Composing multilingual reflection: stylistic dimensions of Vietnamese EFL teachers’ English-medium reflective writing

This article examines Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ reflective writing as a multilingual and multimodal form of professional composition. Drawing on social semiotic, multimodal, and translanguaging perspectives, the study analyses 162 reflective entries written by in-service secondary school teachers during an assessed English-medium professional development (PD) programme. Rather than treating reflection only as evidence of pedagogical reasoning, the article examines how teachers used layout, punctuation, repetition, tone, and Vietnamese-English resources to compose reflective meaning. The analysis identifies three interrelated stylistic dimensions: (1) spatial framing, through which teachers organised experience through headings, line breaks, lists, and segmentation, (2) textual texture, through which punctuation, repetition, rhythm, and tonal shifts signalled affect and professional stance, and (3) expressive hybridity, through which Vietnamese entered English-medium reflection to carry relational, emotional, and culturally situated meanings. The findings show that even within an assessed English-medium task, teachers’ multilingual repertoires shaped how classroom experience was remembered, evaluated, and voiced. The article proposes a heuristic model for reading reflective writing as multilingual and multimodal professional practice.