In Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, pragmatic misalignments, where teacher intent and student uptake diverge, are common yet undertheorized in teacher education. We analyze 72 end-of-course reflective accounts written by in-service teachers in the Mekong Delta, reading them narratively and thematically to trace how teachers describe moments when their talk “ did not land .” We treat reflections as sites of metapragmatic noticing, teachers’ reflexive attention to what their words did in interaction. Across cases, a recurrent Reflective Pragmatic Spiral (RPS) emerged: (1) Dissonance (a missed cue or unintended effect), (2) Narrative replay (re-reading one’s utterance from the student’s position), and (3) Emergent awareness (recognizing language as socially consequential and adjustable). Linguistic markers, such as stance verbs (“ I thought ,” “ I assumed ”), hedges (“ maybe ,” “ I guess ”), and self-repairs, indexed the move from certainty to interpretive work. We position RPS alongside teacher language awareness and classroom interactional competence, arguing that RPS specifies a mechanism by which reflective writing cultivates metapragmatic awareness in teachers. The study reframes teacher reflection as a locus of pragmatic development and offers a language-for-analysis to better bridge “ what I said ” and “ what was heard .” • The study analyzes 72 end-of-course reflections by in-service Vietnamese EFL teachers and models a recurrent Reflective Pragmatic Spiral (RPS): Dissonance → Narrative replay → Emergent awareness. • Reflective writing functions as a site of metapragmatic development, evidenced by linguistic markers, including stance verbs, hedges, and self-repairs, that trace teachers’ shift from intention to uptake analysis. • In the Vietnamese, peer-dense and evaluation-sensitive ecology, classroom “silence” often signals risk management rather than disengagement, shaping how invitations are heard and • RPS complements teacher language awareness and classroom interactional competence by explaining the reflective mechanism that links post-hoc uncertainty to future recalibration of wording, sequencing, and audience design. • Practical routines emerge (e.g., anonymous question stages, pair-first trials, clear directives with optional scaffolds) that redistribute participation risk and translate awareness into concrete “next-time language.”
Pham et al. (Fri,) studied this question.