English as Medium of Instruction in Vietnamese Teacher Education: Students’ Learning Experiences

Abstract

AbstractEnglish as medium of instruction (EMI) in the provincial universities of Vietnam, where there is almost no opportunity to use English outside class, is currently under-researched. This chapter therefore reports on a practitioner-researcher investigation at a provincial teacher training college, investigating students’ learning experiences and how they perceive the effects of EMI on the development of their content knowledge construction and English language performance in a Methodologies course for teaching English in primary schools. Participants were 20s-year students and data were generated from pre- and post-tests, learning diaries, videos of micro-teaching and semi-structured interviews, evidencing students’ learning experiences as well as their perspectives on the role of EMI in those experiences. The teacher’s pedagogical approach was grounded in Sociocultural Theory (SCT), which highlights the role of language in learning. This provided a valuable framework for supporting students to engage with English as a mediational tool for learning, both in terms of knowledge construction and achieved linguistic solutions. The data provide clear evidence of how students built up their learning through teacher and peer scaffolding within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which in turn suggests a number of pedagogical implications for valuable EMI practices.KeywordsEnglish-medium instructionEMIVietnamHigher educationTeacher educationLearning strategies