Non-native Teachers Research Articles

Non-native English Language Teachers⿿ Perceptions of Professional Development: Implications for Career Stages

Abstract This study explored English language teachers⿿ perceptions of professional development and professional development practices. The data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, from six non-native teachers who were in different career stages. Inductive content analysis showed that teachers described professional development as the use of various resources and use of skills and knowledge , while their professional development activities included attending courses and seminars, following professional publications , and collaborating with colleagues . Although both the definitions and practices can be considered as traditional, the results indicated that teachers were aware that they needed to keep up with rapid progress and change in teaching and education.

Collegial Reactions to Faulty Pronunciation of Teachers in Relation to English Language Teaching

Abstract The aim of this study was to explore the collegial reactions of teachers to faulty pronunciation in relation to English language teaching. Some vowel and consonant sounds of English language are problematic for Turkish English teachers because they do not exist in Turkish inventory of sounds. The pronunciation of these English sounds usually results in fossilized mistakes for the Turkish teachers of English and teacher trainees. In this respect, a questionnaire with 21 items and three subheadings, ⿿reactions in terms of profession-wise⿿, ⿿professional efficiency of non-native teachers⿿ and ⿿reactions in terms of collegial friendship⿿, was developed by the researchers of this research. The data were collected from 30 Turkish teachers of English who worked at different state universities in Turkey via a five-point Likert scale and were analyzed through Independent Samples T-test and ANOVA. The results demonstrated that while most teachers support their colleagues in regard to professional efficiency of non-native teachers and collegial friendship, only a small percentage of the teachers support their colleagues in respect to professional-wise.

Classroom Ideologies and Teaching Practices of Native and Non-native English Teachers in EFL Classrooms

<p class="Abstract">This paper presents the findings of two different sets of teachers’ classroom ideologies and actual teaching practices. It compares a set of native and non-native English teachers that are distinct in terms of teacher training background, qualifications and experiences. This study explores the divergence and convergence of the teachers’ ideologies to their actual implementation in classroom. It investigates the factors that lead to the convergence and divergence of the teachers’ actual practice than their claimed ideologies. The findings of this study reveals that both sets of teachers do share the same classroom ideologies but do not apply those ideologies in a same way. The variations between the teachers exist for a variety of reasons, factors such as nature of training, classroom context, experiences of the teachers and their backgrounds have a great influence on teaching practices.</p>

Effective teacher talk: a threshold concept in TESOL

English language teachers are expected to use their talk, ‘teacher talk’, effectively; however, teacher education courses do not always clarify how student teachers can achieve this. This article advocates that understanding and using effective teacher talk is crucial for successful ELT and as such is a ‘threshold concept’ in TESOL. ‘Threshold concept’ is a term used in higher education to describe core concepts that, once understood, transform perception of a subject and help students progress in their discipline. In this study, nine native speaker and non-native speaker EFL student teachers explore their use of teacher talk by participating in stimulated recall interviews using recordings of teaching practice lessons as the stimuli. Findings show trainees understand effective teacher talk differently, with some trainees linking it to pedagogical purpose whilst others do not. This study is the first to examine threshold concepts in TESOL and shows it is a useful micro-perspective for developing the TESOL teacher education curricula.

Symbolic power and the native/non-native dichotomy: Towards a new professional legitimacy

Abstract Based on the research literature of the “native/non-native” distinction and on Bourdieu’s notion of field and social action, this paper proposes to use the specific case of foreign language (FL) teaching in the French educational system to conceptualize the FL teaching field as a highly contested space where unequal actors vie for symbolic power and influence. The FL teaching field is organised into two large spaces: one representing state school educational systems, the other representing private language schools. Symbolic power and teaching legitimacies have been jointly constructed giving more power and legitimacy to non-native teachers in state school settings, and more power and legitimacy to native teachers in private language schools. Universities occupy a middle position between the educational settings of the national education systems and the private settings of language schools: the teaching of language to future specialists is still in the hands of non-native speaker teachers whereas the teaching of language to non-language specialists seems more open to native speaker teachers. The “native/non-native” opposition that linguists thought to be relevant linguistically might no longer be a linguistic concept (Paikeday 1985; Davies 1991; Rampton 1990; Cook 1999; Muni Toke 2013), but, as a social construct, this opposition is still very much alive. It serves to design language policies within which actors-teachers of foreign and second languages confront one another. Due to the global deregulation of educational settings, language actors-teachers are therefore put into a highly competitive market: both native and non-native language teachers struggle to be recognized, and essentialist or even racist attitudes have developed into what Holliday (2006) calls “nativespeakerism”. Understanding the structure of the language teaching field worldwide makes it possible to clarify the power struggle and symbolic violence within the field, whose goals and values are paradoxically aimed at mutual understanding through language teaching and cultural mediation – and even more so in the age of multilingualism.

