Katya Nemtchinova

NNEST of the Month
November 2009
katya [at] spu [dot] edu

Ana Wu: Could you tell us your background and why you decided to become an educator?
Dr. Nemtchinova: I was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. I started learning English when I was seven and fell in love with it, in the large part because the teacher would bring toys to class to introduce new vocabulary- a unique teaching technique in a Soviet school with its strict discipline. As a student of Moscow State Linguistic University (Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Lingvisticheskij Universitet; Московский Государственный Лингвистический Университет), I had several opportunities to experience teaching English in a grade school, which made me realize that teaching is an extremely enjoyable and rewarding experience and what I really wanted to do was to teach at a university level. After graduation I worked as a technical translator for two years, all the time looking for a teaching job before getting a position at the University of Friendship of People (Universitet Druzhby Narodov; Университет Дружбы народов) where I taught English as a foreign language for three years.

In 1992 my husband, a physicist, was accepted into the PhD program at SUNY at Stony Brook, and left for the US. I joined him a year later and stayed at home for some time; when the tediousness of being a stay-at-home mom reached the critical point, I applied to the doctoral program in the Department of Linguistics at SUNY. While in the program I taught ESL classes on campus; I also taught methods courses in MA TESOL program during two summers. It took a certain amount of courage and perseverance to teach native speakers of English how to teach their language to people like me, but it turned out to be a very positive experience that came in handy when I interviewed for my current job at Seattle Pacific University.



Ana Wu: You teach methodology and linguistics in a MA-TESOL program, and Russian, your native language, to undergraduate students. With regards of being bilingual and bi-cultural, what are your strengths and challenges as a professor of your second language? What are your strengths and challenges as a teacher of your native language?
Dr. Nemtchinova: My dual teaching responsibilities of a language teacher and teacher educator are a perfect marriage for me. Teaching Russian language provides me with endless real-life examples to support and exemplify theoretical principles we discuss in the methodology and linguistics classes while teaching ESL methods keeps me abreast of new developments in second/foreign language teaching. It also keeps me honest in front of my Russian students and makes me consciously align my instruction with what we talk about in the methods classes.

Another benefit is the constant exchange of ideas and language learning activities with MA TESOL students: as they design and perform ESL mini-lessons as part of their academic requirements for my methods classes, I note the most interesting and innovative activities which could be adapted for my Russian students.

Each of my teaching roles involves a unique set of strengths and challenges. Beyond the proverbial native language model, teaching my native language fills me with everlasting enthusiasm and an immense joy as I see how students’ language skills and appreciation of the culture grow as they progress. Judging from student evaluations this passion is contagious and it motivates them to study better. As to challenges, I often face the problem of relating to my students’ level and not taking things for granted. I also know first-hand how difficult it might be for a native speaker to explain the finer grammar points without special training. Finally, I constantly have to check my urge to use as much Russian as possible in the classroom against students’ level of proficiency and modify my language without mutilating it.

My greatest asset as a teacher educator is my dual experience as a nonnative speaker learning English and as a native speaker teaching her native language. Students appreciate my opinion on what works and what doesn’t in an ESL/EFL classroom; they also benefit from my awareness of hurdles native speakers face in communicating about their native language. Addressing these problems in my classes in the context of some fundamental questions on the nature of language teaching and learning always results in an animated discussion and helps students develop their own approach to classroom teaching. These discussions are a valuable part of learning; however, sometimes graduate students fail to recognize my authority as a professor. Their inability to see beyond my nonnative-English speaking status, age, appearance, and background can impede teaching and communication and affect the classroom atmosphere in a negative way. While these individual attributes cannot be changed (with the exception of age), recognizing the motives underlying such an attitude allows me not to take it personally, to remain professional, and to assume a strong educator role by striving to improve my professional performance.



Ana Wu: You have done research on language learning, teaching education, using technology, and NNEST issues, particularly on the importance of mentoring and collaboration. In a NNEST-NEST collaborative model, what can both parties gain from this peer collaboration?
Dr. Nemtchinova: The importance of effective mentoring and collaboration in teacher education is well documented in the literature, which underscores the reciprocal nature of such a relationship as its primary benefit. Both NES and NNES can gain a lot from working together, and I see in my classes how NES and NNES students enhance each other’s teaching and learning experience as they work side by side towards their MA TESOL degree.

NNES students offer an invaluable insight into a variety of EFL teaching situations, either from the point of view of an EFL student or an EFL teacher, if they had taught in their countries before coming to the US. They also have a unique perspective on NES students’ teaching based on their language learning experience; they usually have a solid judgment about the feasibility of a lesson or an activity and can anticipate potential difficulties. Not only do they offer their opinion on how this or that activity will work in a real-life classroom or whether it is too challenging for a given population of students, they are also the best judges of NES students’ teacher talk which sometimes tends to be too fast and/or too complex because of the vocabulary, idioms and cultural references.

NES students appreciate NNES’s ability to present and explain grammar and vocabulary, an appreciation expressed in their highly positive peer evaluations. There is a lot of interest in language learning strategies that NNES employ; as we discuss the strategies suggested by the textbook NNES students are always asked how they found ways to master different skills.

