The issue of native and non-native speakers of English, relevant to a large number of questions in applied linguistics, is mainly important if related to native and non-native English-speaking teachers of English as a second or foreign language. The aim of the study was to place this issue in an international setting, including English teachers from ten countries, in order to verify if the two kinds of teachers perceive differences between their teaching and how this perception influ-ences the teaching behaviour and attitudes of the non-native speaking teachers. A questionnaire was administered to 216 participants, ESL/EFL teachers in ten countries. The analysed data show that differences perceived by non-native speaking teachers bias their self-image and attitudes to teaching.
INTRODUCTION
The concept of the native speaker of a language has been widely analysed and discussed from various linguistic as well as sociolinguistic points of view. The issue of defining who should be considered native and who non-native is relevant to a large number of questions within applied linguistics, such as language acquisition, competence and performance, bilingualism and semilingualism, knowledge and proficiency, communicative competence, language con-sciousness and attitudes (e.g., Davies, 1991; Gass–Varonis, 1985; Janicki, 1985; Spolsky, 1989).
Native speakers and non-native speakers were for many years considered to constitute two different and clearly distinguishable categories. However, in recent years this view has come under heavy attack, as a growing number of researchers contend that the rigid distinction between the two categories is untenable, because they cannot be defined with any degree of precision. Davies (1991) even goes so far as considering learners of a second language as “native speakers”, if they meet certain criteria, the most significant of which may be “discourse and pragmatic control” and “creative performance”.
To replace the binary distinction of “native” or “non-native”, new terms have been coined [… but] because these well-sounding terms appear to be no less spurious than the weathered
terms, “native/non-native speakers” (Medgyes, 1992b), many scholars still use the dichotomy, in spite of serious reservations as to its validity.
This helps understand the derivative categories, native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs). While the NEST/non-NEST dis-tinction has lately become a controversial issue in journals and at international conferences, there has only been one major study by Medgyes (1994) which has been entirely devoted to analysing the differences in teaching behaviour between NESTs and non-NESTs.1
Our aim in this paper is to place the NEST/non-NEST issue in an international setting, by including participants from ten countries, and to consider three hypotheses:
■ NESTs and non-NESTs differ in their teaching behaviour;
■ These differences in teaching behaviour are largely due to divergent levels of language proficiency;
■ The awareness of differences in language proficiency influences the non-NEST’s self-per-ception and teaching attitudes.
By revealing and analysing the differences between NESTs’ and non-NESTs’ teaching beha-viour and the difficulties the latter have to cope with, the study hopes to offer non-NESTs public endorsement and suggest ways to improve their public image as well as their self-perception. We believe that teachers working in all corners of the world are underinformed about one another. This ignorance may blind them to the fact that they have a lot in common, great distances notwithstanding.
The recognition and conceptual understanding of the internationally shared problems and interests may yield in the long run practical support to non-NESTs all over the world. By supplying a comparative analysis of this distinction, this study may help teachers gain more insight into and capitalize on their respective potential as NESTs or non-NESTs.
An additional motivating factor has been the desire to look beyond the ethnocentric view spread by researchers working in research institutes and applied linguistics departments in English-speaking countries. Instead of taking their beliefs and guesses at face value, we have decided to examine the issue with the help of an empirical study.
Collecting the data
Representatives of The British Council in 16 non-English speaking countries were asked to distribute a questionnaire among various groups of EFL/ESL teachers. The destination of the questionnaire was intentional: it was meant to reach countries where EFL/ESL is part of the official syllabus throughout the educational system. The aim was to spread out geographically over states on the five continents. The questionnaire was addressed to NESTs as well as non-NESTs. The representatives contacted various types of schools which were interested in participating in an international survey and willing to provide information about their teachers.2
1 As a matter of fact, the most extensive sample claiming to support the hypothesis forwarded by Med-gyes has been supplied by the authors of this study.
