The headway of information and communications technology has facilitated knowledge connecting, sharing and disseminating on institutional, national, regional and international scales. Vietnam Association for English Language Teaching and Research (VTA) has succeeded in enhancing teaching professionalism for the past few years; however little has been known about how to foster research capability to realize the vision and to fulfill the mission statements. Addressing the paucity, the Doctoral Research Group initiate an idea of developing doctoral research database for the thrive of VTA’s shared intellectual properties and towards an engaging research community. Drawn on the premises of connectivism theory that posit knowledge as distributed across a network of connections and learning as the ability to construct and traverse those networks; and ways of knowing are derived from a diversity of opinions (Downes, 2007; Siemens, 2009), we invite Vietnamese doctoral holders of English language teaching and Applied Linguistics to share their doctoral theses and research publications already published elsewhere to establish VTA’s research repository. Then the repository is sorted in thematic trajectories while the contributing researchers are grouped based on areas of expertise so that they could be altogether engaged to conduct relevant research projects and activities. The database accelerates VTA’s shared intellectuality and benefits VTA members who are conducting their PhD and MA theses given the status quo of limited access to research resources in Vietnam. In the keynote, we elaborate on the initiative and the action plan that guides the operation of VTA Doctoral Group in the coming time.

The 21st Century has witnessed a rapid shift from traditional textual literacies to multimodal digital information literacies. This featured speech highlighted how such new kinds of literacies have added new understandings to applied linguistics and cited the presenter's relevant published empirical studies to illustrate how teaching and learning the English language and its language products have radically been transformed accordingly. Specifically, the studies show that the world of digital literacies has reframed and diversified the existing curriculum orientations, content delivery, and instructional methodologies using multimedia, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, students' language production, teacher-generated materials, and teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects and cross-cultural topics via the English language in both Vietnam and the United States. Nevertheless, differences in socio-cultural, economic, and infrastructure factors create equity discrepancies between two countries in the digital era. Consequently, the speech highlights the implications for linguistic diversity online and in a wider educational society. Finally, the speaker discusses the pedagogical and research implications and potentials of the development of digital literacies, including five key sectors:
Scaling up personalized language and content learning for students and teachers via digital coaches and ambassadors using.Conducting digital naturalistic linguistic corpora and online pragma-linguistics and pragma-socio-linguistics research for pedagogical applications.Creating networks of researchers, parents, and communities using social platforms.Expanding equity with open access for acquiring digital skills.Creating curricula and instructional materials focused on training English language learners to express themselves and communicate better via visuals and multimodalities.

Although effective speaking skills have become a professed goal for language learners in the globalized world, speaking has constantly remained a dormant research domain, especially in the field of teacher cognition. Given that speaking is a multifaceted skill, it is the most challenging skill to be taught in a principled and systematic manner, as frequently reported by teachers across contexts. This presentation reports on a qualitative study investigating six Vietnamese EFL teachers’ knowledge base and practice in teaching speaking. Employing semi-structured interviews, observations and stimulated-recall interviews, the study illuminates teachers’ intricate understanding of speaking subject content and pedagogy, and its complex interrelation with classroom implementation. The research is underpinned by a comprehensive framework incorporating Borg’s (2006) teacher cognition model and Shulmans’ (1986, 1987) model of teachers’ knowledge base. Findings from the study showcase the teachers’ existing knowledge base in terms of the subject matter content knowledge for speaking instruction and their speaking pedagogy as it is enacted in classroom contexts. These findings establish a critical foundation for suggestions for further professional development activities for teachers in this particular context as well as proposals for improving the effectiveness of speaking skill instruction at university level. Theoretical contributions of the study will also be discussed.

