Australian-Trained Vietnamese Teachers of English: Culture and Identity Formation Phan Le Ha Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia The identity formation of Australian-trained Vietnamese teachers of English is explored by looking at their experiences as TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) students in Australia and as teachers of English in Vietnam. On the one hand, the paper consolidates the understanding of identity in relation to difference and multiplicity; on the other hand, it challenges the views of identity as being always changing, fragmented and having no sense of core or wholeness. It shows that a strong sense of a Vietnamese national/cultural identity is consistently constructed and confirmed by these teachers, despite their global mobility, and their being simultaneously ‘here’ and ‘there’. This understanding of identity has implications for TESOL teacher training. doi: 10.2167/lcc324.0 Keywords: English language teaching, identity, TESOL, teacher identity formation, Vietnam Over the last 10 years, there have been Vietnamese teachers taking Master of Education courses specialising in TESOL in Australian universities. These teachers are frequently sent to Australia under national and international scholarship schemes and are expected to go back to Vietnam to teach after com- pleting their courses. While in Australia, they are exposed to different cultural and pedagogical practices that affect their identity formation. This paper examines the identity formation of these teachers with regard to how it is shaped and reshaped by their negotiations of their seemingly conflicting roles and selves simultaneously, as TESOL students in the Australian class- room, and as Vietnamese teachers in the Vietnamese classroom. Specifically, how these teachers perceived the issues of asking questions in lectures, and teacher –student relationships and interactions in both contexts is discussed. In Australia, the participants were international postgraduate students, who at the same time viewed themselves as Vietnamese teachers of English. It is assumed that in their Australian lectures, they had to negotiate whether to behave like an Australian student or like a Vietnamese one. As the former, they should enjoy an open and equal relationship with the teachers. But as the latter, they somehow needed to maintain a distance and show obvious respect to them. The former and the latter also involve different approaches to learning, because of different expectations. This paper first discusses the conceptual framework, and next presents the study. The data analysis and discussions follow, and finally, implications for TESOL education are offered. To provide the theoretical framework for this 20 0790-8318/07/01 020-16 $20.00/0 # 2007 Phan Le Ha LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM Vol. 20, No. 1, 2007