Preparing teachers as allies in Indigenous education: benefits of an American Indian content and pedagogy course

The study explores relationship building and improvements in knowledge, skills, and dispositions of pre-service teachers enrolled in an Indigenous education content and pedagogy methods course. The Teaching American Indian Students in the Elementary Classroom course stands alone from other diversity education offerings at the University of Minnesota Duluth and is a required learning experience. Pre-service teachers are provided with essential knowledge and learning opportunities that facilitate success in working with Indigenous students, and helping mainstream students learn about Native history, peoples, and communities. The evaluation study was conducted by an Indigenous faculty member interested in learning how non-Native teacher education students felt they were achieving target knowledge, skills, and dispositional goals. Three separate groups of teacher education students completed both pre and post online surveys as a part of a three-year mixed methods evaluation study. The study shows significant gains made by pre-service teachers in each of the target areas, and affirms that methods coursework in American Indian education can lead to more interculturally competent teacher candidates. Helping teacher education students develop the requisite abilities and dispositions to fulfill Native American education objectives is contributory to developing future teachers as competent professionals and allies in Indigenous and diversity education.

Teacher Use of Acts in Activity Transitions

This study was conducted to investigate a teacher’s use of acts in the transitions and the differences between acts in different types of transitions. The subject of this study is a non-native teacher from an in-sessional English course for postgraduate students at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. The instrument used for data collection was video-recording. The data were transcribed and analyzed to find the acts used in activity transitions and the differences between acts among types of transitions by using ‘The Birmingham School of discourse analysis’ framework of Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). The result revealed that there were six types of acts used in transitions. Marker, Silent Stress, Starter, Meta-statement, Conclusion, and Comment were all found in inter-activity transitions but Starter and Comment were not identified in intra-activity transitions. The forms and functions of Meta-statement were different but the context positions remained the same for these two types of transitions. Uttering words and statements in transition time can be used to focus or frame students. The study suggested that teachers should have a clear purpose before uttering words because the purpose can change students’ interaction or attention in transitions.

The Sociocultural Perspective on Non-native Teacher Identity Formation Process

Research on teacher professional identity has been flourishing in recent decades as part of a drive to understand how identity can influence self-perceptions and professional practice amongst teachers. This qualitative study investigates the identity formation process of seven non-native TESOL tutors working in a tertiary environment in the United Kingdom, and it examines the contextualized factors shaping their identities. To explore the teacher identity construction process, a sociocultural theoretical lens that emphasises the social embeddedness of teacher identity has been utilised. The findings of the study show that non-native teachers working in higher education are active agents who are able to construct and reconstruct their unique teaching identities, corresponding to the demands of the social contexts they are engaged within. The results of the study also demonstrate that a non-native status, through which teachers perceive their identities, does not disempower them as professional experts, but empowers them to enhance their professional identities through the process of context-specific acquisition of knowledge and new experience.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.28.15129

A Call for Empowering the Non-Native EFL Teacher through Professional Development in Pragmatics: Focus on Thai-EFL

The Non-Native EFL teacher is most often the by-product of an educational system blamed for the language skills of its EFL learners. An EFL community such as Thailand is no exception. A canon of research into the need for enhancing the organizational competence of a learner in the L2 has been conducted and reported over several decades. In addition, empirical studies in pragmatics involving and benefiting the learner have gained ground in several ESL and EFL countries. However, the EFL teacher, who is usually the chief facilitator in an EFL context, is marginalized both as a focus of research and in the development of their pragmatic skills in English. An unfair reason generally given is that adult learners have a sufficient stockpile of already acquired pragmatics knowledge in their L1, which would serve them as needed. Yet, as observed over the years this assumption is proving costly. The academic paper authored here, based on literature and a recent needs analysis, makes a case for the immediacy of including explicit instruction in pragmatics through professional development workshops in the Thai EFL context with the chief aim of empowering the Asian EFL teacher.

