Ever since widespread economic reforms were instituted in the
late 1980s, Vietnam has experienced intense growth.
Educational reforms have followed these economic reforms. The
country joined ASEAN in 1995 during this period of economic
growth. This chapter describes Vietnam‘s hopes regarding the
ASEAN Economic Community‘s (AEC) integration in 2015 and
highlights relevant challenges and changes in education policy
to foster regional and international integration, focusing on
foreign language proficiency and teaching competency. It then
describes several major initiatives of a national project that was
created to implement a major government decision to build
national foreign language capacity. The next section
summarizes lessons from Vietnam regarding ASEAN
integration-enabling policies and implementation strategies and
makes recommendations for regional proficiency assessment,
teacher competency tools, alignment of teacher training
curricula and materials, and vehicles to carry out capacitybuilding
priorities. The final section suggests the need for
further research regarding English teachers‘ language
proficiency, language assessment instruments, regional
capacity-building centers, and the effectiveness of the national
foreign language project.