How Do Culturally Situated Notions of ‘Polite’ Forms Influence the Way Vietnamese Postgraduate Students Write Academic English in Australia?

This paper explores how the Vietnamese culturally situated notions of ‘politeness’, which are embedded in Vietnamese postgraduate students' performance at different Australian universities, influence the way they write academic English. The data of this qualitative study were collected from in-depth interviews with four Vietnamese postgraduate students from different universities in Melbourne. The paper also makes suggestions to Australian academics on how they can best help Vietnamese postgraduate students' writing at universities.