2 All quantifiable items were entered in LOTUS l-2-3 and the preliminary data modifications were made in pure spreadsheet format. SPSSiPC+ 3.0 package was used. Only correlations more significant
The questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of 23 questions, 18 of which were addressed both to NESTs and non-NESTs and five to non-NESTs only. Self-identification or anonymity was optional. The majority of questions were closed-ended, i.e., they elicited answers from among a number of options given to the respondent. These questions were mainly intended to provide informa-tion about the personal background of the teacher and the actual circumstances in which they were teaching, such as age, level of students, class size or weekly teaching load.
A limited number of questions were ended, or included a combination of open-ended and closed-open-ended sections. They aimed at capturing the participants’ opinion about the problems involved, their self-perception, etc. It was expected that the answers would reveal the participants’ background, the ELT conditions in their home country, which, together with the direct judgmental-evaluative answers, might shed some light on the non-NESTs’ views on the issue, specifically their self-image and attitudes.
RESULTS
Responses were obtained from ten countries: Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe (see Table 1, Appendix). A com-parative analysis of the data relating to each participating country was not feasible, due to disproportionate number of responses received.
Responses from a total of 216 participants entered the study; 172 female teachers (79.6 percent) and 44 male teachers (20.4 percent) returned the questionnaire. Under 10 percent of the participants claimed English as their native language, i.e., they met the criterion of being NESTs. The 198 non-NESTs (91.7 percent) spread out over 18 languages, the number of native speakers of which ranged between 52 and 1 (see Table 2, Appendix).
The next paragraphs present the answers to the closed-ended questions.
The participants’ teacher-training background varied greatly: 154 had studied between one and six years to qualify as EFL/ESL teachers, 26 between seven and 17 years, whereas 36 were virtually unqualified, i.e., had not been formally trained as teachers of EFL/ESL.
The participants’ ELT experience also showed wide variation. Two-thirds had been teach-ers of English for five or more years, 53 teachteach-ers for between one and five years, and 17 had less than one year ELT experience. 38 were teaching EFL/ESL in college or university courses, 93 in secondary schools, 66 in elementary schools and 19 in private schools. Nearly half of the respondents had a weekly teaching load that was more than 20 hours a week; only 27 participants were teaching less than ten hours a week; the rest, 84 teachers, were teaching between ten and 20 hours a week. Some of the respondents taught, in addition to their full-time job, at other institutions too.
than 0.01 and 0.001, marked with * and **, respectively, were considered. Despite the relatively large number of participants, country and native language representation was not sufficient for more deli-cate statistics. In order to refine the results, factor analysis was applied, but all of the results were mar-ked as insignificant.
Class size also showed considerable variation, ranging between more than 40 and less than 10.96 of the teachers testified to having between 25 and more than 40 students in their classes, and 35 of these had to teach crowded classes of over 40 students. 98 teachers, i.e., less than half of the respondents, claimed to teach small groups of 10-20 students.
The participants were asked to judge the average level of their students’ learning ability on a five-point scale (between “excellent” and “poor”). Only one teacher claimed that the students’ average level was “excellent”, 24 marked “very good”, 120 “good”, 59 “average”, while only 12 teachers rated their pupils “poor”.
Regarding the proportion of NESTs employed in the school, results show that in two-thirds of the schools there were no NESTs, while only one third of the schools employed both NESTs and non-NESTs. Only two teachers claimed to work in an all-native English staff.
Two-thirds of the teachers saw differences in teaching behaviour between NESTs and non-NESTs. Only 32 respondents said there were no differences and 38 teachers left this question unanswered.
A quarter of the respondents considered NESTs to be more successful as teachers, while about the same number thought that non-NESTs were more successful; 87 teachers, i.e., almost half of the respondents, saw no difference between the two groups and 18 did not express an opinion.
Just under half of the respondents knew of any form of organized cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs.
The participants were asked what proportion of NESTs and non-NESTs they would employ if they were in charge of administering their school. Almost half said that they would employ an equal number, one third would employ more non-NESTs, while only about 10 percent would prefer NESTs. The rest, 37 participants, did not answer the question.
The next set of questions concerned non-NESTS only (n = 198).