For their part, NES make an important contribution to collaboration by providing personal and academic support to their NNES peers. They supply encouraging and constructive feedback on their teaching, attend to their language needs, and volunteer as an eager audience to help NNES rehearse their presentations. They encourage NNES to be assertive, ask questions, and participate in a class discussion. NES’s friendly guidance and advice is especially beneficial for those new to the country as it facilitates NNEST students’ socialization into the culture of an American university. As both groups get to know each other better, the NNES’s feeling of personal and academic comfort and self-confidence grows tremendously. I hope these collaborative relations will extend beyond graduate classes and will help both NES and NNES become better teachers.




Ana Wu: The NNEST Caucus became an Interest Section in 2008 and you were its first chair. What would you like to see the leaders and members of the NNEST IS do or initiate?
Dr. Nemtchinova: As a long-time member of NNEST Caucus and Interest Section I find the work done by our community leaders inspiring and encouraging. I would like the Interest Section to continue reaching out to NNS members of TESOL who are still not members of the IS and invite them to join us. As I sat in the NNEST IS Booth at TESOL 2009, I was surprised by the number of nonnative speaking colleagues who did not know who we were. Our strength is in numbers, and the stronger we are, the better we’ll be heard. I also think it is important to enhance the presence of NNES in TESOL through education and research, and to extend our mentoring and support to NNES members in the profession. I hope we will continue working towards increasing the number of conference presentations, single-authored and joint publications, and representation in TESOL, and encouraging on- and off-line networking. On a more practical note, it would be nice to have a column in NNES newsletter devoted to successful classroom techniques, particularly related to NNES issues.



Ana Wu: You are currently writing a series of Russian textbooks. How do you balance your professional life - as a language instructor, professor and writer, mentoring students, giving presentations, writing articles, going to conferences - with your family obligations? What advice would you give to graduate students and new teachers who are also parents and want to have a fulfilling career?
Dr. Nemtchinova: Being a successful professional as well as a caring wife and a devoted mother are both very high on my priority scale, but the balancing act requires a lot of self- discipline, prioritizing and organizing. Preparing classes, grading assignments, providing feedback on student presentations, and actual teaching and advising consume the best part of my waking hours, and then there are demands of being an active scholar and finding time to serve the university and the community. My biggest challenge is to have a fixed block of time for writing once or twice a week. Because I am most focused and alert in the morning, I treat my productive time very carefully and try to arrange my school and home schedule so as to carve a few hours of creative morning freedom for professional writing. This scheduling comes at a price: my “teaching” days are crammed with classes, advising appointments, and meetings to the point of exhaustion. Despite my desire to be substantially involved into university affairs, my options for campus service are limited to committees that only meet once a month; even then I often have to plead with committee members to schedule meetings on my teaching days to avoid a 40-minute commute to campus which will surely ruin my writing productivity. I have to miss university events that take place on my research days and find other ways to increase my visibility and participate in campus life. Nevertheless, having a fixed block of time for writing, even once or twice a week, has proven to be very beneficial for my research.

Family life requires as careful time management and organization as professional life. I have a weekly plan for various family responsibilities and house chores and stick to it. I cannot live without my checklists (one for classes, one for research, one for family, and one for everything else) –they help me remember what needs to be done and stay organized. The most important lesson I have learned while trying to cope with the demands of teaching, research, and family is that it is impossible to be an equally successful and dedicated mother, teacher, and researcher without sacrificing something. I think it’s essential to define your priorities and lower your standards on something you deem less important. My most important priorities are children and work, but I am more relaxed about household responsibilities, particularly cleaning. It’s simply not possible to excel in everything!

My advice to those who are juggling family and career is not to succumb to the feeling of guilt when something is not up to your standards, but be flexible and realistic. Learn to accept that things may not always be perfect, set reasonable goals and have a small celebration when you achieve one of them. It is also important to take time to do things that help you relax and unwind- a hobby, an exercise program, or a stress management practice. Playing tennis, knitting, and listening to audio books help me recharge my batteries when commitments start piling up. After a little break now and then I can focus more effectively on teaching, research, and family.


Ana Wu: Thank you for this delightful interview!

Thomas Andrew Kirkpatrick

NNEST of the Month
October 2009
akirkpat [at] ied [dot] edu [dot] hk

Ana Wu: Could you tell us your linguistic and professional background and why you decided to become an educator?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: I was born in England – my father was Irish, from Dublin and my mother English – but I grew up from the age of 2 in Malaysia and Singapore, as my father got a job there as an engineer (working mostly on tin mines). I was sent back to school in England from the age of seven – as was normal in those days – but my parents remained in Malaysia until my father died, which was in 1965.

Growing up in Malaysia and Singapore meant growing up in a diverse linguistic and cultural environment, and when I went to university I wanted to do a degree in Thai and Indonesian, but this was not possible then as no British universities offered this BA in those days, so I ended up doing Chinese Studies at Leeds University in England. I then got a postgraduate scholarship to China and found myself studying Modern Chinese Literature at Fudan University in Shanghai. I should add, however, that this was from 1976-1977, and there was not much modern Chinese literature that was allowed to be taught! I then moved down to Hong Kong where I worked as a journalist and got involved in English language teaching, became interested in it and did an MA in Linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT) at York in the UK. From there I worked in a number of Asian countries including four-year stints at both the National Institute of Education in Singapore and the Institute of Education in Rangoon, Burma.

In 1989 I got a scholarship to do my PhD at the Australian National University (ANU), where I studied Chinese rhetoric. By this time, I was married, and we stayed in Australia for the next 17 years – 5 years at ANU and 12 years at Curtin University in Perth – while our son went through the school system there. I have been here at the Institute of Education in Hong Kong since the beginning of 2006 and love being back in a Chinese setting and in a place where linguistic issues are so central.