While blended teaching is increasingly becoming popular in higher education all over the world, the concept has recently been paid attention to in Vietnam context. However, under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic online teaching and blended teaching suddenly become a popular trend in Vietnamese higher education. Few studies have been conducted to explore topics related to blended learning in Vietnam and the current study was conducted to fill such a gap. This study focuses on exploring English-majored students’ perceptions toward the benefits and challenges of blended leaching in EFL classes. Participants included 440 English-majored students ranging from 18 to 22 years old coming from three study majors namely English Teacher Education, English Language Studies and English Interpretation and Translation in a multi-disciplinary university of 56 years old in Vietnam. Findings reveals that students perceived that blended learning offers them various benefits as well as some challenges. Suggestions are proposed to enhance blended learning for English-majored students in Vietnam and elsewhere.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s (UHM) most recent strategic plan highlights the university’s mission to be a Hawaiian Place of Learning while sustaining a commitment to global competitiveness.UHM international students therefore encounter a discursive crossroads, as they have been admitted to a flagship, public university in the United States, which carries with it a significant degree of cultural capital. At the same time, multiple stakeholders at UHM have pushed for greater recognition of Hawaiian ways of knowing. As an example of a higher education context that invites radically distinctive epistemologies, the campus affords the opportunity to research how students interact with both globalist discourses in US-based higher education and Hawaiian worldviews. This paper examines how international students at UHM learn about the Hawaiian language and culture through a campus tour (huakaʻi) that invites participants to engage in an embodied resemiotization of the UHM schoolscape. While current linguistic landscape research utilizing walking tours investigates how participants experience and respond to their surroundings (Garvin, 2010; Michalovich et al., 2021), the huakaʻi invites participants to engage with untold histories of the campus. Drawing on narrative analysis (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2013) and engaged linguistic landscape frameworks (Malinowski et al., 2021), this presentation explores five international students’ perceptions of the huakaʻi in terms of how these students position themselves vis-à-vis discourses related to place, neoliberalism, internationalization and/or knowledge about Hawaiʻi. Our findings suggest that a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003) such as the huakaʻi invites radical ideas about decolonization.

In this feature speech, I make my best efforts to deepen our understanding of language and culture. Particularly, research has informed that the former is a particular representation of the latter where the former is used. Speaking of this tight connection, it is necessary for us to pay more attention to the growing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) research. In view of translating theories into classroom practices, my presentation is to put many innovative insights into ICC forth, by considering a series of published works (2020-2022) which I attempted to understand how many groups of university-level teachers, graduates, and students. Theoretically supported by sociocultural theory, my works will be examined through the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) so as to uncover the extent to which those works’ participants have been able to understand and define ICC, and perceive ICC in the practical manner. To achieve these goals, my presentation will begin with a summary of my research project, consisting of what led me to this important scholarship and what contexts my works were located. Based on CHAT which will also be succinctly introduced, it is followed by my reflexivity and critique of ICC-inspired EFL teaching and learning via the findings which can be connected with each other. By the end of the talk, I will discuss potential directions for future research and recommend some practical ways for classroom instruction. In light of equitable and inclusive education, these are the quintessence of pedagogical approaches that support multicultural EFL classrooms.

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) introduced by Michael Halliday (1961, 1985) is a linguistic approach applied in text analysis. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the pedagogical application of SFL for improving the teaching and learning a language. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributions of SFL to the instruction of writing and disciplinary learning outcomes for English learners, especially in EFL contexts. A content analysis of recent articles published in 1999 and 2019 attempts to identify how SFL scholars conducted research on the application of SFL. Findings show common trends of SFL-informed approaches to support learners in (1) using genre-based pedagogy in teaching writing, (2) mastering disciplinary language and literacy skills, (3) availing of repertoires of meaning-making resources, and (4) developing critical language awareness. This study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings on teaching and learning English to EFL learners and the future directions of this work.

The 45-minute panel features perspectives of a number of prominent Vietnamese English language teaching professionals on the topic of “Digital ELT: Approaches and Innovations”. The discussants are currently PhD holders, PhD students, or practitioners who have expertise in teaching with technology, and/ or researching different aspects of digital ELT inside or outside Vietnam. The purpose of the panel is to synthesise the knowledge and experiences from different doctoral studies to contribute to the development of the ELT in Vietnam both in terms of theories and practice. With the facilitation of a chair, the following issues will be covered: 1. The current landscape of digital ELT in Vietnam: Technology in ELT, teaching methods, PD to support teaching with technology 2. The issues of digital ELT in Vietnam that need to be solved (e.g., in terms of technology in ELT, teaching methods, PD) 3. Approaches and innovations to address the issues: From theories to practices