Native teachers, non-native teachers and ELF. Same aims, different approaches?

Abstract

The spread of English used as a lingua franca (ELF) in several multilingual communicative settings and the emergence of World Englishes (WE) have inevitably impacted on the field of English language teaching (ELT) calling into question traditional notions and assumptions and highlighting the need to revisiting teachers’ roles and approaches to the English classroom. In this respect a research study was carried out withing a recent PRIN project which aimed at the exploration of ELF pedagogy in the Italian school contexts. The Roma 3-unit members investigated teachers’ current practices in English language classrooms, with the research objective of enhancing WE and ELF aware teaching to be implemented especially in the training of teachers involved in multilingual learning environments. Two online questionnaires were used in order to gather data from non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) and English Language Assistants (CEL) – i.e. native English-speaking teachers (NESTs), to investigate current ELT practices as well as teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about the current status of English both in Italian high schools and at university level. This paper aims at illustrating the findings of the survey administered to almost 80 NESTs working as language assistants in Italian universities and language centres. A 32-question survey was administered in 2017 to investigate native teachers’ ELF-awareness, attitudes and beliefs, especially, in ELT current routines and concerns, models and lesson planning, material development and assessment criteria. The main results will highlight respondents’ emerging identities as native teachers as well as their positions and views towards ELF-awareness and New Englishes (NE). Implications for the need to go beyond the deep-rooted discriminatory dichotomy ‘NESTs vs. NNESTs’ and for the reconceptualization of the role of ELT for the new societal trends will also be discussed.