Ana Wu: You have been a strong and persistent voice in challenging the native speaker myth and advocating for the recognition that what learners of English need is well-trained plurilingual teachers who are culturally sensitive and sophisticated. How did you first become interested in issues related to World Englishes and NNEST? What are you biggest frustrations and encouragements?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: Growing up in Malaysia and Singapore, I was exposed to linguistically and culturally diverse societies from a very early age and to people who spoke several languages as a matter of course. I was also exposed to varieties of English from a very early age. Having an Irish father who was always ready – if not eager – to prick the balloons of English pomposity was useful! My school teachers in my early years– from the wonderful Tamil principal of the kindergarten through to the New Zealand rugby coach at primary school – were the personification of diversity, so this was all natural to me.

My major frustration centres around the resilience of the privileging of the native speaker teacher over the multilingual local teacher. This prejudice is embraced by key stakeholders in the region, so that school principals and ministries of education still believe that the ‘native speaker’ represents a better investment than the local multilingual. This prejudice is even more invidious when they use it to justify the hiring of untrained, unqualified (and almost always unvetted) native speakers as English teachers ahead of local trained and multlilingual teachers, solely on the grounds that they are native speakers. My new book coming out soon with Hong Kong University Press ‘English as a lingua franca in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): roles, features and the Multilingual Model’, argues for a radical review of language education policy in the region, proposing that primary schools should focus on local languages and not on English, and that English is best taught by local multilinguals using a ‘multilingual model.’

Ana Wu: Once in a while, in our NNEST IS online listserv, we are notified of a job advertisement that specifically asks for native speakers of English. While most members perceive it as a legitimate case of discrimination, there is always someone who thinks the administration is entitled to hire whoever they want. There was also an example in which the students demanded the school to hire native speakers.

a. How do you define a legitimate case of discrimination? Do you think we have the right or duty to comment or fight against discriminatory practices in other countries? Also, if a type of discrimination is a common practice, for example, age or gender discrimination, is there anything we as professionals and outsiders can or should do?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: I think it should be part of our profession’s ethics that we insist that language teachers should be judged on their training, qualifications and linguistic proficiency, and not on an accident of linguistic birthright. I have spoken to a number of organizations including UNICEF to see if it would be practical to set up a register of schools and institutions that adhere to a code of ethics, but nothing has yet come out of it. I know TESOL itself takes a strong line on this and sets a good example (and see George Braine’s suggested response to this), but I think it should be possible to establish a register of this sort. Hiring someone solely on the basis of their linguistic birthright is a highly discriminatory form of ‘linguicism’ and would be criminal, were the hiring done on the basis of colour, for example.

In terms of age and gender discrimination, we have to be sensitive to local cultural practice. Many cultures give respect to age and, in many cultures, men hold more power and rights than women. These practices are deeply ingrained and are not going to be changed overnight by strident criticism from foreign teachers, especially from those who are only going to be in the respective country for a relatively short period of time. Roslyn Appleby of the University of Technology, Sydney writes very sensitively and sensibly about these issues in the context of international development. and I strongly recommend her work.

b. Still using the job advertisement as an example, what can members of the NNEST IS do to help promote equality in the TESOL profession without being accused of advocating social reform in countries where we do not live and therefore do not know about the social background in detail.
Note: In our official website, we have posted George Braine’s suggested response to discrimination in job advertisement and a copy of TESOL statement on NNEST and hiring practices.
Prof. Kirkpatrick: A major problem is that non-native speakers are often the most prejudiced against non-native speaker teachers. The key stakeholders I mentioned above – school principals and ministries of education and to this could be added many of the owners of private language schools – are themselves non-native speakers and it is their prejudices (along with the prejudices of parents and the students themselves) who see them hiring native speakers ahead of local multilinguals. Like all prejudices, this is based on ignorance, so one major task for all of us in the profession is to educate people about this. But, as I indicated above, this must be done sensitively and with an in-depth knowledge of the local culture(s) and context(s). Joining relevant professional organizations is also beneficial as locals and ‘foreigners’ can then work together, under the umbrella of the professional organisation, to achieve change.

Ana Wu: In your article, “English as an Asian Language,” (2000) you stated that since the majority of learners want to use English as a lingua franca, “educated speakers of the regional variety could provide the models (...) Instead of spending large sums of money on importing native-speaking teachers and externally developed materials, funding should be set aside for the professional development of local teachers and for the development of developing regionally appropriate ELT curricula.”

Taking the case of a country where English is widely spoken as an example, let me play the devil’s advocate by asking if the same rationale would work - meaning, native-speaking teachers would be more suitable than non-native speakers when teaching adult immigrant students because these students will use English to communicate with other native speakers. Why or why not?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: There is, of course, nothing wrong with native speaker teachers per se! As I indicated earlier, language teachers should be judged on their training, qualifications and linguistic proficiency – and I would see being multilingual a crucial part of that. The problem lies in the hiring of native speakers solely on the grounds of their linguistic birthright on the one hand, and in the belief that being monolingual is an advantage for a language teacher on the other. The first is discriminatory, the second seems to me to be plainly absurd. How can someone who has never learned a second or foreign language possibly be considered to be better-equipped to be a language teacher than someone who has?

