Native English Teachers Research Articles

Globalization and native English speakers in English Programme in Korea (EPIK)

This study demonstrates how English Programme in Korea (EPIK) is an example of Korea's active response to the globalization process through which Korea not only accommodates external demands but also strategically pursues national interests through equipping its citizens with a command of English. EPIK, affiliated with the Korean Ministry of Education, was established in 1995 in order to hire native speakers of English as teachers, with the mandate to improve the English speaking abilities of students and teachers in Korea and to reform English teaching methodologies. After presenting an overview of EPIK, this study highlights that the South Korean government has responded to and actively participated in the global spread of English by adopting and implementing the EPIK programme. Furthermore, the ideology of the native English speaker as the ideal teacher, readily adopted by the Korean government and people, does not grant native English teachers legitimacy as teachers in their everyday interactions with Korean teachers of English and Korean students. This study demonstrates that the dichotomy of the native speaker of English as a superior teacher, and the non-native speaker of English as an inferior teacher, is too simplistic to explain real-life experiences of EPIK teachers.

Problematic issues experienced by native and Korean English teachers in the process of team teaching at middle schools in Korea

Problematic issues experienced by native and Korean English teachers in the process of team teaching at middle schools in Korea

Haunting Native Speakerism? Students’ Perceptions toward Native Speaking English Teachers

This paper intends to explore how Taiwanese university students perceive their native-speaking English teachers (NESTs). Mutual expectations between the NESTs and students are also investigated. Collected data include questionnaires from 107 students and interviews with three NESTs and 19 students who have filled out the questionnaire. The result shows that students expect more encouragement and interaction with the NESTs, and more relaxed activities with less assignment and test. A third of the students expect NEST with a standard accent, while a quarter do not care about accent at all. The NESTs reveal their dissatisfaction toward the students’ passiveness and irresponsiveness. While students expect their NESTs to be interactive, they themselves seem to give the NESTs an impression of an unwillingness to participate. The discussion centers on this dilemma and offer some suggestions for English teachers.

Students’ evaluation of the effect of video conferencing on promoting speaking fluency

This paper presents the results of the study on how students evaluate video conferencing as a language learning tool. Keeping up with the current trend of learning English through Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), the researcher investigated how students evaluated the effect of a video conferencing tool on promoting speaking fluency. A total of 138 cyber students participated in the study which employed student surveys, telephone interviews, and document analysis. The research results showed that an overwhelming number of students thought that video conferencing could be an alternative to face-to-face interaction with native English speakers, by referencing “no restrictions on time and space,” “utilizing text-chat function,” and “involving less psychological anxiety” as major advantages of video conferencing. Students also favored video conferencing over audio conferencing since it allows students to utilize paralanguage such as gestures or facial expressions. The research results indicate that online video conferencing will be an effective tool to promote English learners’ speaking fluency in Korea, especially by compensating for the lack of native English teachers’ input in the Korean educational system.

Teaching Chinese to the Beginners in Korean and Chinese

The purpose of the thesis is that in Lee Myung Bak Government, English friendly education system has been appeared strongly. Native speaker English teachers who are supported by the Ministry of Education are teaching English not only in the middle school, but also in elementary schools. As well professors are required to lecture in English. Then how about Chinese-Class? Do they teach Chinese in English now or in the future? My answer is definitely No. I analysed this matter from outer environment and the Chinese Language itself. In outer influence, the English ability is different and we can

Native English Teachers in Hong Kong: Building Communities of Practice?

A review of the formulation of the Native English Teaching Scheme in Hong Kong is offered establishing its unique characteristics which confound Native English teachers and local schools attaining successful integration. Reporting a three-step exploratory methodology, key elements are identified and operationalised which appear to support successful integration. Discussing these findings in terms of the literature on Induction and Communities of Practice, a case is made that the reported research methodology may be applicable across other integration contexts - where individuals, rather than remaining disengaged ‘accidental tourists’, seek to become engaged ‘agents of change’.

Reconsideration of the Development of Rating Criteria in Operational Language Testing Contexts

This paper attempts to explain why the rating criteria for English language oral proficiency tests should be reconsidered and how the perceptions of rating criteria could be applied to language assessment. It introduces the needs of World Englishes (WEs) and their perspectives on the issue of English language testing in Korea, and shows different perceptions of rating criteria for the assessment of English language oral proficiency among three different groups of English teachers: native English teachers in Canada, non-native English teachers in the Philippines, and non-native English teachers in China. This study shows the complex relationships among English teachers’ language backgrounds, perceptions of rating criteria, task types, and their actual rating behaviors. It then focuses on the implications for language assessment of non-native speakers’ English language oral proficiency.

