Impacts of using technology-enhanced language learning in second language academic writing at a Vietnamese university

With our chapter, we contribute to this book, Teaching and Learning Innovations in Higher Education, as we show how we have used Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) in English academic writing classes at the University of Foreign Languages (UFL), Ho Chi Minh City, in order to motivate Vietnamese university students. The utilisation of TELL for teaching practice is innovative in its own right in a developing country, such as Vietnam, where the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is limited. The internet, in 1994, was undoubtedly known to only a dozen people in the country (Hoang-Giang, 1999). Since then, there has been yet, slow and limited integration of both ICT and TELL into teaching practice. This is mainly caused by ICT infrastructure shortage, lack of technical support, absence of digital confidence and educators’ negative attitudes towards ICT (Peeraer & Van Petegem, 2010). In Vietnam, teachers and students tended not to be adequately trained as to how to integrate the use of digital technologies for effective teaching and learning. As Nguyen and van Rensburg (2016:156) state, the: “Vietnamese educational philosophy regarding English learning is traditionally associated with memorising and that Vietnamese learners lack English language skills due to ineffective teaching methods”.