Non-native Teachers Research Articles

Self-Perceptions of Non-Native Students in an Undergraduate TESOL Program

While debate continues as to the efficacy of Native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), little research has been conducted to analyze how these teachers impact communicative competence in an EFL context. Research on NNESTs’ self-perceptions has been done in many different contexts (for examples, America, Europe, East Asia), but rarely in Thailand. This paper reports on a mixed data collection study which examines the self-perceptions of undergraduate TESOL students in a Thai university. Data were collected through an online questionnaire responded to by 39 undergraduate TESOL students studying in a B.Ed. English program. Seven of these students were selected for semi-structured individual interviews. Findings show that the undergraduate TESOL students were aware of differences between NESTs and NNESTs and perceived both NESTs and NNESTs to have unique linguistic, cultural, and teaching strengths and weaknesses. The finding also shows that the undergraduate TESOL students had positive perceptions towards their non-native status and perceived themselves to be qualified and successful English teachers after graduation. This paper has implications for language teaching expertise and suggestions for developing TESOL degree curriculum and teacher preparation.

Teaching as Intercultural Communication: A Sociocultural Study of Teaching English as a Second Language in an Asian Country

ABSTRACT Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) has always been studied through the behaviorist lens using quantitative methodology. An alternative is to view it as an intercultural communication and study it qualitatively. Through the frame of the Sociocultural Tradition of Communication Theory (SCT)where communication is theorized as the production or reproduction of the social order and where alienation, misalignments and conflicts are problematized, this study was conducted to answer two research questions: (1) What is the view of the international non-native English professional teachers on ESL teaching? (2) How does this view define their intercultural communicative practices as ESL teachers? In this investigation the view of the participants on ESL teaching constitutes as the meaning that defines their intercultural communicative practices. Such practices explain how the social order where professional standards are alienated and how the traditional teaching proliferates in the ESL classroom is reproduced. A thematic analysis of the interviews of three overseas professional teachers was employed. The analysis surfaced participants’ view of ESL teaching as embracing of the local culture for employment and education. This view defines three communicative practices: local colleagues are befriended; local language is learned; and local culture is integrated in teaching.

Native and Non-native EFL Teachers' Burnout: No Isolation but Cooperation

The aim of this study is twofold: to investigate the burnout levels of native and non-native ELT teachers, and to account for the reasons behind the most stressful aspects of being an ELT teacher in an EFL context. Employing a mixed method design method, 30 ELT teachers are divided into two groups;15 native and 15 non-native. The data is collected using the Maslach Burnout Inventory Educators Survey online to find out the burnout levels within the three components- emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalisation (DP) and reduced personal accomplishment (RPA), and the levels of the two groups are compared to find out whether there is any difference. The procedure also includes online interview to find out the reasons for burnout. The findings revealed that there is a difference between the two groups; where there is ‘low’ burnout level of non-native teachers, the scoring indicated a ‘high’ level for native teachers. Content analysis of online interview data indicated hardness of contextual patterns, which are working, interaction and EFL teaching; in contrast, the analysis of non-native teachers’ data indicated positive consideration of EFL teaching and having an increasing interest in post-graduate degrees in education. Implications are discussed, one of which might be the same as what the title of this research study says: no isolation, but co-operation with the two.

NATIVESPEAKERISM AND WORLD ENGLISHES: TEACHERS PERCEPTION TOWARDS NON-NATIVE ENGLISH VARIETIES

<p>In the last decade, the development of information technology confirms English as a Lingua Franca used by native English speakers and nonnative English speakers. English in a global context has triggered the emergence of new English variants, resulting from the assimilation of English into a local language known as World Englishes. On the other hand, Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEAFL) in Indonesia is still oriented towards the ideology of nativespeakerism which believes that TEAFL should be done by Native English-Speaking Teachers (NEST) because they are believed to have better linguistic competence and contextual understanding than Nonnative English-Speaking Teachers (NNEST). This article is directed to determine the perceptions of English teachers in Indonesia regarding the world Englishes phenomenon. This research is qualitative research with 20 informants consisting of 10 Nonnative English-Speaking Teachers and 10 Native English-Speaking Teachers. Four Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), each consisting of 5 informants, will be conducted to gather as much information as possible related to teachers’ perceptions. This research is expected to provide an overview of foreign language teaching in Indonesia. The results showed that nativespeakerism has a strong correlation with the world Englishes phenomenon. In the Indonesian context, this is shaped by the stigma that forms in society. This research is expected to enrich teaching studies, specifically in teaching foreign languages.</p>

Understanding Nonnative University EFL Teachers’ Professional Anxiety and Their Emotion Regulation Strategies

Based on an in-depth semi-structured interview method, this study explored sources of nonnative university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ professional anxiety and relevant emotion regulation strategies in a Chinese context. Participants mostly suffered from academic promotion anxiety, followed by research anxiety, teaching anxiety, and anxiety about English language proficiency and knowledge. To overcome this negative emotion, participants adopted two families of emotion modifications: response-focused regulation strategies including coping, expressive suppression, and communication, as well as antecedent-focused regulation strategies comprising cognitive reappraisal and distraction, with the former outweighing the latter. Findings revealed the complexity of nonnative university EFL teachers’ professional anxiety and cultural differences in emotion regulation strategies.

