Native speaker TESOL teacher’s talk : examining the unexamined (original) (raw)
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Beyond ‘(non) native-speakerism’: Being or becoming a native-speaker teacher of English
Applied Linguistics Review
The labelling of teachers of English as either ‘native’ or ‘non-native’ speakers in the field of English Language Teaching continues to promote ideals of ‘native-speakers’ that impact negatively on the teaching lives of those teachers using English as another language. In this paper, I explore constructs of ‘native-speakerism’ (Holliday, Adrian. 2015. Native-speakerism: Taking the Concept Forward and Achieving Cultural Belief. In Anne Swan, Pamela Aboshiha & Adrian. Hollliday (eds.), Encountering Native-speakerism: Global perspectives, 11–25. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) by examining them as networks or assemblages formed through interactions of people, technologies, discourses and other material objects integral to teaching and learning environments. Drawing on ‘Actor-network theory’, I analyse unique influences of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ networks as experienced by individual teachers of English from different contexts. The data collected in this qualitative study shows how ‘...
Native and Non-Native Teacher Talk in the EFL Classroom
2020
Native and Non-Native Teacher Talk in the EFL Classroom explores and compares the linguistic features of native and non-native English teacher talk with the aid of corpus linguistics. Setting aside the wide range of audio and video materials available, the EFL teacher is in many instances the main model of English to which students are exposed in secondary-level education. The basis of this book is to work towards a framework for the language that teachers of English need to be proficient in, based on an empirical study of language used in the ELT classroom by both native and expert nonnative users. Presenting a corpus-informed treatment of the precise linguistic features used by EFL teachers within the framework of their most common teaching functions, this book: • Relates directly to the teacher talk of secondary-level EFL teachers; • Combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to data analysis; • Looks into pedagogical implications for ELT and proposes a flexible language development model based on evidence from the teacher training classroom; • Provides a corpus-based repertoire of language for the classroom which is of relevance to native and non-native student-teachers and practising teachers. Highlighting the need for much greater awareness of the impact of language use in both learning and teaching, this book is a major resource for advanced students and researchers of TESOL, classroom discourse, corpus linguistics, ELT, English for professional purposes, and teaching placement preparation.
Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching, 2019
Within English language teaching (ELT), critical scholarship has paid ever-increasing attention to identity, experience and (in)equity, and thus to privilege-marginalization: where it comes from, how and why it manifests, who (potentially) experiences it, and what might be done to address inequity in (and potentially beyond) the profession. This dialogue is intertwined with broader attempts in the field to account for the complexity of identity and interaction in settings around the globe. In this article I discuss how categorical apprehensions of identity, experience and privilege-marginalization, and approaches to (in)equity, have framed discourse within critical scholarship. I then survey how more recent work has called into question many of the critical “assumptions” (Pennycook, 2001) both shaping and shaped by such theory and inquiry. This scholarship contends that critical lenses predicated upon categories of being, while calling attention to idealized nativeness embedded in ELT, fail to account for the contextualized, sociohistorical negotiation of privilege-marginalization within and transcending communities around the globe. Next, in order to contextualize and unpack these divergent lenses, I provide a review of critical dialogue attending to Japan, both in and beyond ELT, noting in conclusion how privilege-marginalization within ELT is intertwined with the sociohistorical negotiation of “selfhood” and “otherness” pertaining both to Japanese society and Japan and “the world beyond.” I close by briefly commenting on future directions for critical scholarship in ELT, and the challenges facing, and yet to be faced by, its stakeholders.
Deconstructing aspects of native speakerism: Reflections from in-service teacher education
2012
In many Asian contexts, issues of who teaches and educates teachers in English Language Teaching remain challenging with status accorded to socalled ‘native speakers’. Issues still remain after two decades of research calling for deconstruction of the native speaker fallacy. Drawing on critiques of the concept, as well as teacher education research, this paper suggests ways to deconstruct the maze of native speakerism. Recent Malaysian inservice training research shows that positioning and modeling can override the origin of the teacher educator, namely a so-called native speaker background. Descriptions of techniques to help deconstruct native speakerism at the interactional level are derived from teacher educator reflection on data. Possibilities for countering native speakerism are suggested through descriptions of how teacher educators may model and use humour to address perceptions of hierarchy. With the growing use of English as an additional language, research into who teache...
