VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER
A CASE STUDY OF AN AMERICAN LECTURER
TEACHING SPEAKING TO THE SECOND-YEAR
FAST-TRACK CLASSES AT ULIS, VNU
(From a perspective of intercultural communication)
Supervisor: Ngô Hữu Hoàng, PhD
Student: Vũ Thị Thu Lý
Course: QH2010.F1.E2
Hanoi, May 2014
ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH
KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

ĐIỂN CỨU VỀ MỘT GIÁO VIÊN NGƯỜI MĨ DẠY KĨ NĂNG
NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN CHẤT LƯỢNG CAO NĂM THỨ HAI
TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ, ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA
HÀ NỘI
Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Ngô Hữu Hoàng
Sinh viên: Vũ Thị Thu Lý
Khóa: QH2010.F1.E2
Hà Nội - 2014
ACCEPTANCE
I hereby state that I: Vũ Thị Thu Lý, E2K44, being a candidate for the
degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating
to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in

shocks, the visiting American lecturer was successful to adapt Vietnamese culture
and demonstrated high teacher credibility thanks to her strategies and the
globalization going on in Vietnam. The paper, therefore, would serve as a good
reference for both English language teachers and foreign language specialized
students who desire to have a closer look at this issue or to improve their
Intercultural sense.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
ABSTRACT ii
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13
2.5.1. Participants 19
2.5.2. Data collection 19
CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 23
2. Findings from the observations 39
REFERENCES 44
APPENDIX 1: GUIDED QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEW 48
iii
INTRODUCTION
The first part of the study discusses the rationale, the aims, the scope as well
as the significance of the study together with a brief overview of the research. The
two research questions, in particular, are clearly identified to work as the guidelines
for the whole paper.
I. Rationale of the study
In today’s modern world, learning foreign languages becomes more and more
popular because of globalization, so it is common that people go abroad to other
countries for working and language teaching. Therefore, in the context of
intercultural communication, culture shock is believed to be unavoidable. For that
reason, a research on how a visiting teacher encounters culture shocks to adapt a

the teacher’s behaviors as well as how they are influenced by the foreign teacher.
III. Research questions
In the implementation of this research, the researcher tries to answer these
following research questions:
1) What cultural problems does she_ the visiting American lecturer_ encounter
when living and teaching in Vietnam?
2) How well does she adapt herself in Vietnamese culture?
IV. Significance of the study
As a future English teacher, the researcher realizes that a good teaching
method does not include only the teaching of four skills: listening, speaking,
reading and writing. Suffice it to say that it is necessary to achieve the Intercultural
sense in order to gain professional development from the American lecturer
through this kind of research. In other words, it could be beneficial for the
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researcher’s future career by training the Intercultural sense thanks to the teaching
of the visiting lecturer.
Also, it is clearly seen that the current research into the area of English
speaking teaching from a perspective of Intercultural communication is highly
limited. Therefore, this study will partly help fill the gap in the literature.
Although the study is carried out as a small scale one, the researcher hopes
that its results could be a good source for both teachers and students who are
concerning about English teaching and intercultural communication.
V. Scope of the study
Although there are many other lecturers in the English Department of ULIS,
VNU, the researcher choose Ms. X for several reasons. She is responsible for
teaching speaking to two second-year fast-track classes. Therefore, all the students
from class 12E1 and 12E15 and their American speaking teacher are included in
this study. The decision to focus on two cases of the visiting American lecturer and
her students was made based on the purpose of referencing their problems, attitudes
and strategies to adapt a foreign culture.

this area. The researcher found no piece of research of Vietnamese researchers on
this issue in the library of Vietnam National University or on the Internet, which
justifies more research to gain insight into intercultural communication in the
context of Vietnam, particularly at ULIS, VNU.
1.1.2. Related studies in the world
These founded case studies were carried out as investigations in foreign
students’ adaptation when coming to another country for further research. Still,
there was a lack of exploring that of a foreign teacher.
(i) Cultural Influence in Intercultural Adaptation- A Case Study of My Son's
"Cultural Clash" in the United States
This is a case study of a Chinese student going abroad to America for higher
education. The focus is on how culture influences the way he encounters cultural
differences in the United States. Whereas most studies focus on cultural awareness,
culture shock, psychological adjustment, this study emphasizes the importance of
culture influence in intercultural adaptation. The cultural influences here are
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examined to be integrated into a relationship of cultural values and cultural
conflicts.
Throughout the study, related terms including culture, cultural values,
cultural differences and cultural adaptation are discussed respectively in order to
figure out the problems that the writer’s son met when he had to face with a main-
stream culture, the reasons for that and what he could do for his adaptation to
American life. Firstly, according to Varner and Beamer (1995), culture is the
coherent, learned, shared view a group of people has about life's concerns that rank
what is important, instills attitudes about what things are appropriate, and
prescribes behavior, given that some things have more significance than others.
Whereas, Pedersen and Hofstede (2002) argued that "culture is rather like the color
of your eyes; you cannot change it or hide it, and although you cannot see it
yourself, it is always visible to other people when you interest with them" (p.196).
Based on those definitions of culture, Feather (1990) indicated that “cultural