ESL students’ reverse linguistic stereotyping of English teachers

AbstractReverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS) has been shown to affect students’ attitudes towards non-native teachers as well as their performance and retention of information. This study investigates ESL students’ preconceived ideas about non-native English teachers. Seventy-one students enrolled in an intensive English programme at a southwestern university in the United States listened to two speech samples produced by an advanced non-native speaker. Using a matched guise technique, students were led to believe that there were two speakers: a Caucasian teacher and an East Asian one. Students showed proclivity to RLS as measured by their speech evaluations, their comprehension scores, and their teaching competence ratings. These findings help better understand learners’ perceptions of language proficiency and teaching competence of a non-native teacher in the context of globalization.

A ‘new’ hierarchy of English teachers: the ‘half-native’ English teacher as a neoliberal, racialized and gendered subject

ABSTRACT This article challenges binary-oriented approaches to understanding the issue of the native English-speaking teacher (NEST) and the non-native English-speaking teacher (NNEST). It unpacks a novel terminology called the ‘half-native English-speaking teacher’ (HNEST) that appears on the website of an online English school for Japanese students. The article also examines the privilege–marginalization experiences of three HNESTs. The analysis of the website shows that the multimodal representations tacitly generate a ‘new’ hierarchy of English teachers, with presupposed NEST, HNEST and NNEST categories arranged from top to bottom. While this hierarchy appears ‘new’ on the surface, it reinforces old and restricting discourses of idealization and essentialization. The analysis of the participants’ interviews, meanwhile, suggests that privilege–marginalization is not uniformly and categorically experienced. This complex fluidity of privilege–marginalization is dynamically interwoven in broader discourses of neoliberalism, race and gender.

“Words are picked up along the way” – Swedish EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of vocabulary knowledge and learning

Vocabulary is a core feature of language proficiency, requiring explicit attention in the language classroom. As teachers’ conceptualizations influence their teaching, their understanding of vocabulary deserves closer attention. Yet, few teacher cognition studies focus on vocabulary, and even fewer on non-native teachers’ conceptualizations of vocabulary. This paper presents an interview study with Swedish EFL teachers at secondary school level. Fourteen teachers were interviewed about their beliefs and practices in relation to vocabulary development in the classroom. The study shows that despite a general understanding of the importance of vocabulary in language learning among the teachers, vocabulary was not seen as a learning objective in its own right. Closely connected to this understanding, the teachers showed a great reliance on incidental vocabulary learning, where words were understood as “picked up along the way” while doing other things, such as reading and playing games. It was also found that although the teachers showed an awareness of the many aspects involved in word knowledge, they mentioned few methods to work with them. The study suggests a need for a more explicit focus on vocabulary instruction in the language learning classroom.

Non-native Teachers’ Challenges in Target Language-only Classrooms: Empirical Implications for Language Policy

Non-native Teachers’ Challenges in Target Language-only Classrooms: Empirical Implications for Language Policy

GLOBAL ENGLISH ACCENTS AND NON-NATIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS

The article is a theoretical study of the issue of non-native English speakers and, in particular, nonnative English teachers’ accent peculiarities and whether these can be an obstacle for employing the latter as teachers of EFL (English as a Foreign Language taught in non-English-speaking countries) or ESL (English as a Second Language taught in English-speaking countries). In the paper, an attempt is made to prove that, under certain conditions, such accent peculiarities can be considered not as qualified non-native English teachers’ shortcomings but as an asset of a kind. In that respect, the notion of global English accents is introduced, which are considered as normative accents for English as an international, or rather global/ planetary, language of international/intercultural communication taught to all the learners of EFL and ESL. It is claimed that special measures should be taken for the native and non-native speakers of English to become accustomed and adapted to hearing such diverse accents quite frequently even in their home countries. Both the native and non-native English speakers the world over need to be taught and get accustomed to perceive the global English accents as something totally normal and acceptable as long as they do not make communication in English incomprehensible or comprehensible with difficulty. The advantages of non-English teachers with their accent peculiarities are discussed when teaching English not only to EFL but ESL students as well, and it is shown that they can be a great help in inuring both nonnative and native speakers of English to hearing the variety of global English accents. It is indicated that relevant training and mutual cooperation of both non-native and native teachers of English is required for achieving this goal.

