Non-Native & Native English Teachers

Abstract

In many countries the primary (mother tongue) language is not English but there is a great demand for English language teachers all over the world. The demand in this field is try to be filled largely by nonnative English speaking teachers who have learned English in the country or abroad, or from another non native English peaking teachers. In some countries, particularly those where English speaking is a a sign of status, the students prefer to learn English from a native English speaker. The perception is that a nonnative English speaking teacher is a less authentic teacher than a native English speaker and their instruction is not satifactory in some ways. This paper will try to examine the literature to explore whether there is a difference in instructional effectiveness between NNESTs and native English teachers.

Meeting the Other in Literature and ELT through the Critical Analysis of a Short Story

“…Researches show that NESTs believe that students should be agents that are responsible for their learning process, engaging actively in activities with readiness for learning, thus struggling with their own mistakes would be a natural and necessary occurrence in order to learn (Kim, 2011). NNESTs may understand students' difficulties of learning another language better than NESTs and as such, they render better learning strategies (Tosuncuoğlu, 2017), different from the selfish motivations displayed by Richards to assign essays and writing activities (so that he could smoke or drink).…”

“…Bhowmik (2014) affirms that such impacts are found in testing, teacher training, curriculum design and materials development due to the preference for native English while disregarding Englishes' varieties. Another topic that has proven to be an important influencer in ELT is teachers' beliefs (Deilami & Pourghasemian, 2016;Finardi, 2018;Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2017;Kim, 2011;Merino, 1997;Silva, 2009;Tosuncuoğlu, 2017). Beliefs are essential for ELT because they "help persons make sense of the world, impacting how new information is understood, and whether it is accepted or rejected.…”

“…: disappointment) of students towards NNESTs (Silva, 2009;Bhowmik, 2014). Moreover, NNESTs are discriminated in the job market facing difficulties to find employment even though they are the majority of English teachers in the world (Tosuncuoğlu, 2017). NNESTs feel the need to prove themselves incessantly as they see NESTs as being superior to them (Silva, 2009) in a "native speaker-fallacy" whereby people (including teachers) believe that the ideal language teacher is the native speaker (Kurtay, 2019).…”

“…In the end of the short story, Richards does not seem willing to change, he affirms almost naturally when Matsubara left his apartment after their unplanned sexual encounter: "So I sat down at the kitchen Teachers' beliefs are resilient to change without reflection once they are culturally bounded (Deilami & Pourghasemian, 2016) but they need to be changed in order to change reality (Tosuncuoğlu, 2017).…”

Views of university instructors and students on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WES)

“…Although the statistics exhibit variances, English is being used by billions of people on a global scale (Graddol, 2006;Tosuncuoğlu, 2017) and the number of people who speak English is also on the increase. The rapid proliferation of English as a medium of communication has sparked a large-scale debate on the position of English with its terminology used in order to define different concepts in the language.…”