Introduction
This research applies the Reves & Medgyes (1994) and the Samimy &
Brutt-Griffler (1999) approach to survey the self-perceptions of two (three) EFL/ESL non-native English speaker teachers.
Reves & Medgyes (1994) conducted an international survey of 216 NS and NNS
English teachers from 10 countries. In order to reveal the difficulties non-NESTs have in common and to suggest ways to improve their public image and their self-perception, they confirmed the following three hypotheses:
1) NS and NNS English teachers are differ in terms of their teaching behaviors
2) These differences in teaching practice are mainly due to their differing levels of language proficiency
3) Their knowledge of these differences affects the NNS teacher’s ‘self-perception and teaching attitudes.’
They found that non-NESTs acknowledge their distinguished important role as a non-NEST in the English education; though, they have a poorer self-image due to their awareness of
English-language deficiency. They suggest that ‘frequent exposure to authentic native language environments and proficiency-oriented in-service training activities’ may improve their difficulties in the targeted language, and it will lead to building up their self-confidence.
Samimy & Brutt-Griffler (1999) applied the approach of Reves & Medgyes (1994) to the survey of the self-perceptions of NNS graduate students majoring in TESOL. The participants perceived a difference between NESTs and non-NESTs in their teaching
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behavior, which was consistent with the results of the former study; however, they considered that whether she/he is a native or non-native is not a matter for successful teaching English, and other sociocultural factors can be decisive factors, instead.
The former study is significant in surveying the difficulties commonly shared with non-NESTs from various backgrounds. The latter study is also significant by exemplifying that the contextual factor (ESL or EFL) would affect non-NESTs’ self-confidence. However, these studies did not reflect on Asian participants’ perspectives.
On the basis of these studies’ approaches, the current case study aims to explore how
Japanese and Korean EFL/ESL teachers perceive themselves as language professionals.
The current study surveys two participants with different teaching settings. It intends to compare their self-perspectives as language professionals and the differences of their teaching settings and personal histories. This small scale and ethnographical study is limited in light of generalizability. However, these two sets of case studies have a potential to yield a rich description which is difficult to be achieved by larger scale quantitative studies.
The Study
Research Question
The purpose of this study is to see how non-native English speaking teachers position themselves as a language professional. Here is the research question:
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How do the participants perceive themselves as language professionals in terms of their linguistic competence, communicative competence, teaching methodologies and so forth vis-à-vis native English speaking professionals?
Participants
Participant 1: M (Japanese, female)
The first participant, M is an EFL teacher of public high school in Japan. Her first language is Japanese. Having taken four-year teacher training at undergraduate level in Japan, she is now a novice teacher with one-year professional teaching experience. Her average teaching road is 19 hours a week, and she usually teaches at over-40-size class.
Participant 2: H (Korean, female)
The second participant is H. She is a Korean PhD student majoring in Applied
Linguistics in PSU. As her job of teaching assistantship, she has been teaching English for 7 months at ESL course for international college students. Her average teaching road is five hours a week, and she usually has 15 to 20 students in a class. She took four-year teacher training at undergraduate level in Korea. Before coming to the US, she had taught
English at a high school in Korea for one and a half years. Therefore she has experienced both ESL and EFL teaching settings.
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Data Collection
All data were collected by questionnaires and written interviews. While one of the participants, H is in the US, which allows the researcher to take a face to face interview, the other participant M is in Japan, which is not available for the researcher to take an interview. In order to offer fair survey settings with both participants, data were collected in writings and exchanged via emails.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire intended to briefly survey participants’ educational and instructional background, their beliefs in teaching English and their perspectives towards native English speaking teachers (NS). Two types of questionnaires were prepared regarding the teaching settings each teachers have/had. The questionnaires mainly applied the questions of Reves & Medgyes (1994) and a few more questions are added from Rajagopalan (2005).
Interviews
The follow-up questions are developed from their first response to the questionnaire.
These questions were asked in written interviews to expand the discussion.
