Chapter One Introduction
1.1Background of the Present Study
Yet NNSTs are still marginalizedin their profession, as numerous researchers and a number of volumes of collectedarticles (e.g. Braine, 1999; Kamhi-Stein, 2004; Llurda, 2005) have shown. In the early1990s, Medgyes (1992, 1994) thoroughly discussed nonnative speakers of English asEnglish teachers, arguing that both native and nonnative speakers of English could besuccessful English as second language (hereafter ESL)/English as foreign language(hereafter EFL) teachers. Nevertheless, it was not until 1996, that is at the 30thAnnualTESOL Conference, that the non-native English-speaking professionals’ movementbegan (Braine, 1998; Kamshi-Stein, 2000). The Non-Native English-Speaking Caucuswas founded there, giving a voice and visibility to NNSTs and resulting in moreresearch on the subject. In Braine’s (1999) book on non-native speaker Englishteachers, a lot of professionals in TESOL felt that an important area of study wasfinally becoming visible. The idealistic notion of “the native speaker” has been calledinto question (Phillipson, 1992b).Despite these pioneering studies, it took nearly a decade for more research toemerge on the issue relating to these teachers. These recent studies could be classifiedby their aims—the determination of the self-perceptions of teachers and students’attitudes, such as that of Samimy and Brutt-Griffler (1999); Liang (2002); Mahboob(2004) and Moussou and Braine (2006). All these studies have been conducted in North America, in ESL teaching contexts. However, NSTs, who have long taught inaffluent EFL contexts such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and many Europeancountries, are now making their presence felt in other EFL contexts, such as in Chinaand the rest of Asia. As a result, NNSTs in many EFL contexts are facing newchallenges (Govardhan, Nayar & Sheorey, 1999; Graddol, 1999, 2006; Crystal, 2002,2003).
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1.2Significance and Purpose of the Study
To fill in this gap, this study attempted to identify university students’perceptions of native and non-native teachers of English in the aspect of strengths andweaknesses. It attempted to find out the differences between NSTs and NNSTsregarding personal quality, linguistic proficiency, cultural knowledge, teachingcontents, pedagogy, classroom management and feedback and evaluation. Theinstruments employed in the study were both questionnaire and interview. 148third-year English majors (22 male students and 126 female ones) from 4 intactclasses responded to the questionnaire. In addition, six of them were chosen forfurther interview in order to get a complete data and a good understanding of thestudents’ perceptions of native and non-native teachers of English. The SPSS 16.0 wasemployed for the statistical analysis. Descriptive analysis and paired samples t-testwere used to analyze the data in this study.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definition of a Native Speaker
The concept of the native speaker of a language has been widely analyzed anddiscussed from various linguistic as well as sociolinguistic points of view. The issueof defining who should be considered native is discussed in a large number ofquestions in applied linguistics, such as language acquisition, competence andperformance, bilingualism and semilingualism, knowledge and proficiency,communicative competence, language consciousness and attitudes (e.g. Davies, 1991;Gass and Varonis, 1985; Janicki, 1985; Spolsky, 1989).The concept of native speaker has not yet been subjected to careful definition,since the common-sense understanding of the term seemed enough, that is,‘peoplewho have a special control over the language, insider knowledge of their language.They are the models in learning the language, and they know what the language is(“Yes, you can say that”) and what language is not (“No, that is not English”)’(Davies,1991:1).The notion of the native speaker is as problematic as it is ubiquitous. Paikeday(1985) discussed the disparity between accepted definitions of the term “nativespeaker” and the reality of many speakers. Cook (2000) cited the common criteria for defining the native speaker, stating that a person is a native speaker of the language.The other characteristics of native speaker are incidental, describing how well aninpidual uses the language. People who did not learn a language in childhood cannever be a native speaker of the language. Later-learnt languages can never be nativelanguages by definition (Cook, 2000:187). Katz & Fodor (1962: 218) defined nativespeakers as those who “must be the explication of the abilities and skills involved inthe linguistic performance of a fluent native speaker”.
