Home All Issues Issue articles Previous article Next article

Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms

Thao Thanh Le 1 * ,
Thuy Trut Pham 2,
Yen Hoang Phuong 1
1 Can Tho University2 Nam Can Tho University* Corresponding Author
Educational Point, 2(2), 2025, e134, https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
Publication date: Dec 19, 2025
Research Article
Open Access Open Access
Download PDF

ABSTRACT

In Vietnamese public schools serving ethnic minority learners, English language instruction often unfolds in linguistically complex and culturally mismatched classrooms. This narrative case study explores how one Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher responds to the challenges of teaching English to Khmer learners in a rural secondary school in the Mekong Delta. Drawing on a written reflection composed during a professional development course, the study examines how the teacher makes sense of her learners’ persistent grammatical difficulties, rooted in first language (L1) transfer from Khmer, and how she navigates the cultural dissonance between textbook content and learners’ lived experiences. Findings reveal that the teacher reframes language “errors” as patterned responses to structural distance, and that she enacts responsive teaching through chunk-based instruction, visual scaffolding, and culturally localized tasks. Her practice illustrates how small, context-driven adaptations are reconfigured when English is learned through Vietnamese by Khmer-speaking learners, making visible the interpretive work teachers do to turn structural distance into pedagogical resource. By foregrounding the voice of a teacher working in a triadic language environment (Khmer, Vietnamese, and English), the study theorises teacher responsiveness in such settings and offers an empirically grounded account of multilingual pedagogy and teacher agency in under-researched Southeast Asian classrooms.

KEYWORDS

culturally responsive teaching ethnic minority education Khmer learners language transfer Vietnamese EFL classrooms

CITATION (APA)

Le, T. T., Pham, T. T., & Phuong, Y. H. (2025). Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms. Educational Point, 2(2), e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
Harvard
Le, T. T., Pham, T. T., and Phuong, Y. H. (2025). Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms. Educational Point, 2(2), e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
Vancouver
Le TT, Pham TT, Phuong YH. Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms. Educational Point. 2025;2(2):e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
AMA
Le TT, Pham TT, Phuong YH. Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms. Educational Point. 2025;2(2), e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
Chicago
Le, Thao Thanh, Thuy Trut Pham, and Yen Hoang Phuong. "Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms". Educational Point 2025 2 no. 2 (2025): e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575
MLA
Le, Thao Thanh et al. "Teaching Across Languages and Cultures: A Narrative Case Study of Addressing L1 Transfer and Cultural Gaps in Khmer EFL Classrooms". Educational Point, vol. 2, no. 2, 2025, e134. https://doi.org/10.71176/edup/17575

REFERENCES

  1. Banks, J. A. (2015). Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum, and teaching. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315622255
  2. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2004). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. John Wiley & Sons.
  3. Dang, T. C. T., & Seals, C. (2018). An evaluation of primary English textbooks in Vietnam: A sociolinguistic perspective. TESOL Journal, 9(1), 93-113. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.309
  4. Diaubalick, T., Eibensteiner, L., & Salaberry, M. R. (2023). Influence of L1/L2 linguistic knowledge on the acquisition of L3 Spanish past tense morphology among L1 German speakers. International Journal of Multilingualism, 20(2), 329-346. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2020.1841204
  5. Gay, G. (2010). Acting on beliefs in teacher education for cultural diversity. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 143-152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347320
  6. Hieu, H. H., & Thao, L. T. (2024). Enhancing learner autonomy in teamwork skills: Strategies of Vietnamese tertiary EFL teachers in a changing educational landscape. Nurture, 18(3), 564-572. https://doi.org/10.55951/nurture.v18i3.679
  7. Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203935927
  8. Le Ha, P., Ha, V. H., & Dat, B. (2014). Language policies in modern-day Vietnam: Changes, challenges and complexities. In Sercombe, P., & Tupas, R. (Eds.), Language, education and nation-building: Assimilation and shift in Southeast Asia (pp. 232-244). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
  9. McManus, K. (2015). L1-L2 differences in the acquisition of form-meaning pairings in a second language. Canadian Modern Language Review, 71(2), 155-181. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.2070.51
  10. Nation, I. S., & Webb, S. A. (2011). Researching and analyzing vocabulary. Heinle Cengage Learning.
  11. Ngo, X. M. (2024). English assessment in Vietnam: status quo, major tensions, and underlying ideological conflicts. Asian Englishes, 26(1), 280-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2022.2132128
  12. Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer (Vol. 27). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524537
  13. Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Sage.
  14. Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Sage Publications, Inc.
  15. Sundkvist, P., & Nguyen, X. N. C. M. (2020). English in Vietnam. In K. Bolton, W. Botha, & A. Kirkpatrick (Eds) The Handbook of Asian Englishes (pp. 683-703). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118791882.ch30
  16. Thao, L. T., & Mai, L. X. (2022). English language teaching reforms in Vietnam: EFL teachers’ perceptions of their responses and the influential factors. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 16(1), 29-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2020.1846041
  17. Vu, T. L. (2024). Teacher agency in enacting English language curriculum: The case of primary school EFL teachers in Vietnam. Issues in Educational Research, 34(4), 1618-1637.
  18. West, A. J. (2016). Adaptation of communicative language teaching methodology to an English textbook for English language learning of Nida students. PASAA, 52(1), 25-52. https://doi.org/10.58837/CHULA.PASAA.52.1.2
  19. Woore, R. (2014). Beginner learners’ progress in decoding L2 French: Transfer effects in typologically similar L1-L2 writing systems. Writing Systems Research, 6(2), 167-189. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.838536

LICENSE

Creative Commons License
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.