With regard to the point that the migrants student will use to communicate with native speakers, they will, of course, also communicate with other non-native speakers. ‘International’ students all over the world tend, for example, to communicate more with fellow international students than with local students. Lingua franca communication is always of crucial importance.

Ana Wu: Regarding the hiring of monolingual teachers in some Asian countries as opposed to multilingual locals, in “No experience necessary?” (2006), you asked, “In what other profession would a lack of relevant knowledge and experience be touted as an advantage?”

Considering international graduate students attending a TESOL or Applied Linguistics graduate program in an English-spoken country,

a. What advice would you give to these new EFL teachers who are returning home after getting the degree and are concerned about having a second-class status in the profession when competing with less-trained native English speaking colleagues?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: I think they should join their local professional organisations and also try and find out who the ‘rogue’ employers are and who the ethical employers are. Having said that, these teachers will inevitably meet injustice and at different levels. In Hong Kong, for example, native English teachers tend to be paid more than their local counterparts; and non-native teachers will find it impossible to find work in a range of language schools.

b. What can professors in these TESOL or Applied Linguistics graduate programs do to empower or guide the students who may face hiring discrimination in their homecountries? Should concerns of NNEST be included in the curriculum and training? How?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: This is a hard one to answer as I’m not sure of the contexts you are referring to. One point that is probably generalisable to all contexts is the importance of making people feel good about being multilingual. Hong Kong is full of trilingual people who believe that their English is not good enough – because it differs from a native speaker standard - and/or that their Putonghua is not good enough for the same reason. Actually, though, they are functional trilinguals. They feel deficient, however, because their multilingual linguistic proficiency is measured against a monolingual standard. This measuring of language acquisition against a monolingual standard remains a huge problem for traditional cognitivist second language acquisition SLA. Multilinguals need to be measured against comparable and successful multilinguals, not against a monolingual standard. Language is a social construct and is something that is used in real contexts. Being able to use it successfully in these contexts is what matters, not whether your vowel sounds perfectly replicate some idealised speaker of RP. So I’d like to see a shift from a traditional cognitivist SLA perspective to one that includes a more ‘social’ theory of SLA.

At the same time, all language teachers need to encourage respect in multilingual ability, no matter what the languages involved are. Thus children from minority groups who go to school should never be made to feel ‘small’ because they speak this or that language. Instead, a multilingual repertoire always needs to be valued. In the same way, multilingual students should be made to feel proud about their linguistic heritage and backgrounds.

The concerns of NNEST should certainly be included in the curriculum – a good way of doing this is to shift the focus of TESOL courses so that the multilingual and multicultural contexts of almost all English language teaching contexts are fore-grounded. At the same time, being multilingual and multicultural must be recognised as important advantages and attributes of the language teacher. If US and UK-based TESOL courses gave formal recognition to being multilingual and being multicultural – even making it a condition of entry to postgraduate courses – then employers might start to take this seriously too.

Ana Wu: In your article, “Teaching English Across Cultures: What do English language teachers need to know to know how to teach English,” (2007), you argue that it is time to discard the NS-NNS distinction and instead develop a list of skills and knowledge (p.32) that all language teachers should have.

If we use this list to describe the ideal language teacher, how would we label language learners and speakers? If we discard the NS-NNS labels, how would call we ourselves?
Prof. Kirkpatrick: Do we need labels? It would be nice to discard the NS-NNS labels and just refer to properly qualified and trained people as professional language teachers.

One related point I would make is that English is often introduced to learners too early. This is a particular problem in primary schools through out Asia. As I mentioned above, primary schools in this region should be focusing on ensuring children develop proficiency and literacy in their mother tongue(s) and the respective national language, and not on English. It is perfectly possible to develop excellent proficiency in English (in any language) if you start in secondary school. The current increase in the number of ‘young learners’ of English world-wide enrolling in private language schools is also a concern. Many middle class parents in Asia (and possibly elsewhere) are choosing to educate their children in schools where English is the medium of instruction instead of in their own language. As a result, their proficiency in English often comes at the expense of proficiency (and literacy) in their first language. This seems incredibly short-sighted. In this sense then, the ideal learner of English in the region should be someone who is already bilingual in their first and national language!

Ana Wu: Thank you for this interesting interview! I would like to also thank Terry Doyle for revising and editing the interview questions.


References:

Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). Teaching English across Cultures: What do English language teachers need to know to know how to teach English. EA Journal 23 (2).

Kirkpatrick, A. (2006). No experience necessary? The Guardian Weekly.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2000). English as an Asian Language. The Guardian Weekly.

Ali Shehadeh

NNEST of the Month

September 2009

ali [dot] shehadeh [at] uaeu [dot] ac [dot] ae

Ana Wu: Could you tell us about your background and why you decided to be an educator?
Dr. Shehadeh: I developed an interest in languages, especially English, when I was 13 years old in the middle school. In my country, Syria, English is taught as a foreign language. Several of my middle and high school teachers inspired me to like the language. As soon as I graduated from high school, I enrolled in the Department of English at Aleppo University, Syria, in 1977. Even at the age of 17, when I was still a first year student at university, I excelled in my English studies, started to give private English lessons and short courses at private institutions. On graduation from university in 1981, I was one of the honour students who were offered Graduate-Assistant positions at the university to teach English to university students majoring in English.