Native and Non-native English Teachers' Beliefs about Grammar Instruction and Error Correction in Korean College Contexts

Native and Non-native English Teachers' Beliefs about Grammar Instruction and Error Correction in Korean College Contexts

Preschool English Teachers’ Practices in Early Literacy Instruction: A Multiple Case Study

The practices preschool teachers implement in their classrooms are vital in their students’ literacy development. Preschool teachers are always expected to implement research-based literacy practices to make sure children are ready to learn when they enter school. This multiple-case study intended to address four non-native in-service preschool English teachers’ practices in early literacy instruction. Data collection involved field notes and videotaping of classroom practices along with interviews and documents from ten full English lesson observations in each classroom. Data analysis began with identifying teachers' practices. A cross case analysis was also conducted. The results showed that even when four teachers were in the same school district, using different curriculum, and supported by the different principal, each interpreted and enacted literacy policy differently. The overall conclusion generated from the results of the data analyses is that though teachers and preschool principals perceived that they were effectively applying early English literacy instruction, there was actually a divide between what teachers believed and what they implemented (their actual practice) in their classrooms. Besides, there was not enough interaction between teacher and children. However, the four preschool teachers mentioned in their interviews that they would like to be friends with their students.

비원어민 교수자 음성모델을 이용한 자동발음평가 시스템

An appropriate evaluation on learner`s pronunciation has been an important part of foreign language education. The learners should be evaluated and receive proper feedback for pronunciation improvement. Due to the cost and consistency problem of human evaluation, automatic pronunciation evaluation system has been studied. The most of the current automatic evaluation systems utilizes underlying Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. We suggest in this work to evaluate learner`s pronunciation accuracy and fluency in word-level using the ASR and non-native teacher`s speech model. Through the performance evaluation on our system, we confirm the overall evaluation result of pronunciation accuracy and fluency actually represents the learner`s English skill level quite accurately.

Investigating the relationship of target language proficiency and self-efficacy among nonnative EFL teachers

Target language proficiency and pedagogical capabilities are considered to be the two main teacher attributes necessary for second/foreign language teaching. Drawing on this notion, two hypotheses were tested: (a) minimum threshold levels of language proficiency and pedagogical capabilities exist and (b) teachers' language proficiency and pedagogical capabilities are interdependent. A total of 167 Korean secondary school English as a foreign language teachers self-reported their English proficiency, teaching efficacy, and frequency of English use in their English instruction. A sequential multiple regression with interaction was employed to investigate the relationship between these two teacher attributes and their contributions to English use as an outcome behavior. The results supported both hypotheses. Only teachers above the minimum threshold levels of both attributes showed positive associations among the two competences and English use. Above the minimum levels, language proficiency and self-efficacy were interdependent, magnifying each other's impact on the teaching behavior. The results pointed to the beneficial potential of continuous development of linguistic and pedagogical competences even after teachers possess the minimum levels. Given that previous research has assumed nonnative teachers as one homogenous group and explored language proficiency and self-efficacy separately, this study addresses important theoretical, methodological, and practical gaps.

Teaching Physics in English: A Continuing Professional Development for Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers in Thailand

<p>The purposes of this study were to develop a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) using English integrated science approach training curriculum and to promote physics teacher’s efficacy to be expert teachers and be able to teach Physics in English. The quality of the curriculum was at a high level corresponding to the congruence scores of the overall curriculum and curriculum content which equaled 0.85 and 0.93, respectively. Besides, the appropriateness scores of the curriculum content, instructional materials and curriculum format equaled 0.89, 1.00 and 0.53, respectively. The participants were 22 Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) who taught physics in the schools that attended the projects of “World-class standard school” and “English for Integrated Studies (EIS)” administered by the Ministry of Education, Thailand. Considering the participant’s opinions from semi-structured interview and satisfaction assessment form, the results found that the participants’ satisfaction was at a high level. From the follow up after training with 7 physics teachers, the results revealed that there were some concerns from teachers in several aspects based on their efficacy which were communication skills, choosing and using appropriate instructional materials, developing the physics lesson plan in English, dealing with classroom problems, and lifelong learning to improve their English skills and teaching. According to students’ opinions, students that were taught by these trained teachers were satisfied with learning physics in English because this way of learning can promote their communication skills. However, before they start learning Physics in English, improving their language ability was the most important that they required.</p>

Native and Nonnative Teachers of L2 Pronunciation: Effects on Learner Performance

Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach because of inadequate training or uncertainty about the effectiveness of instruction. But nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as inadequate models for pronunciation, leading to increased uncertainty about whether they should teach pronunciation (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Although studies have regularly shown that instruction is effective in promoting pronunciation improvement (Saito, 2012), it is not known if improvement depends on the native language of the instructor, nor if learners improve differently depending on whether their teacher is native or nonnative. This study investigated the effect of teachers' first language on ratings of change in accentedness and comprehensibility. Learners in intact English classes were taught one class by a nonnative‐ and one by a native‐English‐speaking teacher. Each teacher taught the same pronunciation lessons over the course of 7 weeks. Results show that native listeners' ratings of the students' comprehensibility were similar for both teachers, despite many learners' stated preference for native teachers. The results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.