10 percent of the participants reported stays in English-speaking countries of more than one year, whereas 86 had never been in an English-speaking country. The rest ranged between about one year and less than one month.
A fifth reported that they had daily contact with native speakers of English, while only 12 claimed never to have the opportunity to communicate with native English speakers. A third had rare contact with native speakers (see Table 3, Appendix).
Most of the non-NESTs (74.7 percent) considered their English to be “good” or “average”.
10 percent claimed that their command of English was “excellent”, while only two (1.0 percent) admitted having a “poor” command of the language to be taught (see Table 4, Appendix).
182 teachers reported on various language difficulties. Since teachers were free to attach any label to their language problems, these labels were grouped into larger, and inevitably arbitrary, categories. The most frequently mentioned difficulty areas referred to were vocabu-lary and fluency. Next followed speaking, pronunciation and listening comprehension.
Grammar, idioms, appropriacy, intonation and the correct application of prepositions were also mentioned, but received less weight in the participants’ answers (see Table 5, Appendix).
Less than a quarter of the respondents claimed that difficulties in the use of English had no hampering effect on their teaching at all, while about 4 percent of the participants admit-ted that their deficient command of the language did indeed “extremely” or “very much”
interfere with the effectiveness of their work. The bulk of the answers gathered around “a lit-tle” and “quite a bit” (see Table 6, Appendix).
DISCUSSION
Granting that there are differences between NESTs’ and non-NESTs’ teaching behaviour, it has been hypothesised that the level of language proficiency is the most influential reason for the differences. It can furthermore be inferred that the realization of this inadequacy is the strongest factor biasing non-NESTs’ self-perception and teaching attitudes.
The findings allow us to group the results into two interactive units, representing to a cer-tain extent a cause-effect relationship. The quantifiable variables (derived from closed-ended questions) cluster around “cause-factors”, which could influence the non-NESTs’ command of English and thus may affect both the differences between NESTs and non-NESTs and, consequently, the self-image assumed by the latter. The factors which seemed to be essential in this causal chain were non-NESTs’ teaching qualifications, the time non-NESTs spent in an English-speaking country, the frequency of non-NESTs’ contact with native speakers of English, non-NESTs’ knowledge of professional organisations and some conditions under which non-NESTs usually have to teach.
The non-quantifiable variables (derived from open-ended questions), on the other hand, rather represent “effect-factors”, resulting from the above, i.e., the differences found between the two groups of teachers, NESTs and non-NESTs, the comparison of their respective success in teaching, the difficulty felt in teaching caused by language problems and the sug-gested form of beneficial cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs.
Quantifiable variables Time spent in an English-speaking country
The amount of time the non-NEST spent in an English-speaking country significantly correlated with three other variables: length of pre-service training (r = 0.26**), teaching qualifications (r = 0.23*), the frequency of regular communication with native speakers of English (r = 0.24**) and awareness of professional cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs (r = 0.18*).
With regard to the rather predictable, albeit modest correlation, found between length of training and time spent in an English-speaking country (r = 0.26**), it may be suggested that the more effort one makes to qualify as a teacher, including time and expenses, the more probable it is that one takes the opportunity to spend some time in the target language country.
Similarly, the modest correlation between teaching qualifications and the time spent in an English-speaking country (r = 0.23*) may be due to the fact that the higher the qualifications, the more likely it is to find an opportunity to spend some time in an English speaking country.
The same is true for the relationship between frequency of contact with native speakers of English and time spent in an English-speaking country (r = 0.24**). Spending a consider-able amount of time in an English-speaking country offers the chance to make friends and subsequently keep in touch with them.
The significant, albeit weak, correlation between the amount of time spent in an English-speaking country and awareness of professional cooperation (r = 0.18*) suggests that the more time non-NESTs have spent in an authentic, English-speaking environment, the more stimulated they will be to enter into professional cooperation with native speaking peers.
Teaching qualifications
One of the strongest correlations found was between the level of training and the number of years spent in training (r = 0.46**), since those who aim at higher professional qualifications usually have to spend more years in training. Teaching qualifications also showed interesting correlations with a number of variables, namely the participants’ self-evaluation of their command of English (r = 0.22*), the difficulties encountered in the course of teaching (r = – 0.30**) and the participants’ estimation of students’ learning abilities (r = 0.24**).
