledge and expertise. This situation exposes English teachers to the challenge of whether to adopt an exam-oriented or a communicative development approach to language teaching (Hiep, 2005). Third, English teachers in Vietnam tend to take learner autonomy for granted.…”

Conceptions of Language Input in Second Language Acquisition: A Case of Vietnamese EFL Teachers

“…In addition, as in many other Asian countries, the lack of a social environment for communicating in English generally restricts ELT in Vietnam (Canh, 2000). Although training programs include a component about communicative language teaching (CLT), teachers are often constrained from teaching communicatively (Pham, 2005).…”