How I became an educator was a peculiar story, but a rewarding one. One day, a group of the middle school students I was teaching -when I was still a student at university- came to me and said: “We really like you as a caring and enthusiastic teacher. We also like the way you deal with us and treat us, but sometimes your language goes over our heads! We need more accessible and simple language which we can easily understand.” Ever since, I was convinced that incomprehensible input or output is of less value no matter how important it is or the message it carries, unless it is understood by your audience. Since that time too, I would give equal weight, importance and planning to How to teach, or the methodology I use in my teaching, as much as to What to teach (It comes no surprise therefore that my doctoral dissertation (1991) was on comprehensible output!).

This reconsideration of the teaching method paid off. On several occasions, both when I was studying for my bachelor’s degree in Syria or my graduate degrees in the UK, my classmates would ask me to assist them in their lessons, to re-explain lessons for them, or to give them my own notes. Some of my classmates and professors would describe me as ‘born to be a teacher?” This is how I became an educator.



Ana Wu: You have given workshops and extensively published in the second language acquisition field, especially about the task-based learning approach. Also, you got the 2006 TESOL Award for a Teacher as a Classroom Action Researcher. What advice would you give to NNES novice teachers who are just starting their career?
Dr. Shehadeh: My advice to NNES novice teachers is to always aim at and maintain a high level of dedication and commitment to their teaching, learning, research and professionalism. This can be achieved in at least two ways: First, NNESTs should know that what matters for real success is not ‘who you are’ (native or non-native), but rather ‘what you know’ (your competence and your knowledge). Second, I would encourage these NNES novice teachers, when something goes wrong in their teaching or classroom, to move away from ‘Why don’t they understand me?!’ to ‘How can I make myself understood?’



Ana Wu: You were once a member of the NNEST Caucus and the 2008-2009 chair of the Applied Linguistic Interest Section at TESOL. What other leadership positions have you taken? Why is taking a leadership position important to you? Would you encourage young professionals to take a leadership position? Why or why not?
Dr. Shehadeh: Actually I’m still a member of the NNEST Interest Section and I am on the NNEST IS email list.

On leadership positions, besides the Applied Linguistic Interest Section leadership role, I have served or have been serving TESOL and TESOL Arabia, my regional TESOL affiliate, in a number of other ways too: Member of TESOL’s Awards and Grants Standing Committee, Coordinator of TESOL’s Ruth Crymes Academy Fellowship Awards, Member of TESOL’s Publications Standing Committee, Member of TESOL’s Research Standing Committee, Member of TESOL Arabia Research Grants Committee, and Member of TESOL Arabia Travel Grants Committee. I have also been serving on TESOL Quarterly’s Editorial Board for a number of years now, initially as a manuscript reviewer and evaluator, and now as a major section co-editor, Brief Reports and Summaries.

It is very important for NNESTs to take leadership roles in TESOL for a number of reasons: 1) NNESTs outnumber NESTs in the world. Actually they make more than two-thirds of all English language teachers worldwide (Crystal, 2003). 2) Being ex-learners who went through the same journey of L2 learning which their students are taking, NNESTs are in a better position to understand and appreciate the difficulties their students face; they are more sensitive to their students’ needs and wants; and they are better positioned to assist their students in the L2 learning journey. 3) NNESTs bring a sense of multiculturalism and multilingualism to the profession of TESOL. Unlike NESTs, every NNEST comes to the TESOL profession with at least two languages, his and the English language, and two cultures, his and the English culture. It is imperative therefore that NNESTs take active and leading roles in TESOL if their voices were to be represented and heard, and if TESOL were to be a truly international, multilingual and multicultural association.



Ana Wu: As someone who has taught at universities and academic institutions in many countries, what do you think the NNEST IS or TESOL can do to fight against hiring discrimination and discrimination in the workplace?
Dr. Shehadeh: I think that TESOL and the NNEST IS can do a lot to fight against hiring discrimination and discrimination in the workplace. The most important thing to do is to change the baseless, but popular assumption that the teachers most acceptable are native speakers. For instance, in the last 3-4 years I gave a number of presentations, keynote speeches, featured sessions, and discussion groups on the topic, both individually and in collaboration with other NEST and NNEST professionals, in regional and international conferences, symposiums, and workshops. Research shows, I would report to my audience, that the popular assumption by administrators, recruiting agencies/personnel, the public, students, and even some teachers that the target language is best taught by the native speakers of that language is not accurate and therefore it is changing.

Concerned people are now more aware that what matters most is no more ‘who you are’ but rather ‘what you know,’ and ‘what you can do.’ I would report to my audience that studies of what makes a good teacher (administered to students, teacher trainees, and school administrators) have specified several attributes of what makes a good teacher, including caring, committed, confident, creative, culturally aware, decisive, disciplined, energetic, enthusiastic, flexible, funny/humorous, knowledgeable (language and SLA), knowledgeable (methods), open-minded, organized, patient, punctual, reflective, respectful, self-aware, and well-planned (for a review of studies, see Thompson, 2007). None was cited as being a NEST or NNEST. TESOL as a global profession, the NNEST IS, and even individual professionals and members can all play an active role too in fighting against hiring discrimination and discrimination in the workplace by falsifying such baseless assumptions.



5. What advice would you give graduate students or novice teachers who may not conform to the native speaker image in appearance and language?
Dr. Shehadeh: The advice I would give graduate students or novice teachers is to prove to all stakeholders (mainly students, administrators, and parents), in deeds not words, that what matters most -more than anything else- is genuine professionalism, namely: 1) teacher’s competence, 2) teacher’s expertise, 3) whether and to what degree the teacher achieves learning and teaching goals, and 4) whether and to what degree the teacher possesses the qualities of a good teacher mentioned above.