The correlation between the participants’ qualifications and their perceived command of English (r = 0.22*) lends itself to somewhat conflicting interpretations. One interpretation may be that the higher the level of sophistication a non-NEST achieves, the more self-critical and self-conscious he/she becomes. It has to be admitted, however, that the correlation is more modest than expected. This may be attributed to the fact that most of the participants (especially from Eastern Europe, Africa and South America) learned English as a foreign language in an isolated, artificial context; they may, therefore, have had less self-confidence and thus felt that they could not attain a high level of target language proficiency.
The negative correlation found between teaching qualification and difficulty in the use of English (r = – 0.30**) follows from the fact that a more highly qualified teacher is probably confronted with fewer language difficulties in the use of English. Furthermore, it may be assumed that the better trained a teacher is, the more self-confident he/she is likely to be in the classroom.
The correlation found between the participants’ qualifications and the students’ estimated language learning abilities (r = 0.24**) suggests that better qualified teachers can assess their students’ learning capacities more accurately and are more generous in their value judgments.
This interpretation seems to be corroborated by the correlation found between the length of pre-service training and the students’ estimated language learning abilities (r = 0.28**).
Another possible interpretation may be that better qualified teachers are more likely to be employed at “better schools” teaching students from more fortunate backgrounds.
Frequency of contact with native speakers
In addition to the correlation with the time spent in an English-speaking country, the fol-lowing correlations relating to frequency of contact with native speakers were found: the proportion of NESTs and non-NESTs in schools (r = 0.47**), non-NESTs’ self-perceived command of English (r = 0.19*), class size (r = - 0.21*) and perceived teaching difficulties caused by language deficiencies (r = 0.33**).
The fact that the proportion of NESTs and non-NESTs in school showed high cor-relation with the frequency of contact with native speakers of English (r = 0.47**) seems to be obvious: in non-English-speaking societies the presence of NESTs may provide
non-NESTs with opportunities – and sometimes the only ones – to communicate in English outside the classroom.
Frequent contact between non-NESTs and native speakers also helps non-NESTs improve their English-language proficiency, even if the native speaker often simplifies the language into “foreigner talk” in the interaction with non-native speakers (Spolsky, 1989).
Frequent contact with native speakers, however, may bring non-NESTs to judge their own command of English more severely in the light of recurrent exposure to native performance, as suggested by the relatively low correlation with non-NESTs’ perceived command of English (r = 0.19*).
The negative correlation between frequency of contact with native speakers and class size (r = – 0.2 I*) suggests the interpretation that more affluent schools can usually afford both smaller classes and employing NESTs. Non-NESTs teaching in such schools are likely to have more opportunity to communicate with native speakers than less privileeged ones.
The relationship between the frequency of meeting native speakers and perceived teach-ing difficulties (r = 0.33**) may be explained by the fact that frequent contact makes non-NESTs more self-critical of their own command of English. This in turn makes them more aware of the problems that emerge from their language handicaps.
Professional cooperation
The participants’ awareness of the existence of organised cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs yielded correlations with the following variables: with perceived differences between NESTs and NESTs in terms of teaching behaviour (r = 0.32**), with non-NESTs’ perceived teaching difficulties caused by language deficiencies (r = 0.25**), with class size (r = – 0.24**) and with time spent in an English-speaking country referred to above. Awareness of the existence and possibly participating in organised cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs may raise the non-NESTs’ consciousness of the differ-ences in teaching behaviour between them, as indicated by the correlation between the two variables (r = 0.32**)
The correlation between awareness of organised cooperation and perceived teaching difficulties (r = 0.25**) suggests that participation in organized cooperation between NESTs and non-NESTs makes non-NESTs more sensitive to difficulties caused by their limited command of English.
The negative correlation between awareness of professional cooperation and class size
The negative correlation between awareness of professional cooperation and class size