Perceptions of Non-native EFL Teachers’ on L1 Use in L2 Classrooms: Implications for Language Program Development

<p>The study of L1 (first language) use in L2 (second language) classrooms has long received attention in the literature. Despite the considerable amount of research that has been conducted on the phenomenon, the focus has often been on the advantages and disadvantages. Considerably, less research has been conducted regarding the non-native L2 teachers’ perceptions of when L1 use is required. More importantly, there has been little research on the limitations faced by non-native EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers because of the strong English-only policies they have to follow. The present study explored the perceptions of non-native EFL teachers’ towards the existing English-only policies in their institutions. The teachers’ perceptions of when L1 should or should not be used in L2 classrooms were also of interest. Fifty-four non-native teachers of EFL from English preparatory schools of four universities in Northern Cyprus participated in the study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the data indicated that all of the participating teachers were inclined to use L1 in their L2 classrooms for a variety of reasons. Further, it is found that teachers were affected negatively and were restricted in certain issues as a result of having to follow strict English-only policies at their institutions. Implications for program development are discussed here.</p>

Reviewing non-native English-speaking teachers' professional identity

Reviewing non-native English-speaking teachers' professional identity

어휘학습을 위한 언어 입력의 제공원으로서 원어민, 비원어민 교사, 교재 비교 연구

The present study aims to compare teacher talk and the course book used as a source of vocabulary input. For the research purpose, part of Yenny Corpus (Kwon, 2013) was used to analyze the vocabulary content of the two input sources. Yenny Corpus consists of a total of 247,398 words collected from EFL classes of four native and five non-native university lecturers. In this study, however, the data of 1,416 words by the native teachers and 1,651 words by the non-native teachers with their course book scripts were used. To analyze the quantity and quality of the vocabulary use (e.g., level, diversity) of the two input sources, some representative word lists such as BNC-COCA 25,000 word family list topped on Range Program (Heatley & Nation, 2002) were applied. The results show that the teachers (including both native and non-native teachers) orally provide 8,090 word types while their course books introduce 4,713. The non-native teachers provide a little more vocabulary input compared with the native teachers’ talk. In addition, the level of the vocabulary provided by the non-native teachers seems more appropriate for their students’ vocabulary ability. Nevertheless, in order to generalize the findings further research is needed in different settings.

Code Switching in an EFL Environment

When referring to Bilingualism, code switching seems to be an important issue as it is connected to: (a) the use of L1 while teaching the L2; (b) the native teacher, or the non-native teacher, in an EFL classroom environment; (c) along with the importance of the Critical Period Hypothesis concerning language acquisition. The use of L1 in the classroom largely depends on the teacher, and whether he / she is native or non-native. On the other hand, these days many classrooms tend to be multicultural and multilingual as well, so there might be confusion in some EFL classroom environments on the L1, and on how many languages code switching occurs. Acquiring a second language is largely connected to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), and whether children are able to learn a language to the extent, they can learn their mother tongue, before the age of puberty. When referring to two languages and the ease of switching from one into another, the reference to the CPH becomes even more important. The present paper provides reference on recent research and the literature review on code switching and identifies the factors facilitating or inhibiting it. The paper focuses on whether code switching in an EFL classroom environment occurs because of the difficulties learners have when communicating from one language to the other; whether having a native teacher helps students or not and how code switching is influenced by several factors, such as the speakers' age.

Shayla: A Portrait of the Schooling Experiences of an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian Youth

Native youth have complex schooling experiences. To better understand Indigenous youths' experience in public schools and in order to inform schooling practices and teacher preparation for both Native and non-Native teachers we share this portrait of Shayla. Through this research, particularly in the use of portraiture to document “goodness” in the lives of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian youth in schools, a more complicated picture of success and challenges for Native youth emerges. We particularly highlight Shayla's experience in seventh and eighth grades in a rural middle school adjacent to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian Qualla Boundary. One finding suggests a need to better contextualize and understand students not only as individuals but also as members of families and cultural groups by non-Native teachers. Specifically, teachers must be aware of the historical and cultural significance of the place in which teaching and learning occurs in order to be culturally responsive. In sharing Shayla's complex experiences of schooling we hope to contribute to the ongoing discussions in teaching and teacher education about culturally relevant schooling for Native youth.