ForeignLanguage Teachers Shouldnt Have to be Native Speakers

[Applause]

now

in english my name is gina ellia

and my chinese name is aiken i am a

chinese and english teacher at north

broward preparatory school

my methods of teaching these two

languages are entirely different

i think the reason is that english is my

native language

well chinese is not in fact

i think that both native speakers and

non-native speakers

can make great foreign language teachers

the important thing

is their teaching ability not their

linguistic ability

in fact i still remember well when this

idea was

first illuminated within me i was a

graduate student

and i was complaining to a fellow

graduate student about a very bad

japanese teacher i had at the time

and specifically i lamented that she

wasn’t a native speaker of japanese

and he got a little upset and he looked

at me

and asked me two questions which became

the million dollar questions

the sparks so to speak that set me off

on a years-long crusade

to rethink the relationship between

linguistic ability

nationality and teaching ability and to

encourage others to do the same

he asked you first of all what

difference does it make

whether she’s a native speaker or

japanese or not when it comes to

assessing her teaching ability

and secondly especially when it comes to

global languages

like english french and spanish that

have many second language speakers

how do you even decide who gets to count

as a native speaker

he’s right in fact this is a very thorny

issue

and let me illustrate this to you by way

of example

consider for the moment that you are

hiring

foreign english as a foreign language

teaching position

let’s imagine this is the case so this

is a position where you are teaching

english to non-native speakers say in

china

and let’s say the basic requirement of

the position

is that your teacher be a native english

speaker

think about whether or not you would

hire any of the following candidates for

this job

vladimir bokov is a very famous author

most well known perhaps for his english

language novel lolita

he also was a professor of comparative

literature at cornell university for

many years

however his native language was russian

this is the language in which he wrote

his first

nine novels would you consider him for

this english teaching position

even though he isn’t technically a

native english speaker

chung island also known as eileen chan

she’s a very famous chinese author wrote

most of her literature her fiction and

short stories in chinese

however she was bilingually educated in

english and chinese

she spent years in the united states she

even worked for the u.s government at

one point

what about her would she consider her to

meet the basic qualifications of this

position

lastly joseph conrad joseph conrad’s

native language was polish

and in fact english was his third

language

it was in this third language that he

wrote heart of darkness

which to this day is one of the most

widely read and taught

novels in english so again

i ask you if he walked into your

interview room

would you seriously consider him for

this english as a foreign language

position

that is open only to native speakers of

english

so you can see that this becomes a

thorny issue how do we define

this account as a native speaker and not

in part because of all the immigrants

and expats who spend so many years

living in english-speaking regions of

the world that their ability in the

language grows to equal or even surpass

that of people who were born and raised

in those regions

and in fact

in fact there are many more second

language speakers in english

than there are born native english

speakers

this chart represents the three

populations of the different kinds of

english speakers that exist in the world

and that innermost circle represents

those english speakers who were born

in countries that have always

predominantly spoken english such as the

usa

the uk australia etc so you can see

that that population of english speakers

is dwarfed

by the two outer circles the outer

circle and the expanding circle there

so there are far more second language

speakers of english than there are

born native speakers so when we

make a decision as to who gets to count

as a native speaker and who doesn’t for

a language like english

we’re necessarily excluding lots of

highly qualified teachers who speak

english at

fluent or native levels from

being able to be included in that

definition

now you would think this is not a major

problem in your job ads

simply ask for a native level speaker

rather than a native speaker

this tiny shift in language will shift

the emphasis to the linguistic ability

of your applicant

rather than to their identity however in

practice the shift seems in large part

not to have occurred

before you you see two real-life sample

job ads for english as a foreign

language teaching positions in china

there are many more

i found them online the one on the left

explicitly states that it wants only

native english speakers

the one on the right says that it wants

native speaker level

teachers only which seems more inclusive

until you consider

that according to chinese visa

stipulations

if you want to come to china to teach

english as a foreign language

you must be a citizen of one of the

countries in that inner circle

on the chart that i just showed you so

because of the chinese nation’s visa

stipulations

only a very small subset of people in

the world who speak english

can come to that country take on these

jobs and educate chinese youth

and because of this the nation of china

which provides many of the englishes of

foreign language teaching positions that

are available to the world

is precluding many qualified teachers of

english

who hail from all corners of the world

from coming to their nation

and benefiting their youth

and this is a problem because in fact

being a native speaker in any case is

not correlated

to being a great teacher these are two

separate skills

that require different formations and

different

developmental processes one can be a

native english speaker

it doesn’t mean that one will be a great

teacher of english

conversely one can be a fantastic

teacher of english without having to

have reached a native level

in that language once you have reached

an intermediate or high intermediate

level proficiency in a language

your effectiveness in the classroom is

going to be determined

primarily by your teaching expertise and

experience

not by your linguistic ability

this is my classroom at north broward

with both english and chinese

all over the whiteboard and walls i love

that i get to teach

both my native and my non-native

languages here at north broward

i especially feel that as a non-native

teacher of chinese i bring

a certain something to the table that

perhaps a

native speaker would not i can empathize

with my students

learning process because i went through

it myself i can readily identify

areas where they’re going to have

trouble because i had trouble with those

areas when i was in their shoes i know

how to break the language down into

digestible pieces

for them to process more easily because

that’s how i learned it

and in these respects i think i bring

a perspective to learning chinese that

can be helpful for my students

at 22 years old i criticized my then

japanese teacher

for teaching her non-native language now

seven years later i find myself making a

living doing exactly the same thing

that i criticized her for

my thinking on this matter has come full

circle and i hope that today i can

convince some of you to change your

minds on this matter as well

at the very least standing before my

students at north broward as a

non-native chinese future

i hope that i can encourage some of them

to carry forth that spark of love for

learning foreign languages

that was first inculcated in me a long

long time ago

and i hope that seeing me standing

before them

they will never be deterred by

preconceived notions that only a limited

narrow subset of people can ever truly

know a language like mandarin chinese

well enough to say

for example teach it thank you