Native and Non-native Teachers’ Self-perceived Language Competence and Their Feelings About Collaborative Experiences and Relationships

Abstract

There is a general expectation that language teachers need to possess a fluent command of the language they teach in addition to extensive knowledge about the language so that they can teach it as a subject and use it as a medium of instruction. Faced with such high expectations, it is hardly surprising that some L2 teachers may feel anxious and emotional when they reflect on their ability to teach their subject, including doubts about their own L2 competence, particularly when working alongside native speaker colleagues. This chapter reports the results of a study of non-native speaker (NNS) and native speaker (NS) university teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The study tested the teachers’ (n = 50) metalinguistic awareness, then looked in depth at the self-perceived English competence of ten NNS and ten NS teachers and asked them to report on their experience of working together in the same teaching team. While the results showed enormous variation in the metalinguistic knowledge of both groups, there was surprisingly little difference between NNS and NS teachers in their self-perceived competence to teach academic English. Some cultural differences were found to affect collaboration adversely, such as different NNS/NS attitudes towards assessment, communication with senior management and tolerance of ambiguity.