Non-Native Teachers Investigating New Englishes

Abstract

While teacher-as-methodology-researcher paradigm in the area of methodology is quite firmly established, teacher-as-language-researcher is less common, especially in teacher training programmes. Much less emphasis is placed on equipping teachers (especially non-natives) with skills of language analysis, hypothesis posing, data retrieval and analysis. The use of ready-made language corpora in preparing classroom data and creating materials is still inadequately covered in teacher training programmes, let alone putting future teachers in the shoes of linguistic researchers observing the changing face of English. The purpose of this paper is to present a case for promoting teacher-as-language-researcher attitudes in the graduate teacher training programme. A case study is presented, in which student teachers were gradually introduced into New Englishes, through existing corpora, text retrieval and compilation, and — finally — do-it-yourself concordancing. The data from questionnaires and teacher diaries will illuminate upon the viability of self-made corpus compilations as a part of 21st century digital literacy.