University classrooms in Vietnam: contesting the stereotypes

Eastern education may be perceived by Western-oriented educators as something quite different from the latters’ ‘advanced’ and ‘developed’ way of educating. Cultural difference in pedagogical practice may be experienced by Western English language educators not as difference but as deficit. Eastern teachers of EFL are sometimes judged to be using ‘backward’ teaching and learning methodologies compared with the ‘advanced‘ and widely-used Western methods, such as ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ (CLT). This paper explores two Vietnamese teachers’ accounts of their own teaching experiences of EFL in Vietnam. These teachers, at least, do not conform to the above cultural stereotype. Like effective English language educators in the West, these teachers use a variety of pedagogical approaches which take account of the cultural context of the classroom.