Foreign Friends

Abstract

AbstractIn the Qunxi program, students refer to foreign English teachers as “foreign friends”. In this chapter, I elaborate on how foreign English teachers’ identity is discursively constructed in a local context, which, in turn, affects students’ representations of the teaching practices of both local and foreign teachers. I first explain how identity operates in the representation of social practices. The relationship between representation and identity is lived out in students’ construction of their foreign English teachers’ pedagogical practices, forming a discourse of “foreign English teachers as foreign friends”. Within this discourse, the foreign teachers’ practices are devalued by students as “play”. The foreign teachers, however, have a radically different interpretation of their methods, which is encapsulated in their principle of “teachers as facilitators”. In comparison, students describe some of the activities in local English teachers’ lessons as “buzzing class activities”.