Educators and Students Perceptions about Ecuadorian NEST Knowledge and Quality in Terms of Effective Teaching

Abstract

EFL has become necessary in all areas of education over the last decade in Ecuador. There has been a widespread push for changes in the level of knowledge and quality of EFL teacher effectiveness throughout the educational system. This paper aims to look at what perceptions current EFL participants have about the Ecuadorian NNEST and if they have the necessary linguistic awareness, language skills and teaching qualities to teach EFL effectively. The data for this investigation includes 89 student questionnaires and 30 teacher interviews based on their perceptions. The findings illustrated how students at lower levels tend to be more comfortable with teachers who use primarily the first language (L1) and have effective teaching qualities, while upper intermediate students tended to choose NESTs, because they needed proficiency skills such as language fluency and high levels of oral communication to be examples in class. The study goes onto demonstrate how many Ecuadorian NNESTs cannot speak, understand, communicate or pronounce English fluently at higher levels since many did not have teachers who possessed these qualities. This phenomenon creates the perception that a native speaker will have better fluency, pronunciation and overall better proficiency than an Ecuadorian NNEST. These results show it is necessary for these teachers to increase their English proficiency to be effective teachers in the future and change the perception that native speakers have higher levels of English in Ecuador.

Biological students’ perception of the advantages and disadvantages of learning English with native and non-native English-speaking teachers

“…A majority of biological students preferred learning pronunciation with native English-speaking teachers because these teachers could pronounce more accurately (4.33/ 5.0 points) and it was easy to practice (4.05/ 5.00 points). It is obvious that pronunciation is one of the most important aspects of a language (Çakir & Baytar, 2014) and native English-speaking teachers can have better pronunciation than non-native English-speaking teachers because they master the language they teach (Madrid & Canado, 2004;Çakir and Demir, 2013;Walkinshaw & Duong, 2014;Sevy-Biloon, 2017;Yazawa, 2017). This result is also similar to what Thien and Hung (2018) found that students wanted to study pronunciation with native English-speaking teachers because of their using of accurate English.…”

Diagnostic of the current situation with native English-speaking students in EFL classes

“…In Ecuador, most teachers are non-native speakers and from those, the majority does not meet the minimum requirements to teach the language (Sevy-Biloon, 2019). This represents a hindrance to English language teaching in the country.…”

National Aspect Of Modern Rfl Teacher Language Personality

“…This problem is also touched upon in the works devoted to effective teaching (Sevy-Biloon, 2017;Al-Mahrooqi, Denman, Siyabi, & Al-Maamari, 2015;Coombe, 2014;Gan, 2012;Kourieros & Eviripidou;Walkinshaw, 2012;Almazova, Eremin, & Rubtsova, 2016;Almazova, Khalyapina, & Popova, 2017;Popova, Almazova, Khalyapina, & Tretjakova, 2017;Pogodin, & Li, 2017;Zakharova & Krasnoschokov, 2016). Researchers argue that effective teaching depends on the teaching style and classroom management (Marzano & Marzano, 2003;Knowles, 1980;Kazemi & Soleimani, 2016) and on the effectiveness of the teacher's communicative behavior (Chory, Horan, Carton, & Houser, 2014;Mazer, McKenna-Buchanan, Quinlan, & Titsworth, 2014;Titsworth, Quinlan, & Mazer, 2010).…”