| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 英語教學研究所 === 107 === Conforming to the seemingly inevitable globalization processes (Mok, 2000), like many other countries, Taiwan has been making efforts to internationalize its higher education by recruiting international students (ISs). A very large population of ISs in Taiwan hails from Vietnam, a neighboring country that has established a close relationship with Taiwan in trade, investment, labor flow, and transnational marriage. Informed by Norton’s theory of language, identity, and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 1997, 2000, 2013), this study examined how Vietnamese international students (VISs) use their multilingual capitals to navigate the social and academic activities in Taiwanese universities, how they perceive themselves as multilingual users in such contexts, and what investment they make in learning languages during their sojourn in Taiwan. The study employed the qualitative multiple-case study methodology with data collected from semi-structured interviews, participant self-reports, and informal conversations with the participants. The study found that, as social beings, VISs’ perception, language use, and learning investment are shaped by the interplay of (1) institutional routines and practices, (2) social ideologies, and (3) social identities. The results also indicated that as active agents, VISs not only complied with the existing institutional practices and social ideologies, but also resisted negotiated certain institutional practices and social ideologies or employed non-conventional models of communication in their social and academic interactions in Taiwan. The study sheds light on the barely elucidated research area of ISs in non-Anglophone countries. In addition, it brings pedagogical implications for hosting universities, such as acknowledging ISs’ multiple capitals by allowing them to use multiple languages and communication modalities in their social and academic interactions in Taiwan.
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