Factors Influencing Non-Native EFL Teachers’ Identity Construction at a Saudi School in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Factors Influencing Non-Native EFL Teachers’ Identity Construction at a Saudi School in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Native or non-native instructors? A case study on foreign language speaking anxiety in EFL classroom

The purpose of this study is to investigate foreign language speaking anxiety in the Non-Native and Native Instructors’ classroom. To this end, Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope’s (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was administered to 469 EFL learners studying at three universities in Ankara. The data was collected through a questionnaire and adapted from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (hereafter referred to as FLCAS), which was developed by Horwitz et al. (1986). According to the results, there are differences in the items such as preparation and negative evaluation in Non-Native and Native Instructors’ classroom. When the variables such as age, gender and the length of study were taken into consideration, it was found that the participants’ length of study is a significant factor in foreign language speaking anxiety. However, no correlation was found between the anxiety and age and gender. In addition to that, the participants with more years of instructions showed lower anxiety levels when compared to others.

Opinions of Turkish Foreign Language Learners about Native and Nonnative Teachers

English is the lingua franca of 21st century on earth obviously. It takes the biggest part in foreign language education all across the world and there are two main sources for employing teachers in the field. Native English speakers are able to find a suitable position for themselves anywhere in the world as a tutor thanks to their true born identity and a shot period course else ways other language users can be an English language teacher because many countries offer English language teaching education in their universities or colleges to fulfill massive number of teacher exigence in the field. There is an ongoing debate about which group of teacher is superior the other especially in settings where both group of teachers can serve simultaneously. In this study, opinions of learners who have a chance to study both group are investigated and findings are exposed both in quantitative and qualitative manners.

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

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.

ELF awareness in ELT: Emerging challenges & new paradigms in teacher education

This contribution aims at presenting the underlying construct and the research design of a study carried out by the Roma Tre University unit of a 3-year national research project (PRIN), as well as the findings about English language (EL) teachers’ attitudes towards English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as they emerge from the study and from the in-service teacher education course designed and implemented during the project. The study investigated native and non-native teachers’ understandings, beliefs and attitudes towards ELF and the challenges brought about by the notion of ELF awareness in English Language Teaching (ELT). This investigation was carried out through the online administration of two questionnaires, one for Italian non-native teachers of English teaching in the Italian school system, and one for native English language assistants working at university level. The survey findings informed the design of a post-graduate blended EL teacher education course, with a special focus on developing English language teachers’ awareness of the emerging realities of English, while providing an ELF-aware reflective approach to revisit the EL teachers’ syllabus design, lesson planning and implementation. Course participants’ feedback is presented and pedagogical implications for EL teacher education are illustrated and discussed.

Challenging the interlanguage hypothesis: The convergence of EFL and ELF in the English classroom

This paper follows from the PRIN Conference (PRIN 2015 Prot. 2015REZ4EZ) on ELF that was held in Lecce, Italy, at the University of Salento, on December 4-6, 2019. Here, the PRIN Unit of the Roma Tre University presented the findings of their three-year study in a panel session entitled: English as a Lingua Franca: challenges and new paradigms for native and non-native teachers, insights from the language classrooms and implications for teacher education. One of the main aims of this article is to show how possible it is to find a convergence between English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) in second language education, by means of the learner’s performance. This assumption is based on the author’s critical analysis of the interlanguage hypothesis in English language teaching (ELT), seen through the lens of ELF theory. One of the fundamental tenets of this study is that today’s plurilithic dimension of English as a global language entails a reconceptualization of the second-language learner’s ‘errors’, which challenges the prescriptive role of standard English. Given the dynamics of English as a contact language, it is assumed that a more effective pedagogical approach should take into consideration the sociocognitive processes connected to language variability and the learner’s linguacultural identity

Shifting perspectives on native speaker teachers (And new roles for collaboratori linguistici

In this paper I examine the profile of the collaboratori ed esperti linguistici (formerly lettori ) in the light of a thirty year old and ongoing debate contrasting the role of native English speaking teachers (NESTs) with that of non-native colleagues (NNESTs), and against a background of rapid change in English language requirements in Italian and European universities. The picture which emerges from the PRIN survey of 75 CEL is of a professional category which is largely a product of the ‘communicative revolution’ in language teaching, and which is less wedded to native speaker norms than its NNEST colleagues. I conclude that the traditional distinction between native and non-native teacher is increasingly problematic, and potentially misleading, while there are many possible future roles for collaboratori linguistici which transcend the basic requirement of ‘nativespeakerism’.

EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Scalar Emotion Verbs

This study investigated EFL learners’ comprehension of scalar properties of three types of emotion verbs, namely, fear type, liking and disliking emotion verbs and compare their performance with instructors and native speakers of English. The participants were 38 non-native pre-service teachers from ELT department at a state university in Turkey, 11 ELT instructors at different universities and 10 native speakers from the USA and the UK. The data were collected through a scale construction task according to participants’ judgements on scalar emotion verbs in terms of their relative order on a linear scale. The results revealed that in terms of constructing consistent scales with with previously determined scales in literatutre, pre-service teachers performed poorly for fear-type and disliking emotion verbs, they were partly successful in constructing consistent scales for liking verbs. It was also found that similarly instructors performed poorly in constructing scales for fear-type and disliking verbs, but they were better than pre-service teachers. They were also successful in constructing scales for liking verbs. Native speakers were successful in fear-type and liking verbs; however, like non-native participants, they performed poorly in constructing consistent scales for disliking verbs. This means that there may be cross-cultural differences among participants’ judgement of emotion verbs on a linear scale in terms of their intensity. This study may provide valuable information for the studies on lexical resources (e.g., VerbNet, WordNet etc.) Previous studies (e.g. Fellbaum & Mathieu,2014; Sheinman, & Tokunaga, 2009) show a way to represent the scalar properties of emotion verbs in WordNet, and other possible extensions to additional verb families can cause a more subtle semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases with potential benefits for automatic inferencing, language pedagogy and translation. This study may contribute to semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases. It may also provide some implications for students, language teachers, and policy makers in terms of vocabulary learning and teaching.

Prep school students’ perceptions of native and non-native teachers and effect of proficiency level on their perceptions

Many questions have been raised about the role of native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in language education, and the issue has been investigated in various aspects. The aims of this study are to shed new light on the issue through an examination of preparatory school students’ perceptions of NESTs and NNESTs and to find out the effect of their English proficiency level on learner’s perceptions. The participants were 60 prep-school students from lower-intermediate (30) and upper-intermediate (30) levels. Quantitative data for the study were collected using a 30-items questionnaire that was designed by Üstünlüoğlu (2007), adapted, and modified by Demir (2011). It was developed with respect to four aspects: in-class teaching roles, in-class management roles, in-class communication skills, and individual qualities. In terms of the reliability of the items in the questionnaire, Cronbach's Alpha was calculated as .75, which was acceptable. Referring the general results, the findings showed no significant difference between the students’ perceptions of NESTs and NNESTs in the four aspects evaluated. However, when the perceptions of lower and upper intermediate students were compared, their perceptions were found to be affected by their English proficiency level, and significant differences were found between perceptions of those students. The results revealed that upper-intermediate level students held more positive perceptions towards both NESTs and NNESTs in all categories.

Team Teaching in a Bilingual School: An Exploration of Teachers’ Interpersonal Aspects and Student Classroom Interaction

The purposes of this study were to explore the teachers’ interpersonal aspects of team teaching in a bilingual program and to examine whether “team teaching” increases classroom interaction. The data was collected during course preparation and classroom instruction through classroom observations and individual semi-structured interviews. The participants were provided from the school and taught in English by selecting the same loading cognitive subjects to avoid the problems of difficult learning content. The participants were two pairs; pair one consisted of one native English-speaking teacher (NEST) and one non-native English-speaking teacher (NNEST), pair two consisted of two non-natives English-speaking teachers (NNEST). The findings indicated that the “Team Teaching” model was not the only advantage for the students and teamwork but the teacher's interpersonal aspects showed that when they had no choice to choose their team, and they might feel uncomfortable. The different cultures (Logistical), attitudes (Interpersonal), and teaching styles (Pedagogical) also made them felt uneasy to work in teams. Comparing two teams of the study, team consisting of two non-native English-speaking teachers built a better relationship than the other team. It was combined with gender factors, culture, teaching style, language barrier, communication, and attitude. It is obvious that pairing teachers is not an easy job. School administrator should consider various factors in order to help the team work effectively and successfully. They expressed feelings of working as a team through various factors. Therefore, the results of this study indicate that a good team should follow the model type as “Team Teaching”. Keywords: Team teaching, Pedagogical, Bilingual Education, Interpersonal, Classroom interaction DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-33-15 Publication date: November 30 th 2020