NEST – Educational Sociolinguistics

Native or non-Native ESL Teacher: That is the Question!

By: Zahra Zamani

From my first attempts in Canada to be an English Teacher (what I used to be in my country), I understood that there is a long journey in front of me to be admitted to the club. Assuming that you are from a non-native English-speaking country, native speakers (especially native English speaker teachers (NEST)) become sensitive to check your pronunciation and your knowledge of English language to be sure that you are put in the right position. The questions that I always see in their eyes are “does she make a good teacher of English language while she has not learned it naturally and cannot speak it with a perfect correct accent? Do not we have enough native speakers who can teach the course?”

This view/ attitude can be easily seen in the teaching market demands when you see that majority of EFL and ESL teaching job sites require applicants to be native speakers. Then, you will confront this fact that being a non-native English speaker teacher (NNEST) can be a serious disadvantage for you despite your many years of studies in ESL programs at accredited universities and your valuable teaching practices. This happens while just being a native English speaker (NES) gives a great opportunity to some other people to be English teachers all around the world without having enough knowledge and experience about teaching.

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Am I good enough to compete in the local ESL market (in the eyes of recruiters)?

Hector Alvarez

I’m a fresh-off -the-plane newcomer here in Canada, originally from Argentina. I’ve been here for five months, and I’ve been looking around for job opportunities on the side just to gather some English Language Teaching (ELT) experience Canada.

The question is not whether I, myself, believe I’m good enough to teach English within this ESL (as opposed to EFL) context, but whether local recruiters believe so. At the end of the day, they have the final word on whether I get hired or not.

Native and non-native speaker language teachers

Sihong Chen (Blog post 2)

In China, English native speakers seem to have overwhelming advantage over Chinese ESL teachers. When I interned in New Oriental (an English Institution in China), there were some foreign teachers whose teaching experience and teaching methodology are not as good as Chinese English teachers, but they were more welcome by students and parents. When I was an undergraduate, there were also many foreign teachers in my university’s English department. However, there is a phenomenon and that is that most foreign teachers do not have much teaching experience and what they teach is just the language itself. Conversely, these Chinese professors not only have enough teaching experience but also have deeper understanding of language construct and better research background. After I came to Montreal, I wanted to learn some French so I began to think about the question again. Native or non-native FSL teachers, who is better? Finally I choose the non-native speakers because I think they are more familiar with my cultural background and are easier for me to understand. In different contexts, we may have different opinions about native and nonnative language teachers. My experience in Educational institutions, in both my university and in Montreal, makes me rethink about the identity and ethnicity of native and non-native speaker teachers.

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