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2.2 Students’ General Perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs
Hertel and Sunderman (2009) point out that many early publications regardingnative speaker and non-native speaker teachers were mainly anecdotal in nature ratherthan research-oriented. However, preference towards NSTs and NNSTs has beeninvestigated in the recent years in many studies. The qualifications of NSTs andNNSTs have been a heated topic of discussion in the TESOL literature (e.g., Braine,1999; Brutt-Griffler & Sammimy, 2001; Canagarajah, 1999; Kamhi-Stein, 2004;Llurda, 2005; Medgyes, 1992, 1994; Phillipson, 1992a; Sheorey, 1986; Widdowson,1994). This will be elaborated in the following section. According to Phillipson (1992b:194), NSTs often held to be the ideal teachers oflanguage because they are believed to possess some prominent characteristics asopposed to NNSTs counterparts: they are able to speak fluent, idiomatic appropriatelanguage, they have great appreciation of cultural connotations and associations ofEnglish, and they are competent in assessing whether or not a given linguistic form isgrammatically acceptable as an English utterances. Some people prefer the NSTs,because they believe that NSTs are the authority on the language and that he or she isthe ideal informant (Canagarajah, 1999, p. 78).Mahboob’s (2004) qualitative study explored the perc
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Chapter Three Research Methodology ....20
3.1 Research Questions .....20
3.2 Subjects .....21
3.3 Instruments......21
3.3.1 Questionnaires........21
3.3.2 Interview ....22
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis ........22
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ......24
4.1 Students’ General Perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs .........24
4.2 Students’ Perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs in the Aspects of Personal Quality ........25
4.2.1 Personal Quality .....25
4.2.2 Linguistic Proficiency and Cultural Knowledge ....27
4.3 Students’ Perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs in the Aspects.......29
4.3.1 Teaching Methods........29
4.3.2 Teaching Contents........30
4.4 Students’ Perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs in the Aspects of Classroom........33
Chapter Five Conclusion and Implications .........37
5.1 Summary of the Major Findings in this Study ......37
5.2 Implications of this Study .......38
5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research ....41
Chapter Five Conclusion and Implications
5.1 Summary of the Major Findings in this Study
This study investigated students’ perceptions of NSTs and NNSTs in Englishteaching, and the findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly, the results of the study portrayed that students do not evince a preferencefor NSTs or NNSTs. It appears that, like the participants in other studies, the studentsin this study recognized that NSTs and NNSTs both have strengths and weaknesseswith regard to such aspects as personal quality, linguistic proficiency, culturalknowledge, teaching methods, teaching contents, classroom organization andmanagement, and feedback and evaluation.Secondly, the results show that there is a significant difference between NSTsand NNSTs in the aspect of personal quality, linguistic proficiency and culturalknowledge. In terms of personal quality, NSTs are more humorous, easygoing andopen than NNSTs; they establish more harmonious relationship between teachers andstudents and treat students more equally than NNSTs; their posture and performanceare more casual than NNSTs. However, NNSTs’ professional dedication is muchbetter than that of NSTs. From the perspective of linguistic proficiency and culturalknowledge, NSTs are better than NNSTs in such aspects as standard pronunciation,fluent English, authentic English and the culture of target language, while NNSTs aremore familiar with Chinese culture than NSTs.
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Conclusion
Undoubtedly, the present research is far from perfect. Due to various constraints,there were some limitations in the study.Firstly, the sample in this study is limited in the number of subjects surveyed andonly 148 subjects were involved in this study. In addition, all the participants are fromfour intact classes from the same school. It is hard to represent the university studentsas a whole. Therefore, further studies are needed for students of various backgroundsin different types of schools. If condition permits, more longitudinal investigationsshould be carried out in order to have a more comprehensive understanding ofdifferences between NSTs and NNSTs.Secondly, the subjects in the present study and most other studies are Englishmajors. The future study should investigate the perceptions of the difference betweenNSTs and NNSTs by non-English majors to determine the extent to which perceptionsof various groups of students would be similar or different. In this way, the differencesbetween NSTs and NNSTs from learners at different stage can be observed.Thirdly, the language that is taught to the participants in this study and mostother studies is English. The future research can focus on students who learn otherforeign languages such as French, German or Japanese. By doing this, we can seewhether students’ perceptions of the difference between NSTs and NNSTs are thesame or not when students are engaged in learning other foreign languages.
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References (omitted)