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