Vietnamese society at the beginning of the 19th century experienced cross-cultural contact, transition, and a clash between classic and modern values. Confucianism, which had dominated society and culture for more than 10 centuries, immediately lost its influential roles due to the expansion of Western cultures. As a result, Confucianism - based education instructed in Chinese written language was replaced by modern study in French and the Latinised national language, namely Vietnamese. In subsequent periods, socio-historical events have had considerable impact on language policies regarding the implementation of different foreign languages in the educational system, from Chinese and Russian at the peak of relations with socialist countries, to English as a global language in the current context. Therefore, foreign language education in Vietnam, especially the language of priority, has always been subject to political and economic conditions. The emergence and collapse of these languages has been approached as historical events in the contextual background to explore research issues in previous studies (Le, 2004; D. H. Nguyen, 1997; H. T. M. Nguyen, 2011). Little research has concentrated on the impact of these language policies on sociocultural life. For example, one generation had invested their material and cultural capitals for Russian, but the emergence of English language in the educational system and in wider society immediately made all of their efforts wasteful and meaningless.
In this study, narrative inquiry into an extended family in which five generations have learned five languages reveals a number of issues related to language, culture, identity, and education. Based on the stories of language learning in this family, some implications will be discussed for foreign language education, especially English language teaching in Vietnam today.