ABSTRACT
Concern for the quality of English as Foreign Language (EFL) Teacher Training is shared systemically across Vietnam’s Higher Education sector. This chapter reviews research to illustrate how programmatic weaknesses related to curriculum design and outcomes pervade Vietnamese EFL teacher training sectors. We compared curriculum, observed classes, and interviewed teachers and students at some leading Vietnamese teacher training universities, taking cultural aspect and learner autonomy into consideration. EFL teacher training programmes at universities face several challenges: they appear not to be wholly effective, English language teaching skills are not adequately developed for the English teaching profession, the cultural aspect of the language is not designed as an integrated part of the programme, and the learners’ autonomy is not the focus of the teaching-learning philosophy. Recommendations are made to reform curriculum design by applying cognitive development theory.
