The Influence of Extramural English Input on the English Proficiency of Vietnamese Students

The current study investigated the possible effects of out-of-school English exposure, the so-called Extramural English (EE), on Vietnamese undergraduate students' English proficiency. The main aim of the current study was to shed light on how exposure to EE input influences Vietnamese students’ English proficiency. The study was conducted on 245 undergraduate students in a university in Vietnam. The study was carried out using the quantitative method. A questionnaire asking about the participants' educational background, English knowledge, EE, and motivation for learning English, and a Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) to measure the participants' receptive vocabulary size (Webb et al., 2017) were included. The results of the study revealed that reading in English was the only predictor of the participants' English proficiency. Additionally, the participants of the current study did not have massive exposure to EE. Moreover, the study found a significant correlation between residential areas where the participants originally came from and their English proficiency. A significant difference between the rural participants and the urban participants at their VLT was found in the current study. Specifically, the urban participants had a better performance at most levels of the VLT than the rural participants. Parents' educational levels did not have a connection with the participants' English proficiency. Taken together, the study suggests that there is indeed a correlation between EE and the participants' English proficiency in Vietnam, but it is not as strong as compared to correlations found in previous research. The weak correlation between EE and the participants' English proficiency may be due to the lower volume of exposure to EE in the current study compared to previous studies and maybe also because of a late starting age for EE