Automatic pronunciation scoring of words and sentences independent from the non-native’s first language

This paper describes an approach for automatic scoring of pronunciation quality for non-native speech. It is applicable regardless of the foreign language student’s mother tongue. Sentences and words are considered as scoring units. Additionally, mispronunciation and phoneme confusion statistics for the target language phoneme set are derived from human annotations and word level scoring results using a Markov chain model of mispronunciation detection. The proposed methods can be employed for building a part of the scoring module of a system for computer assisted pronunciation training (CAPT). Methods from pattern and speech recognition are applied to develop appropriate feature sets for sentence and word level scoring. Besides features well-known from and approved in previous research, e.g. phoneme accuracy, posterior score, duration score and recognition accuracy, new features such as high-level phoneme confidence measures are identified. The proposed method is evaluated with native English speech, non-native English speech from German, French, Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese adults and non-native speech from German school children. The speech data are annotated with tags for mispronounced words and sentence level ratings by native English teachers. Experimental results show, that the reliability of automatic sentence level scoring by the system is almost as high as the average human evaluator. Furthermore, a good performance for detecting mispronounced words is achieved. In a validation experiment, it could also be verified, that the system gives the highest pronunciation quality scores to 90% of native speakers’ utterances. Automatic error diagnosis based on a automatically derived phoneme mispronunciation statistic showed reasonable results for five non-native speaker groups. The statistics can be exploited in order to provide the non-native feedback on mispronounced phonemes.

Study on Students’ Attitude Towards World Englishes and Non-native English Teachers

The objectives of this paper are first to investigate how students perceive the relatively new concept “World Englishes” and second to find out whether they prefer native English teachers or non-native local English teachers. A questionnaire survey was conducted on two different groups. One group consists of students of a 2-year college who have never taken a course on World Englishes, thus are not familiar with the new concept. The other consists of students of a 4-year university who have taken a course on World Englishes. The former group shows a stronger preference towards British English or American English while the other group shows a relatively less preference towards the so-called Standard English. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to the formal lectures on World Englishes given to the group of 4-year university students. However, in terms of their preferences towards teachers, the result is reversed. Their preference and choice of teachers may depend on the levels of English proficiency. The 2-year college students with lower English proficiency prefer non-native teachers even without taking the course while the 4-year college students with higher English proficiency still prefer native teachers even after the course.

Elicitation and Reformulation and Their Relationship With Learner Repair in Dyadic Interaction

This research investigates the usefulness of two major types of interactional feedback (elicitation and reformulation) in dyadic interaction. The focus is on the different ways in which each feedback type is provided and their relationship with learner repair. The participants were 42 adult intermediate English as a second language learners and two native English teachers performing dyadic task‐based interactions. Six different reformulation subtypes and five different elicitation subtypes were identified, differing from one another in feedback salience, and the degree to which they pushed the learner to respond to feedback. Analysis of data on output accuracy following feedback showed that both reformulation and elicitation resulted in higher rates of accurate repair when they were combined with explicit intonational or verbal prompts compared with less explicit prompts or no prompts. These findings confirm the role of salience and opportunities for pushed output as important characteristics of effective feedback.

A study on the qualities of native English instructors of university

A study on the qualities of native English instructors of university

Asian Englishes: Implications for English Language Teaching

Most Ministries of Education in East and Southeast Asia still see the acquisition of native-like proficiency as the goal for English language teaching. They thus promote the native speaker model as the classroom target and many have some form of 'native English teacher' scheme, whereby native speakers are brought in from overseas to teach in Asian English language classrooms. In this paper I shall question the need for a native speaker model in a multilingual world in which a number of new varieties of English have become established and in which the majority of English users are LI speakers of other languages who use English as a medium of communication or lingua franca with each other. I shall propose a number of possible alternative models, ranging from a localised variety to a lingua franca 'approach'. The paper concludes with a suggestion for the curricula for TESOL courses in light of the arguments presented in the paper.