offended. That is the reason why the lady refused the boy’s help.
Above all, it is necessary that the Chinese students should learn certain
things about another culture’s priorities, what attitudes its members have, and how
they think people would behave. By doing so, Chinese students can guess how
people from another culture expect them to act with the knowing of how they think
for the purpose of acting appropriately under circumstances so as to overcome
problems from cultural differences. Also, Hofstede’s advice: “The principle of
surviving in a multicultural world is that one does not need to think, feel, and act in
the same way in order to agree on practical issues and to cooperate” would be a
good suggestion.
(ii) Cultural Adaptation: A case study of Asian students’ learning experiences at
a New Zealand University
The number of Asian students studying in New Zealand in 2005 counts for
eighty-five percent of international students, which raises an enormous concern for
the New Zealand education industry to explore the level of satisfaction of Asian
students with their learning experiences. This study provides a critical summary of
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some important and yet challenging issues in teaching Asian students. In order to
meet these challenges, it is said to be important to review and adapt pedagogical
practices and to realign the students to the needs of both local and international
students.
In detailed, studying in a different country can be an exciting and
challenging experience for international students who have to experience many
adjustment problems, particularly those relating to academic, socio-cultural and
psychological adjustment (Ward & Kenny, 1993). According to Ward, Bochner, &
Furnham (2001), problems can arise from differences in the linguistically
determined of the communication patterns of the participants. In other words, the
closer the student culture is to that of the host community, the easier the interaction
and adjustment will be (Mehdizadeh & Scott, 2005).
Normally, there are several factors that are said to influence Asian students

1.2. Theoretical background
1.2.1. Intercultural communication
As cited in “Promoting Intercultural Communication” (Fareeda, 2012), “the
term intercultural communication involves a wide range of communication issues
that inevitably arise within an organization composed of individuals from a
variety of religious, social, ethnic and technical backgrounds. Each of these
individuals brings a unique set of experiences and values to the workplace, many of
which can be traced to the culture in which they grew up and now operate” (SBE,
2002). The term is divided into two key words which are “inter” and “cultural”.
They signify a multidisciplinary field, involving people having divergent ways of
thinking and doing possibly belonging to different geographical areas and speaking
a variety of languages.
Other definitions assume that “intercultural communication is a
dynamic process of interrelation, transference and exchange of cultural values and
cultural specificities, and a process of interaction of diverse cultures which are
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being increasingly marked by new information and communication
technologies” (Vertovec & Cohen,2002)
According to Dodd (1991), intercultural communication is a scientific field
whose object of interest is the interaction between individuals and groups from
different cultures, and which examines the influence of culture on who people are,
how they act, feel, think and, evidently, speak and list. As described by Vila (2005),
intercultural communication may be defined as a communicative process involving
individuals from reference cultures which are sufficiently different to be perceived
as such, with certain personal and/or contextual barriers having to be overcome in
order to achieve effective communication.
The perception of the definition of intercultural communication differs
among researchers. But “it is true that the world is shrinking and the contact of
people from different cultural backgrounds has been increasing more than ever
before as that in the process of intercultural communication, there are lots of

These two kinds of adaptations are said to be predicted by different factors.
The former is believed to be predicted by personality, life changes and social
support while the latter is predicted by length of residence, language ability,
cultural distance, quantity of contact with host nationals etc.
1.2.4. Teaching English as a view of Intercultural communication
(i) English teaching in Vietnamese context
According to Crystal (1997), several geographical and historical factors as
well as socio-cultural ones led to the initial spread of English. Smith (1976)
stated that “As an international language, English is used both in a global sense
for intercultural communication between countries and in a local sense as a
language of wider communication within multilingual societies”. In
Vietnamese context, people learn English as a foreign language, not a second
language, which leads to a lack of their motivation to achieve the
communicative skills in English (Ngo, 2014). Therefore, they may be quite
good at communicating with English speaking people but get troubled in
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Intercultural communication, where not only English speaking people but also
the whole world speaks that language (Ngo, 2014). This is partly because
English is taught with the only aim of Vietnamese people being able to
communicate with English speaking people. In other words, Vietnamese
people still pursue a native English speaker model while the control of this
language is gradually shifting away from native speakers (Crystal, 2004).
Additionally, as it is an international language, “the use of English is no longer
connected to the culture of countries where English is used as the first
language” (Smith, 1976).
(ii) English teaching in Intercultural communication context
The situation of teaching English in Vietnam now improves thanks to the
globalization going on in the country, which leads to a need of Vietnamese
people using more English to communicate in intercultural contexts (Ngo,
2014). Since one of the primary functions of English, as is the case with any

