native speakerism – Educational Sociolinguistics

Dismantling the Native and Non-Native English Speaking Teachers’ Divide

Albert M.

A widespread and deeply rooted bias against Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) have been documented. This prejudice, together with the discourses that support and normalize it, has been described as the ideology of Native Speakerism (NS). To be specific, Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) are claimed to be the best teachers based on the conception that they “represent a ‘Western culture’ from which springs the ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching methodology” (Holliday, 2005, p. 6). NNESTs are viewed as not only linguistically, but also instructionally inferior and second-class citizens to their native speaking colleagues (Curtis & Romney, 2006). Of course, both NEST and NNEST have their own strengths and weaknesses.

In a classroom research conducted among my Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4 students , I asked them: What kind of teacher do you like? a. Native Speaker of English (Teacher who is born in an English speaking country like Canada and whose first language is English) b. Non-Native Speaker of English (Teacher who is born outside an English speaking country and learn English as second language) c. No preference ( I like both), why?

At least 6 out of 7 students who answered the questionnaire on Google classroom disclosed: c. No preference. Their reasons being are: “I think native or non-native is not important. I like them both, because they are teachers. I do not like comparison- if someone who is not Canadian (NNEST) works in an educational centre, it is because s/he is qualified and deserves to teach English. The important thing for us students is to learn the English language – that teachers show us the way on how to improve our English. Teachers should not only be patient and responsible, but also to teach professionally.” Only one student answered b: NNEST “I like the second language teacher because I can understand him.”

Undeniably, the dichotomy of NEST and NNEST generates negative reactions from scholars. In fact, Motha (2014) reveals that the “NEST/NNEST construct shrinks to simply one aspect of linguistic identity. This is not to deny that in many countries the construct is heavily racialized.” While Motha et al. (2012) reject the dichotomy as simplistic, they offer a more appropriate nomenclature and argue for the term translinguistic identity as a more appropriate emphasis on the “considerable linguistic and pedagogical resources that translinguistics identity offers English language teachers.” (p. 15)

It is high time to dismantle the NEST and NNEST divide. At this juncture, the trend in English Language Teaching (ELT) is the promotion of plurilingual multicompetence among TESL teachers. As Ellis (2016) noted that “in the future, the question we ask of a TESL teacher may be neither: “Are you a native or non-native speaker?” nor “What variety of English do you speak?” but rather “How rich is your linguistic repertoire and how can this be deployed as a pedagogical resource?”

Questions:

As a learner of English as a second language, what is your teacher preference: NEST or NNEST, why?
As a native speaker of English, do you consider yourself as monolingual, why?

References:

Curtis, A. & Romney, M. (2006). Color, race, and English language teaching: Shades of meaning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ellis, E. (2016). “I may be a native speaker but I’m not monolingual”: Reimagining all teachers’ linguistic identities in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 50(3), 597-630.

Holliday, A. (2005). The struggle to teach English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Motha, S. (2014). Race, empire, and English language teaching. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Motha, S., Jain, R., & Tecle, T. (2012). Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for language teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching, 1(1), 13–28.

So, is my oral English good or bad?

Dongqi/Katie Z.

Last Christmas, my mom flew to Montreal from China to visit me. Since it was her first time in Canada, I decided to take her on a tour of the nearby cities. While on our way to Toronto, I made an acquaintance with a Caucasian man, a native English speaking Canadian who was extremely fond of the Chinese culture, so we chatted for a while. Before he left, he kindly complimented me for “speaking good English”, which made me feel super honoured. As soon as he left, my mom, who barely understood English, asked me what was going on. After explaining everything to her, my mom said to me in Chinese, “Oh I see. But why don’t you speak like him, a native speaker? Like, you don’t roll your tongue as much as he does. You know what I mean by ‘roll your tongue’ right? It seems that your oral English is still not good enough, huh?”

People vector created by freepik – www.freepik.com

All of a sudden, I felt mixed emotions. For one thing, I was surprised in that my mom, whose English doesn’t even reach beginner-level, could tell that I pronounced the rhotic sounds less overtly and preferred a rather flat tone while speaking English. In addition, I felt upset that my mom questioned me by saying that “your English is not good enough”, simply because she detected that I spoke differently from a native speaker. Ironically, a few minutes ago my oral English was just praised by this native speaker. Besides, she seemed to take for granted that I would be able to talk exactly the same as the locals do, in other words, “speaking good English”, after receiving English education here in Canada.