Ana Wu: Thank you very much for this interesting interview!


References:

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd Edition). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Shehadeh, A. (1991). Comprehension and Performance in Second Language Acquisition: A Study of Second Language Learners’ Production of Modified Comprehensible Output. Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Durham , UK .

Thompson, S. (2007) What Makes a ‘Good Teacher’ in a Communicative Class-centered EFL Classroom? MA Dissertation. Centre for English Language Studies, Department of English, University of Birmingham , UK .

Robert Phillipson

NNEST of the Month
August 2009

rp [dot] isv [at] cbs [dot] dk

Dr. Phillipson: Thank you for contributing questions, all of which are important. They are also, unfortunately, ‘big’ questions that need rather detailed answers – which time does not permit. Anyone working in our professional field is likely to suffer from information overload. I definitely do: I’m rather stretched both professionally and in my home life, since my wife, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and I live in the country, grow most of our own vegetables and fruit, and have sheep. We enjoy working with nature, and feel this complements our intellectual activities. Both involve interaction with ‘the real world’, in our view.

1. Could you tell us your background and why you decided to become an educator? (from Ana Wu, City College of San Francisco, ESL Instructor)

Dr. Phillipson: My home background and schooling were entirely monolingual British English, but with many factors triggering a love of languages: my mother was in drama, my parents were internationally oriented, and music figured prominently. My first visit to the USA was as an 11-year-old member of the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral Choir in London in 1953; we gave concerts in 40 cities. At school I specialised in French and German, which led to studying these languages at Cambridge University. I spent half a year between school and university in continental Europe, experiencing Austrian, French and German cultures and becoming proficient in the languages. With a BA, I joined the British Council, the UK’s official service for cultural diplomacy, in 1964. It stands for bridge-building between Britain and countries worldwide, in theory in the interests of both. Within the organization’s career service, English teaching seemed to me to be the most stimulating activity, and I therefore found myself in posts in Algeria, Spain, Yugoslavia, and London that built up ELT professionalism. But by 1973 I had had enough of being in Her Majesty’s service, emigrated to Denmark, and was lucky enough to find work straight away at an experimental university, Roskilde. Studies there are multi-disciplinary in the first two years, problem- and project-oriented, with students working in groups at building up academic competence in speech and writing, in dialogue with their professors. This forces teaching staff to constantly renew their professional identity, which is demanding but very productive. At several Danish higher education institutions over the years, I have found traditional teacher-centred course teaching much less worthwhile.

So to answer your question more directly, I have enjoyed being an educator, i.e. teaching, and the institutional teamwork and administration that this entails. I have also been fortunate enough to be in university employment in which there has been a right and duty to research for at least one-third of my time, in institutions that attempt to ensure that teaching is informed by ongoing research.

There is some personal information on my background in my contribution ‘Dialogue and Discourse’ to Christian and Critical English Language Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas, ed. Mary S. Wong and A. Suresh Canagarajah, 2009. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 66-71.

2. From poststructural and postcolonial perspectives, linguistic imperialism could be critiqued by its deterministic and binary divisions; those who colonize and those who are colonized.

However, in this globalized era–where it is more difficult to differentiate this binary yet expanding hegemonic power of English–what would linguistic imperialism provide to our understanding of the dominance of English? Does linguistic imperialism have any insights and meaning in this era? What would you say about Pennycook’s (2003) article, “Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity”? And how does linguistic imperialism differ from world Englishes? (From Bong-gi Sohn, University of British Columbia, first year doctoral student).

Dr. Phillipson: I have written a good deal about the issues you raise since the publication of Linguistic imperialism in 1992. Several of my articles are being re-published in a new book Linguistic imperialism continued (Routledge, July 2009, also published in New Delhi by Orient Blackswan for seven Asian countries). The book also includes a number of book reviews of the work of others in the field of ‘global’ English, and goes into considerable detail on many of the issues you ask about. In the introductory article I react to some of Pennycook’s points of criticism of my understanding of linguistic imperialism, such as being too deterministic and overly structural. I don’t think that Pennycook’s work on hip-hop cultures really takes educational policy for multilingualism, or even ‘English-medium’ education, forward significantly, except in relation to connecting to young people’s awareness of language.

I move on to attempting to theorise ‘the linguistic imperialism of neoliberal empire’, since, as you rightly state, the world has changed a good deal, and the roles of English with it, over the past 20 years. The linguistic imperialisms of dominant languages have not gone away, but are integral to the maintenance and reconstitution of power, economic, political, cultural and military in the preset-day world. The binary issue needs unpacking (the oppressed generally know the difference between Them and Us), and this can be facilitated when colonizers become aware of their role: their/our minds need decolonizing as much as do those of the colonized - and I am not essentialising by writing this, we all have agency and responsibility, and an opportunity to exert influence.

Within this overall framework, which, yes, is a global structure, TESOL activity can be ambivalent, an issue that is explored in Julian Edge’s (Re-)Locating TESOL in an age of empire (2006), which I have a review of in the next number of the TESOL Quarterly. The initial work on linguistic imperialism, and linguicism, required analysis of structure, ideologies and beliefs, and the policies, discourses and professional norms that these are embedded and transmitted in.