empirical inquiry which investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-
life context, when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly
evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.
A case study’s definitions abound that are useful or maybe not. Merriam-
Webster’s dictionary (2009) defines a case study straightforwardly as follows:
Case study. An intensive analysis of an individual unit (as a person
or community) stressing development factors in relation to
environment.
According to this definition, case studies focus on an “individual unit”, what
is mentioned above as a “functioning specific” or “bounded system”. So the first
decisive factor in defining a study as a case study is the choice of the individual
unit of study and the setting of its boundaries, its “casting” to use Ragin’s (1992,
p.217) felicitous term (Le, 2012).
Case study is also considered to be intensive. Le (2012) states that “case
studies comprise more detail, richness, completeness, and variance- that is, depth-
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for the unit of study than does cross- unit analysis. The commitment with in- depth
details, with intensiveness is what makes case study distinguishable from survey
research”. She also emphasizes that case studies stress development factors. It
means that a case typically evolves in time and place. And case studies focus on
relation to environment which means the context.
Gerring (2004, p.342) has correctly pointed out that the many academic
attempts to clarify what case study means has resulted in “a definitional morass”,
and each time someone attempts to clear up the mess of definitions it just gets
worse. So it is better to stay with definitions from Webster’s as they are more
commonsensical definitions.
2.1.2. A reason of “case study” for the research
With the aim of getting thorough understanding of the issue and increasing
the validity of the study, the paper was conducted in qualitative approach since it
helped the researcher collect the participants’ feelings, emotions as well as the

2.3. Phase 1: Interview
The research question to be answered in this phase is the first one: “What
cultural problems does the American lecturer encounter when living and
teaching in Vietnam?”
2.3.1. Participants
In this phase, before observing the speaking lessons of the chosen second-
year fast- track classes, the researcher conducted five interviews with the American
teacher as well as 2 students from class 12E1 and 2 students from class 12E15.
2.3.2. Data collection
(1) Justification for the use of email interview
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There are several reasons for choosing email interview as one of the major
research instruments in the study. Regarding to time saving, observation could help
reduce the time of travelling to the interview location. Moreover, it would be much
convenient to both the interviewer and interviewees to arrange time flexibly as to
invest in the focused questions. Also, the researcher could save time transcribing
the interview as the answers were all typed into the computer. In addition, email
could help the researcher conducted a large number of interviews at the same time.
In other words, the interview with the teacher and the interview with the students
were conducted at the same period of time.
In terms of informed and confidentiality, email interview could ensure that
all information and names of the interviewees were kept confidentially. Concerning
that many people perceive online communication as anonymous because there is no
in-person contact and thus, little accountability. This anonymity may explain why
some people are more willing to participate in email interview studies, whereas
others are more willing to stop participating, not respond in a timely fashion,
embellish more, or be less friendly to the interview, as cited in Meho (2005).
As for data quality, the quality of responses gained through online research
is much the same as responses produced by more traditional methods, (Denscombe,
2005, p.51). The same conclusion was reached in several studies that compared, or

conducted right after the observations as the researcher found out anything that
were unclear and confusing about her behavior, attitude, etc. in the classroom. The
participants were very supportive and enthusiastic, which made the interviews very
flowing and natural. The answers of the respondents to each of these two questions
often contained more than one idea. Since they were interviewed via email, they
could freely express their ideas and feelings without the fear for their identity and
reputation. With each question, the respondents were asked to rank the ideas in
order of importance so that the research could transcribe them easier later.
(3) Procedure of data collection
Step 1: Preparation
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The researcher made a set of interview questions for both teacher and
students and send two different emails for the two kinds of subjects. As the
researcher had a time being familiar with those students, it was quite easy to
contact their monitors (or some other representatives of these classes) and asked for
their permission to interview them.
Step 2: Conducting the interviews
All the interviews with the teacher and the students were conducted in
English. They were quite acquainted with the researcher through some observations
so that the conversation via email had no significance difference from the face-to-
face interviews or interviews through mobile phone.
Before starting each interview, the researcher promised to keep the
interviewees’ names in confidentiality in the current study. So they would be
mentioned in the results as anonymous. The participants were informed of the basic
content of the study beforehand so that they could have general information about
the interview. Then, they were asked to answer the interview questions which were
arranged in the order specified in the interview schedule. The interviews with both
teacher and students were conducted at the same time via email with different
questions. Previously, the researcher made a list of respondents including their
name, class, email address and their phone number thanks to two monitors of class

In this phase, the researcher asked for permission of the visiting American
lecturer to be present at each period of speaking lesson. Also, the researcher
informed the students via their monitor before the observation, guaranteed that it
would not affect their teaching and studying. In other words, there was one
American lecturer who was in charge of teaching speaking, 20 students from class
12E1, 21 students from class 12E15, which means 42 participants in total.
2.5.2. Data collection
(1) Justification for the use of observation
There were certain reasons for the decision of choosing observation was
made. The first reason was because of its directness. As the researcher involved in
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