Author: Hai Quy Pham
Pham, Hai Quy, 2025 Vietnamese International Students' Identity Formation During Integration into Australia: Perceived Challenges and Strategies, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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Most speakers of English as a Foreign Language believe that their challenges in social integration stem from insufficient English proficiency. However, this study suggests the conflict between the identity motives for belonging and distinctiveness may play a more salient role in social integration challenges, as can be seen in the case of five Vietnamese international students from different universities in South Australia. Qualitative analyses of these five one-to-one semi structured interviews reveal the big picture of this cohort’s social integration challenges to be more nuanced and complex, including multiple contributing factors such as internalized beliefs about Second Language Acquisition, ingroup and intergroup bias, as well as intragroup tensions. This study conceptualizes and investigates all these factors through the dynamics between language, identity, and power in social practices as demonstrated by contemporary Second Language Acquisition research. Contemporary research calls for the expansion of Second Language Acquisition theories beyond the acculturation model and the integrative motivation concept whereby successful Second Language Acquisition is theorized to depend entirely on the learners’ motivation to engage with native speakers. This Second Language Acquisition model has two prominent shortcomings: (1) it fails to address the reality of unequal social power that often renders learners illegitimate English speakers and causes native English speakers to deny them further engagement, and (2) it fails to recognize the multidimensionality of learners’ lived experiences in conceptualizing them dichotomously as being motivated or unmotivated to learn English. For those reasons, the process of Second Language Acquisition has been reconceptualized in this thesis as a matrix of identity, power and language, wherein language is constructed by and constructive for the identity of its user simultaneously. Therefore, to acquire a second language, learners must engage in identity negotiation to garner more right to speak and develop competence. Since many young adults are pursuing higher education abroad in English-speaking countries, their entry into adulthood usually converges with the process of acquiring English as a second language, which exacerbates their challenges in feeling and expressing an authentic sense of self. The findings suggest a stable sense of personal identity and having their autonomy supported by significant others can help young adults mitigate these challenges.
Keywords: Vietnamese international students, identity formation, identity motives, identity crisis, transnational identity, identity negotiation, authentic identity, acculturation, integration, belonging, second language acquisition, identity and language, identity and power
Subject: Sociology thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2025
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Shvetal Vyas Pare