Most work on World Englishes in the Kachruvian sense is purely descriptive, and an over-simplification of the complexity of the sociolinguistics of English in multilingual societies. Whereas I see my own work as attempting to document inequality and exploitation, and to move things forward in a more just direction. Not getting stuck in intellectual games. I have reviewed a recent book, Cultures, Contexts, and World Englishes by Yamuna Kachru and Larry E. Smith in World Englishes, 38/1, 2009, 136-138.

3. Currently, I am conducting a research project in which I am exploring the crosslinguistic applicability of the native speaker fallacy by investigating foreign language students’ perceptions of their native and non-native teachers. The next step in the project will be comparing ESL students’ perceptions with that of foreign language students. I would like to learn more about your expert opinion on the crosslinguistic applicability of the native speaker fallacy.

I would like to make use of this opportunity to thank you for your immense contributions to our field, as well as to our efforts of understanding what is behind the mirror (from Ali Fuad Selvi, University of Maryland, College Park, PhD student – Graduate Teaching/Research Assistant).

Dr. Phillipson: This sounds like an immensely worthwhile and much needed project. Historically, it is a fact that the TESOL business evolved quite separately from well-established traditions of foreign language learning. They remain distinct professional worlds, with literature still dominating in most departments of ‘English’ in, say, the UK and India, and the same being true of departments of ‘French’ or ‘Spanish’ in the USA or Denmark. The financial constraints that increasingly drive higher education in the UK mean that English for Academic Purposes, pre-sessional language training, is being privatised, since there is cash in the foreign students industry, and universities can then maintain their language departments, and an ‘apolitical’ focus on literature, unchanged.

By contrast, native speaker mythology has never taken root in most countries of continental Europe, which have a relatively successful tradition of learning foreign languages, including English, taught by locals with proficiency in the target language. University posts are open to all in most countries, irrespective of mother tongue. This means that in foreign language departments, any native speakers who are employed are so because of their qualifications and not because of their mother tongue being privileged.

The need to analyse why there is so much faith in native speakers of English in Asia (but not in the Indian sub-continent) and the Middle East really needs empirical exploration. Personally I think it is a scandal that monolinguals are let loose on hapless Chinese, Malay, Saudi, or Emirate learners. The attitudes of decision-makers as well as learners therefore need clarification.

In the European Union, several studies have explored the gap between the policy-makers’ rhetoric which advocates early foreign language learning, and the professional skills that need to be in place for anything of the kind to succeed.

So any studies that can shed light on ‘the crosslinguistic applicability of the native speaker fallacy’ and cross-cultural and cross-national dimensions would be very welcome.You are probably familiar with the considerable literature on the qualifications of 'non-native' teachers of English (a discriminatory label, since it defines people negatively, in terms of what they are not). I also heard of a PhD study at Teachers College, Columbia University, which Ofelia Garcia supervised, and which drew on the fine tenets/fallacies. Ofelia wrote to me some months ago, Maryam Brjian, mb2452@columbia.edu. She has just finished a dissertation on English teaching in Iran which she will defend April 1st. For the moment, she is in the United States again, but I don't know whether she still is. Ofelia is now a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

4. Prior to the publication of your seminal book Linguistic Imperialism in 1992 conventional wisdom among linguists was that language spread was a naturally occurring phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest significance of your book was to show that the current position of English in the world was clearly not the inadvertent and natural result of language spread as it has been traditionally defined. Also, as Alastair Pennycook pointed out in his book English and the Discourses of Colonialism, you have been one of the few writers on ELT who have written about in detail why colonialism should be seen as the context in which present day language policies are framed. Pennycook compares your treatment of these aspects of language teaching and ELT history with those of Kelly (1969) and Howatt (1984), for example. How did you originally come to realize that the global spread of English is so closely linked to colonialism and also to the Americanization or homogenization of world cultures? Also, how important and relevant are the conclusions of your seminal book Linguistic Imperialism and the five tenets you identified (especially tenet #2 “the ideal teacher of English is a native speaker” and the “native speaker fallacy”) to ELT and especially non-native teacher issues in 2009? (Questions 4, 5 and 6 from Terry Doyle, City College of San Francisco, ESL Instructor).

Dr. Phillipson: The short answer to the first question is that my experience of being paid for nine (youthful!) years by the British government to promote English worldwide, and of working in countries with different political agendas (Third World liberation Algeria and communist Yugoslavia, now both tragically fractured) made me sensitive to issues of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and global and local inequalities.

One seminal experience was that my wife, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (see www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org), was asked by a Norwegain ‘aid’ NGO in the early 1980s to get involved in support for the liberation movement of Namibia, SWAPO, then still occupied by apartheid South Africa. It later transpired that well-intentioned NGOs in Scandinavia were attempting to support Namibian refugee children living in camps in Angola and Zambia by sending them literacy materials. And guess what? Large amounts of money were being spent on British mother-tongue basic readers presenting a world in which ‘Peter is helping Daddy wash the car, while Susan is doing the washing-up with Mummy’, and pictures of middle-class Brits to match. We were appalled, and started to look deeply into what had happened in post-colonial education in ‘independent’ countries in Asia and Africa. Tove was already then a well-established scholar in bilingualism studies, with a worldwide network, and publications for UNESCO dating back to the 1970s. We were twice at ‘aid’ conferences for SWAPO in Zambia, planning education for an independent country, and have never looked back. We have been deeply influenced by many African and Indian scholars and creative writers (see, for instance, our “Reviewing a book and how it relates to ‘global’ English, Wizard of the crow by Ngŭgĭ wa Thiong’o”. The European English Messenger, 16/1, 2007, 50-54. It can be downloaded from my website, along with several recent articles, www.cbs.dk/staff/phillipson).

