Name: Phuc Nguyen (Lucas)
ESOL 0360
Personal story about a cross-cultural misunderstanding with an American teacher in
Vietnam
Recent years, there are so many foreign teachers come to Vietnam to teach English. A new
country, a new culture, foreign teachers need to face and deal with a lot of new things in
Vietnam called culture shocked. In my opinion, there are three main important things
foreign teachers need to prepare before they come to Vietnam are time, attire and behavior.
First of all is time. In Vietnam, people wake up very early in morning to start a new day.
That is a reason why school always start at 7am. It means you must to wake up at 5am to
6am to prepare everything before you go to school. Almost high schools, they end at 5pm,
so foreign teacher need to be in school 10 hours to 12 hours. For some reason, the school
will open some special classes for student till 9pm.
Second of all is attire. In Western culture, teacher can wear tee, polo, jean to go to school.
But in Vietnam, teachers in to wear in formal dress. Students don’t want their teachers
wear careless. One of important thing is teacher cannot put their feet on the table like in
Western Culture. When they do that, students will think teachers are not respect on them,