Strengths and limitations for non-native speaker English teachers in teaching practice Yi Zhang

Native and non-native speakers The definition of native speaker is elusive and ambiguous Definition: a. people who acquired the language naturally and effortlessly in childhood, through a combination of exposure, the child's innate talent for language learning and the need to communicate. b. people who use the language or a variety of it correctly and have insight into what is or is not acceptable. c. being a native speaker, which is assumed, entails knowledge of and loyalty to a community of the language.

NS and NNS English teachers Peter Medgyes first brought issues concerning NNS English teachers to the open. (The schizophrenic teacher 1983, and Native or non-native: who'w worth more? 1992) NNS English teachers was first used in George Braine's book (George, 1999), with the reissue of the research by Macmillan in 1994 in the book The Non-native Teacher. And the controversial topic remains as whether these two types of teachers are opposite, or they are 'two different species' (p.25)

Strengths a. Teaching grammar b. Teaching vocabulary c. Teaching pronunciation

Grammar Teaching As the NS English teachers acquire English during their childhood, in which they acquired the language intuitively, many NS English teachers do not have the knowledge of offering explicit explanation of the grammar. Though they can speak with standard or dialectal grammar, many find it hard to explain the norm to ESL students. For NNS English teachers, they learned the language by analyzing language grammar and understand the formation of certain grammatical forms. As they learned the second language in this way, they are often capable of explanation of English grammar.

Teaching Vocabulary Vocabulary teaching is a very important part in language instruction. In this part of teaching, NNS English teachers often have their advantage, as most of them had the experience of vocabulary learning for a relatively long period of time and have their own way of memmorization. NNS English teachers have the experience of dealing with words that are easy to be mistaken for many of them had the same mistakes before.

Teaching Pronunciation This looks shocking at first sight, for there has being a long time that teaching pronunciation best fits NS English teachers because their native accent. However, NNS English teachers have their own advantage too. a. For NNS English teachers, they experienced the same hardship as ESL students. For some teachers who share the same dialectal pronunciation with the students, they can expect the pronunciation patterns of the students, and instruct them by telling their own ways when they learned English. b. For NNS English teachers, they understand the hardship of learning pronunciation and can be caring and patient in pronunciation instruction, thus encouraging the student's confidence.

Limitations a. Limitation for language proficiency as native speakers b. Limitation of the lack of childhood acquisition which has access to the resources of the culture attached to the language in early stage

Native Language Proficiency The native speaker teachers are no doubt the "authority" in terms of nativeness. In The native speaker in applied linguistics (Davies, 1991, 2003), six criteria are used for the clear definition for native speakers, in which native speakers' intuitive correctness of the language is an essential part in terms of grammar (dialectal/standard),fluent spontaneous discourse (production and comprehension) and interpretation. However the non-native speaker teachers, as they has not acquired the language at their childhood, they don't have the intuition knowledge as native speakers. *Possible solution: become "native-like"?

Cultural Background Another limitation for NNS English teachers is the lack of cultural background, especially for the culture that is imprinted in native speakers' early age. In practice, NNS teachers may face the problem that they will not be able to explain some very dialectal linguistic phenomenon for the lack of cultural background, especially for the ones that one usually acquires them during childhood. Ex. double negative

Variables In terms of different types of students Ex. students' need students' background (in terms of linguistic, social and cultural background) In terms of the institutional requirement