I am afraid that the native speaker fallacy is alive and kicking in many parts of the world. English as a ‘lingua franca’ belongs in the same category of generally unchallenged myths that serve to propel English forward uncritically, and which I have written about at length.

5. In your book English Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy, you contrast the “diffusion of English paradigm” with the “ecology of languages paradigm”. Among other things, the “ecology of languages paradigm” promotes multilingualism and linguistic diversity, additive foreign/second language leaning, and equality in communication. In this book you also advocate English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as a way to legitimate a shift away from native speaker norms towards equipping people to function effectually as non-native speakers. Can you explain further how the “ecology of languages paradigm” can bring about truly equitable communication? Also, what are the negative consequences of continuing to treat native speakers as the learning target? How can the ELF model make a positive contribution to non-native teacher issues, to help decrease discrimination against non-native job applicants and to put to rest the idea that non-native teachers have to define their identity in terms of “native teachers”?

Dr. Phillipson: Much of what I have written earlier (in this NNEST contribution and generally) can be seen as pointing in the direction of a world of more equitable communication. I think that analysis and discussion of the native speaker issue, and of the legitimation of Englishes in all their diversity, are often derailed by a failure to distinguish clearly between norms in speech and in writing. The amount of variation in written English worldwide is minimal, except in texts that are of purely local significance. Whereas in speech the position is much more varied. This applies equally to so-called ‘native speakers’ as much as to non-natives.

Research into ELF is still in its infancy, even if the Vienna project has now made a large corpus accessible on the internet. But there is no direct connection between insights from the kind of research that Seidlhofer and Jenkins stand for and what happens in classrooms. On the other hand, if classrooms can sensitise learners to a wide variety of relevant types of spoken English, develop the receptive competence of learners, while maintaining clear and different goals for the types of spoken proficiency that are needed for different contexts, and different levels of the education system (local --- regional --- national --- international), I see this as ensuring that English is learned appropriately, additively, and with no reason for any teachers to define themselves as either native or non-native, but rather as proficient users of English.

6. Dr. Phillipson: In the March, 2009 interview Marinus Stephan on this blog, Dr. Stephan

mentions that your book Linguistic Imperialism is one of the best books he has read in the politics of ELT. He also says that much criticism has been leveled at your book. No doubt, Dr. Stephan is alluding to criticism of your arguments which come from what I feel are un-informed people who refuse to see the connections between colonialism, Americanization, and now globalization. How would you reply to people who say that the “native speaker fallacy” is no longer relevant when it comes to policy decisions and hiring practices?

Dr. Phillipson: I agree that much of the criticism of Linguistic imperialism tends to be rooted in political differences. I am also tired of the book being misrepresented, even by eminent scholars like John Joseph, and Bernard Spolsky, to whom I have responded in ‘Linguistic imperialism: a conspiracy, or a conspiracy of silence?’ Language policy, 6/3-4, 2007, 377-383.

7. How do you think we should call ourselves? What do you think English speakers should be called in the future? Would terms such as intercultural speakers, multi-linguals, or translinguistic teachers be more accurate and representative than "non-native speakers"? (Questions 7 and 8 are from Ana Wu, City College of San Francisco, ESL Instructor).

Dr. Phillipson: I strongly agree with the need to get away from the non-native label. It may be no comfort for you to learn that teachers of English in Scandinavia are never referred to in this way! Also, ESL means very different things in different parts of the world. Obviously TESOLers should be minimally bilingual. There was a symposium on this topic organised by Shelley Taylor at TESOL 2008 in New York (with, among others, Tove, Jim Cummins, Ofelia García, and Joan Wink), one purpose being to attempt to persuade the High and Mighty in TESOL to make a clear break with monolingualism. The short papers from this symposium are appearing in a number of the TESOL Quarterly which I have already read proofs for.

I don’t think my (European) views on what labels might go down well in your local contexts are relevant. Good luck in producing something snappy and valid.

8. You have written and discussed very controversial issues. How do you deal with criticism? How do you react to people who disagree with your ideas?

Dr. Phillipson: This is a tricky issue. Tove told me, as soon as Linguistic imperialism was published, that I would need to develop a thick skin. I felt the need to spend quite a bit of time responding to critiques of my work that I thought were invalid, in several journals. I list the references in my new book, which does not regurgitate these ‘dialogues’, though the book does contain my reviews of books by people like David Crystal, Abram de Swaan, and Janina Brutt-Griffler, scholars who basically claim that linguistic imperialism never existed (!), and that I got it all wrong – which happily a lot of people worldwide don’t agree with (the book was published in China in 2000 and in India in 2008, better late than never). One is tempted to simply ignore attacks that either misrepresent what one has written or contradict one’s conclusions on false premises. This has also happened with what Tove and I have written about linguistic human rights. On the other hand, if one does not challenge conflicting views, they have a habit of getting recycled by others as though they are uncontested. Ideally scholarly dialogue should take things forward, and lead to better empirical descriptions and to an improvement of our concepts and theoretical approaches - for which all of us, including myself, need to be open-minded.

Ana Wu: Thank you very much for your time and insightful interview!