Findings
Participant 1: M
The instructional objectives directly reflect her language learning experience and
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inferiority complex in her command of English. The instructional goal is “to understand what textbook say or teachers say.” In order to achieve this goal, two instructional objectives are set. One of them is to develop students’ grammatical knowledge. As she mentioned in the response, she herself enjoys learning English grammar; therefore, she seems forward her joy of learning straightly to teaching. The other instructional objective is to develop students’ listening skills; as a matter of fact, according to her response, it can be inferred that her real focus in instruction is on improving students’ pronunciation. She believes that if you can pronounce better, you can listen better. That is to say, speaking in
“good” pronunciation is directly related to better listening and ultimately better understanding. She believes that native-like pronunciation is a prestigious quality in speaking English. Therefore she estimates NS as a perfect provider of authentic input.
As a non-native speaker of English, she evaluates her English pronunciation as “not good.”
This feeling of inferiority in her command of English and her belief of native English speakers’ authentic input seem to directly reflect on her teaching objectives.
Her inferiority complex in pronunciation leads to uncertainty of her professionalism. She seems to be little confident as a language professional because her uncertainty of her professionalism emerges at many parts in her responses. For one example, she admits her lack of intuitional sense of English as well as her pronunciation.
For another thing, she feels that her command of English has been deteriorated after she graduated college, which will negatively affect her career in the future. She predicts that she will lose her courage to teach in the future when she feels severe loss of her command of English. Also, the form of collaborative teaching between NS and NNS she suggested
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represents her uncertainty as a language professional. Her idea of collaborative teaching depicts that in a class, a non-native English speaking teacher will support as a translator of a native English speaking teacher, from which it can be assumed that she regards herself inferior to native English speaking teacher.
While evaluating their poor understanding of language structure and poor pedagogical knowledge, she highly estimates native English speaking teachers as providers of authentic language input. She recognizes the difference between native English speaking teacher’s teaching method—student-centered teaching—and her own teaching method—teacher-centered teaching.
She justifies her instruction style with the excuses of that her students are not
“courageous” in learning and that reading class, which she is teaching, is not for communication development. She strongly relies on teacher-centered approach
(teacher-students one-way instruction) and ignores student-student interaction. In addition, she does not try to approach the lower level students because they are not motivated in learning. As a result the class seems not to have a cooperative atmosphere. It can be assumed that her instructional style demotivates more students.
Her perspective in instruction represents that she regards language teaching and learning as a micro-level process not macro-level process. She only concentrates her instruction on some particular topics—grammar and pronunciation—highly emphasizing not “what you say” but “how you say.” Consequently, her instructional goal is unclear, and objectives are inconsistent with the goal: the instructional goal aims to develop students’ “understanding” skills; on the contrary, the instructional objectives aim to develop
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students’ output skills. Her unclear instructional goal and inferiority complex as a language professional may come from inexperience in teaching. She is a beginner teacher, so she may not be able to see the classroom from students’ perspectives yet. Even if she recognizes some advantages as a non-native English speaking teacher to some extent
(mentioning “I can understand what kind of thing students cannot understand.”), she is currently not able to link these advantages as a non-native English speaker to her actual language teaching.
Participant 2: H
Her main instructional goal is to develop students’ communicative competency.
Keeping it consistent, she slightly adjusts her instructional goals along with her teaching settings (ESL or EFL). For example, in ESL setting, all the students are college students.
Therefore, the instructional goal focuses more on developing communication skills in academic settings. On the other hand, in EFL setting which is a high school in Korea, the instructional goal focuses more on developing general conversation skills.
She recognizes the difference between native English speaking teacher’s and her instruction method. Her response represents that she as a non-native speaker of English can more understand students’ mind than native English speaking teachers. For example, she can predict typical errors or difficulties students may have, knows the reason of them, and can provide clear solution or instruction to students. Also, she recognizes the gap between two language systems, Korean and English. However, from her perspective, native English speaking teachers may not be able to understand the reason of students’
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errors and problems in language learning because they are not aware of the difference between two languages. In addition, they may not be able to provide appropriate instruction to cope with these problems because of their lack of pedagogical knowledge.