My mother was not the only one that had this “native speaker” stereotype. In Amin (1999)’s work, two presumptions were drawn from the students (participants): native English speaker equals white people and only native speakers speak “real,” “proper,” “Canadian” English (p.94). It’s interesting to notice that, although my mom knew little about English, her limited knowledge of English was still associated with “being native-like”, or “being white people-like”. This, in fact, also made me realize that how far-reaching the ideology of “Native Speakerism” (Holliday, 2006) is, to which I believed that globalization has contributed a lot. However, what my mom didn’t know was that “native speaker” itself is a controversial term that bears as many critiques as supports. Furthermore, there are myriad English varieties existing around the world. In this perspective, every English speaker, either native or nonnative, is able to speak good English in their own way, while he or she is not necessarily considered to be so-called “native-like”. Anyhow, speaking native-like or not without question is not the only standard to measure one’s oral English proficiency by.

But then, I started to reflect on myself: why would I feel super honoured that my oral English was complimented by a Canadian? Was it because I regarded his English as the “standard” in my subconsciousness? In other words, did his compliment mean an authoritative recognition of my oral English? If so, I am also in support of the “Native Speakerism” (Holliday, 2006) deep down. Then why would I have the superiority to judge my mother? Interesting huh?

Questions for further discussion:

Have you ever noticed any “Native Speakerism” in your life? What’s your opinion on it?

As a language teacher, how would you deal with “Native Speakerism”?

References:

Amin, N. (1999). Minority Women Teachers of ESL: Negotiating White English. In G. Braine, Non-native Educators in English Language Teaching (p93–104). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60, 385–387. doi:10.1093/elt/ccl030

Better English for more employment opportunities: Is it a myth or not?

Yuri

When I was 18, my piano teacher asked me if I wanted her to write a letter of recommendation to go to music school after graduating from high school. I didn’t hesitate to say ‘no’ because I had decided to go to college in the United States. My goal was to become a ‘native-like’ English speaker with ‘perfect’ grammar, lexical knowledge, and pronunciation. I didn’t even think about majoring music at a university in the US (or in other ‘English-speaking’ countries) because I not only wanted to learn the language but also learn about the language to become a native-like speaker. I was actually surprised a few years later when I realized that majoring in music in the US might also allow me to acquire ‘correct’ English, but it was too late to change my major to music because I had stopped practicing piano seriously. It’s not that I regret I didn’t become a pianist. I knew I wasn’t talented enough to be a top pianist, studying abroad had been my dream since I was very young, and I appreciate a chance to learn what I’m learning now. I am just curious whether my life would have been different if I didn’t hope to become a ‘perfect’ English speaker. Maybe if I kept practicing piano seriously, even if I couldn’t be a concert pianist, I could have done something related to music?

“Are You a Native Speaker of English?”: Exploring What It Means to be a “Non-Native, Native Speaker”

By Wai In Chan

Awhile ago, when I read Van Herk’s (2012) chapter on language and place, I noticed the chapter (3) started with an example (p. 25) that really resonated with me. In addition, our discussion in class on “native speakerism” (the idea that native speakers are more qualified to teach a language than non-native speakers) and ethnicity, really got me thinking about my own language situation in Canada. It made me think of the following two reverse scenarios that happened recently in my life.

Continue reading ““Are You a Native Speaker of English?”: Exploring What It Means to be a “Non-Native, Native Speaker””

Native vs non-native teachers: Accents and culture

Simon Desmarais – Blog post 1

Over the course of my life, I have devoted a lot of time to learn languages. I come from a small town in Québec, so my first language is French, but since about 2009 I have been living my life mainly in English (as a result of frequent traveling and studying at McGill). I have also spent some time learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Even though by linguistic definition I am a L2 speaker of English, I am now at a point where I consider myself even more than near-native: I have a slight accent, but I possess the same language intuition as native speakers.

Continue reading “Native vs non-native teachers: Accents and culture”

Reflecting on my Language Biography

Maxime Lavallée

Hello! Having grown up in several countries and spoken different varieties of the same languages in different places, I decided to begin with a brief timeline for some context.

Born in Quebec to French-Speaking parents.
- Native speaker of French.
Moved from Quebec to California at the age of nine.
- Became a minority language speaker of French.
  - No prior knowledge of English before moving to California.
- Went to primary school in English.
- Continued on to high school in English.
  - Became indistinguishable from native speakers of English.
  - Adopted Californian vernacular and accent.
- Moved to Australia at the age of sixteen.
  - Had to adapt to Australian English.
    - New vocabulary, sentence structure, cultural norms, spelling, and more.
      - Over time, adopted Australian vernacular and accent.
- Moved back to Quebec at the age of twenty-one.
  - Had to acclimate myself to Montreal English.
    - New vocabulary and cultural norms very different from Australia.
  - Found a job and made some serious improvements to my stagnating French.
  - Began to learn Spanish.
  - Adopted Montreal English vernacular and accent

Continue reading “Reflecting on my Language Biography”