Native and Non-Native English Speaking Teachers in Kindergarten Classrooms

Abstract

Previous studies on the differences between native and non-native English-speaking teachers have relied mainly on self-reported data, whereas this study examines the actual classroom discourse of kindergarten native and non-native English-speaking teachers to identify their teaching styles with supplementary data from interviews. The results show that the non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) benefited from sharing learners' LI (Chinese), code-switched between English and Chinese flexibly, and used Chinese effectively for various pedagogical and communication purposes. In contrast, the native speaking teacher (NEST) used English exclusively and had a communication gap with learners. The NNEST adopted more strategies to maintain classroom discipline, whereas the NEST had a serious problem maintaining classroom discipline. However, the NNEST, who owns superior English competence, used a fuller range of lexicons and syntactic structures with multiple examples to illustrate a new word, and had longer, more frequent social talks with learners. In addition to teachers' linguistic competence, data also show that teacher beliefs, attitudes and teaching strategies are influential variables to consider in interpreting their diverse teaching styles.