Differences in Evaluation of Japanese College Students' Writing Between Japanese English Teachers and Native English Teachers

Differences in Evaluation of Japanese College Students' Writing Between Japanese English Teachers and Native English Teachers

Video-Based Language Learning Environment Using an Online Video-Editing System

Unlike most videoconferencing systems, the new videoconferencing system we have developed allows sessions between a native English teacher and a non-native second language learner to be recorded and edited for later reuse for educational instruction purposes as a teaching aid thus enhancing explanations and comments about pronunciation and intonation. To develop easy-to-use tools for adding such enhancements, a new paradigm called video correction is proposed implementing as a video correction system so that the learner can understand the teacher's comments as if they were corrections on paper. The prototype system, called Viclle (Vi deo-based C ommunication L anguage L earning System),support both a teacher (a native English speaker) and a learner (non-native speaker) with video correction and communication. A new XML schema, called VCML (V ideo-based C orrection M arkup L anguage), is exploited to represent pedagogical correction essentially in a compact text format so that both teacher and learner can communicate through e-mail without sending video files back and forth. In addition, VCML relates the teacher's corrections to the video with links, and it includes the learner's feedback. Therefore, the teacher and the learner can communicate with each other by using the VCML document only.

A Close Look at the Chinese Cultural Influence on Students’ Learning Styles and Strategies

Following a clarification of the relationship between learning styles, learning strategies and cultural factors that help shape them, the article presents the results of a free-writing questionnaire that asked 28 native English teachers to express their views on Chinese students’ learning styles and strategies. Inductive analysis of these free-writings indicated that Chinese students had certain types of learning styles and strategies, which were closely related to their traditional education pattern and cultural values. After tracing the origins of the cultural influence on the students’ learning styles and strategies, the article offers some practical suggestions, which might be beneficial to English teachers in China as well as those teachers who teach English in the same situation worldwide.

Professional Development and the JET Program: Insights and Solutions Based on the Sendai City Program

This paper examines the role professional development can play for Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) and native speaker Assistant English Teachers (AETs) working together in the Japan Exchange and Teaching om Program. Aiming for a communicatively-based team-taught approach, the program has been in existence in Japanese high schools since 1987. Japanese government documents, academic reports, and participants' reflections have been examined to reveal some of the program's shortfalls. A detailed description of Sendai City's training and in-service system is offered as a way to maximize the success of the JET Program through consistent professional support for ]TEs and AETs.

Perspectives on Team Teaching by Students and Teachers: Exploring Foundations for Team Learning

The number of English language instructors from abroad working in Japan's secondary schools increases yearly. Research shows that during the years since the introduction of team teaching, a number of yet to be resolved classroom issues have persisted. Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) and native speaker assistant English teachers (AETs) appear to be in touch with their students' needs, but at the same time are more inclined to see their roles as distinct from that of their teaching partners. Students have shown themselves to exhibit an awareness of learning strategies regarding how JTEs and native speaker AETs may best serve their learning needs, though not necessarily in the same lesson. Given the dominant position traditionally held by a Japanese teacher in the classroom, the role of the JTE at this stage in the development of team teaching might now be best described as ambiguous, or perhaps even displaced. The data presented in this paper suggests a reformulation of the approach to team-taught lessons is in order. The concept of 'Team Learning' is introduced and explored with an aim toward fostering authentic communication, where all the participants of the team-taught class can exchange their ideas and sense of cultural values.

Factors Affecting Composition Evaluation in an EFL Context: Cultural Rhetorical Pattern and Readers’Background

We investigated how 465 readers with different backgrounds (differing L1, academic status, and amounts of writing instruction) evaluated 16 versions of Japanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) students’English compositions containing different culturally influenced rhetorical patterns (Japanese vs. American English) as well as two other features (coherence breaks and language use errors). Among other factors, including coherence and language use, culturally influenced rhetorical patterns affected assessment of EFL student writing on an analysis of effects topic. Overall, Japanese students who had not received English writing instruction preferred the Japanese rhetorical pattern, native English teachers favored the American rhetorical pattern, and Japanese students who had received English writing instruction and Japanese teachers valued features of both patterns. There were no significant differences between the two teacher groups in the overall assessment of the two rhetorical patterns, but Japanese English teachers, similar to Japanese students, gave significantly higher scores than native English teachers to the Japanese introduction. On a comparison/contrast topic, other discourse features, particularly paragraph level coherence problems, appeared to override rhetorical pattern in terms of influence on writing quality scores. The results suggest that a flexible approach to permissible rhetorical patterns and a greater emphasis on coherence may prove beneficial for EFL writing instruction.