Towards post-native speakerism: dynamics and shifts
Current Issues in Language Planning, 2018
This book provides an important contribution to the rapidly growing literature on post-nativespeakerist future in language education. The contributors in this volume Towards Post-Native Speakerism: Dynamics and Shifts examine English and Japanese native-speakerism in the Japanese context by providing theoretical and practical perspectives, both at the micro-and macrolevels. The book explores the crucial question of how the role of language teachers will evolve in the future as we move beyond the native-speaker learning model in language education, a topic that has not been yet explored elsewhere in detail. The new insights gained from the chapters of this volume provide a much-needed starting point on how educators can realize a post-native-speakerist future for the language classroom. English teacher-researchers firstly discuss their experiences and challenges they have faced in the classroom and at the institutional level due to the prominence of the native-speaker ideology in English language teaching field in Japan. Japanese teachers of Japanese, similarly, provide insights on how the concepts of 'native-speaker' and 'non-native speaker' are understood and experienced in their field. Finally, the book examines these issues in a wider context on a global scale while it attempts to present solutions and appropriate ways of moving past native-speakerism in language education. The book is divided into four sections. Part one of the book titled 'Individual Teacher-Researcher Narratives Related to Workplace Experience and Language-Based Inclusion/Exclusion' is made up of three chapters. In chapter one, Ng, a Singaporean Professor of English at a Japanese prefectural university, shares his personal journey of how institutional ideology rooted at native-speakerism undermined his professional identity and how he overcame this self-doubt about his professional legitimacy through critical and reflective classroom practices. Ng firstly discusses the subtle processes, such as teaching responsibilities, teaching materials, and differing professional expectations, that perpetuate the unexpressed bias towards nativespeakerism at his institution. He then details the steps he took, including educating himself about the NNEST/NEST dichotomy, reflecting on his teaching, and discovering ways to empower his students, not despite but because of his own non-native speaker status, to regain his self-confidence as a legitimate educator. Ng concludes the chapter by stressing the importance of the need to educate Japanese administrators and institutions about the dangers of this underlying bias towards native-speakerism, most importantly because ultimately, it has a negative effect on students. Bouchard, in chapter two titled 'Native-Speakerism in Japanese Junior High Schools: A Stratified Look into Teacher Narratives,' examines teacher narratives of four teachers in addition to examining their classroom materials, government policies about English education, and government-prescribed textbooks for junior high school. Through this analysis, the author discovered that both in discourse and in practice these teachers supported the monolingual paradigm of categorizing Japanese learners as unauthentic English speakers who will always be deficient speakers of English. This strong linguistic dichotomy was accompanied by beliefs of Japan's cultural isolation having a detrimental effect on students' ability to learn English and NESTs being the ideal L2 models for their students, although the teachers also CURRENT ISSUES IN LANGUAGE PLANNING
The “NNEST Movement” has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the marginalization of their nonnative counterparts, and the factors that may influence an individual falling into one category or another. More recently, scholars have adopted a poststructuralist orientation toward language and identity that resists dichotomized framings of language and language users. This article extends the poststructuralist orientation to consider how and why such abstract idealizations of native and nonnative speakers—what I term (non)native speakered subjectivities—emerged historically and are continuously reified and (re)produced through everyday discourse. Throughout this discussion, I weave illustrative examples from a participant in a semester-long ethnographic study that took place in a graduate teacher education program. In the conclusion, I consider implications for future theorizations of (non)native speakering as well as possibilities for increasing equity in the field of ELT.
Shifting perspectives on native speaker teachers (And new roles for collaboratori linguistici
2020
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’.
(Non)native Speakered: Rethinking (Non)nativeness and Teacher Identity in TESOL Teacher Education
Despite its imprecision, the native-nonnative dichotomy has become the dominant paradigm for examining language teacher identity development. The nonnative English speaking teacher (NNEST) movement in particular has considered the impact of deficit framings of nonnativeness on "NNEST" preservice teachers. Although these efforts have contributed significantly towards increasing awareness of NNEST-hood, they also risk reifying the notion that nativeness and nonnativeness are objectively distinct categories. This article adopts a poststructuralist lens to reconceptualize native and nonnative speakers as complex, negotiated social subjectivities that emerge through a discursive process that the author terms (non)native speakering. It then applies this dynamic framework to analyze "narrative portraits" of four different archetypical language teachers, two of whom seem to fit neatly into (non)native speakerist frames of language and culture and two of whom deviate from them. It then reflects on how these preservice teachers negotiate, re-create, and resist the produced (non)native speaker subjectivities, and considers the complexity, fluidity, and heterogeneity within each archetype. In the conclusion, the author consider implications of (non)native speakering as a theoretical and analytical frame, as well as possible applications of the data for teacher education.
Directions and Prospects for Educational Linguistics, 2010
Educational linguistics is known for examining phenomena that are situated on the boundaries between two distinct but related areas of intellectual inquiry (applied linguistics and education), or investigating "those parts of linguistics directly relevant to educational matters as well as those parts of education concerned with language" (Spolsky 2008, p. 2). While pursuing questions and concerns that are informed by the situated challenges and constraints of practical ("real life") problems, educational linguists marshal the theoretical and methodological tools that they need to address the issues at hand and recommend new directions forward. In this way, the researcher "starts with a problem (or theme) related to language and education and then synthesizes the research tools in her/his intellectual repertoire to investigate or explore it" (Hornberger and Hult 2006, p. 78). Because such problems and themes often come out of a particular learning or teaching situation, this "problem-oriented discipline… focuses on the needs of practice and draws from available theories and principles of many relevant fields" (Spolsky 1975, p. 347). Within this large-scale endeavor, questions about language learning and language teaching have often taken priority: "in educational linguistics, the starting point is always the practice of education and the focus is squarely on (the role of) language (in) learning and teaching" (Hornberger 2001, p. 288). The relationship that exists between the language issues identified by teachers, researchers, and/or teacherresearchers and the various theoretical and methodological approaches used to investigate them has inspired research that is theoretical but applied, situated in specific contexts but influenced by larger (institutional, ideological, structural) processes, and reflective of the nested nature of local-global processes.