She recognizes that native English speaking teacher can provide more communicative instruction which is different from her instruction. In the light of teaching English in
Korea, she seems to have confidence as a teacher, and her confidence as a language professional may come from both her language learning experience and teacher training experience.
Although having a firm confidence as a non-native English speaking teacher, she has some difficulties in teaching English in ESL course in the US. She always feels necessity to improve more her command of English, particularly speaking skills because she recognizes that required or appropriate language teaching skills in ESL setting (in US) are different from that in EFL setting (in Korea). Appropriate instructional method needed to ESL setting in US requires more active teacher-student two-way interaction. Also, as she mentions, her students underestimate her knowledge in English teaching due to her non-native like pronunciation. However, she seems not to be discouraged by such difficulties. She recognizes her tendency in instruction and tries to adjust herself to the different teaching setting which are opposite from her experience. That is to say, she is in a transitional point in her language teaching.
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Emerging themes and Issues
The responses from the two participants, some common themes emerged. First, they share similar view of native English speaking teachers. They regard that native
English speaking teachers cannot understand well EFL learners’ learning patterns and linguistic difference between English and students’ L1, but they play a crucial role in teaching English mainly in communicating with students in English. Second, they feel advantageous of their bilingual, declarative knowledge of english and language learning experience. Third, both of them feel that their English pronunciation is not “native-like,” and that they do not have intuitional sense of English language, which sometimes make them confuse when they validate appropriateness of language use in a particular situation.
The striking difference between two participants is their confidence as a language professional. The first participant, M has a negative attitude towards her English pronunciation which provokes her inferiority complex as a language professional. Her inferiority complex as a language professional and unclear instructional goal may partly come from her teaching inexperience. She is a beginner teacher with one-year teaching experience, so she may not be able to see the classroom from students’ perspectives yet.
Even if she recognizes some advantages as a NNS to some extent, she is currently not able to link them to her actual teaching.
On the other hand, the second participant, H has a firm confident as a language professional. Even though she is currently challenged professionally, she has maintained her confidence. From her high self-esteem, it can be assumed that non-nativeness may not have much negative effect on her self-perception as a language professional. She takes
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advantage of her language learning experience and teacher training experience. A couple of reasons of her confidence can be inferred. One is her teaching experience. Compared to M, H has a longer teaching experience. However, the difference is too short, just around a year long, that we cannot tell its validity. The other reason which may be more convincing is that H’s experience of two kinds of teaching settings. H is now teaching
English in English speaking country where authentic input is everywhere around students.
Therefore, H as a teacher as well as students can make use of other sources to experience oral output and audio input in English, which are definitely short of in EFL settings.
Although M lived for a year in the US as an exchange student, the distinct point is H has experienced teaching in the US as well as studying. That is, her more diverse and broader experience of teaching and studying secure her as a language professional.
Conclusion
The current case studies explored how non-native English speaking teachers position themselves. Non-native English speaking teachers are aware of their advantages as multilingual and language learner. The current study found that two participant view native English speaking teachers as authentic language input provider with poorer pedagogical skills. However, it does not mean all native English speaking teachers are less qualified English professionals. Nativeneess seems not really matter in language teaching. In conclusion, who is more successful teacher derives from a variety of factors: learner, institution, educational goals, material, context, etc.
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Bibliography
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Phillipson, R. (1992). ELT: the native speaker’s burden?,
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Reves, T. & Medgyes, P. (1994). The Non-native English Speaking EFL/ESL Teacher’s
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Samimy, K. K., & Brutt-Griffer, J. (1999). To Be a Native or Non-Native Speaker:
Perceptions of “Non-Native” Students in a Graduate TESOL Program, In
Non-Native
Educators in English Language Teaching , 127-144, George Braine (Ed), NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah.
Seidlhofer, B. (1996). “It is and undulating feeling…” The importance of being a non-native teacher of English, VIEWS , 5, 63-80.
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