Non-native English-speaking teachers, context and English language teaching

Abstract

Abstract This article contends that, in spite of a recent upsurge in writing on non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in the global discourse of English language teaching (ELT), the experiences of NNESTSs working within their own state educational systems remain seriously under-investigated. To help to redress this, the article explores, from their own perspectives, how a group of NNESTs experience English teaching in Thailand, where English is taught as a foreign language. Though the article only has space to consider two aspects of the teachers’ lives and careers – classroom methods and commitment to teaching – it is hoped that it will contribute to an understanding of the many and varied locally-based practices of ELT, as well as helping to correct a monolithic view of ELT based on western conceptions of practice. The importance of NNESTs of English being ‘native’ in terms of their situational teaching competence is, accordingly, given due weight.