Week 10 TQ Dialogues Chapter 10

Revisiting the Colonial in the Postcolonial: Critical Praxis for Nonnative-English-Speaking Teachers in a TESOL Program

I am encouraged by the phrase in this article; the notion of experts shifts the emphasis from ‘who you are’ to ‘what you know’. I have ten-year teaching experience in EFL situation, but I still think in the same way as one student in this article “I am not qualified to teach students at any level, even though I will graduate with an MA degree in TESOL.”(p.423) This is because many of students, even teachers, wish to have native speakers. I strongly want to overcome my linguistic deficit and achieve native-like proficiency. However, is it only necessary that non-native English speaking teachers(NNESTs) acquire native-like proficiency? I think we, NNESTs, can get closer to native-like proficiency, but we cannot become a native speaker. I do not abandon my hope, but we should reconsider our true role as NNESTs. I am impressed with “bright side of being a non-native,” such as being a good model for the learners, being culturally informed, and being empathetic to learners’ needs.(p.423) ‘Who can do what’ is important.

Then, I remembered one thing. I had taught English in Japan. Our school has Assistant English Teacher (AET) visit once a week. Compared with me, AET spoke English much more fluently with Standard English pronunciation. Not only students but also I admired how the AET spoke. Whenever I had a team teaching with the AET, students were looking forward to it. The content naturally focused on communication, not reading or writing. One day, I tried to have a writing class with AET, because I thought it was very useful for students to learn how to write in English from a native speaker. Nevertheless, they were very confused because there were a great gap between Japanese writing style and English one. In addition, they could not know how to write what they wanted. As a result, I taught them how to write and express their feeling in English. The AET helped them, depending on the situation. Therefore, I realized that AET was not always an ideal English teacher. It is important that NNESTs and NETs should divide our roles and co-operate each other.

I want to ask non native English speakers how you learn or teach English wiring and reading in a class. In Japan, we mainly translate English into Japanese. Or do you have speaking class? In Japan, it exists only the course name and we learn reading and grammar instead.