A Tentative Study Of The English Teaching Styles Of Native-english-speaking And Non-native-english-speaking Teachers

Teaching styles (TS) refer to the unique combination and performance ofproductive and consistent teaching perspectives, teaching methods and teachingfeatures explored and formed by teachers in a long-term teaching process. Theessence of a teaching style lies in its uniqueness in many aspects, such as language,methods, classroom interactions and so on.At present, the number of native-English-speaking teachers coming to Chinafor English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities is gradually increasing.However, native-English-speaking teachers are mainly assigned to teach thecourses of English major students and students with high English proficiency. Asto non-English major students, for the two years’ fundamental English study, theyhave few opportunities to attend foreign teachers’ classes or communicate withthem. With the development of bilingual teaching, more and more native Englishteachers come to Chinese colleges or universities to help non-English majorundergraduates’ English study. Therefore, a vivid contrast of college Englishteaching styles between native-English-speaking teachers andnon-native-English-speaking teachers are displayed.The findings of the research reveal that the teaching styles between the nativeand non-native English teachers are not the same and salient differences do exist.Native-English-speaking teachers are popular with their students because of thefacetious teaching languages and the various teaching forms. It can be inferred thatthe teaching styles of native teachers are learner-centered. Three features of nativeteachers’ classes are colorful teaching methods, humorous teaching languages andactive classroom atmosphere, making it more comfortable and relaxing to attendforeign teachers’classes and the students have more enthusiasm to learn. As for the non-native teachers, the traditional teaching style, namely,teacher-centered or authoritative style is still in the prominent position. In additionto fewer classroom interactions between teachers and students, the teachingattitudes or behaviors of non-native teachers are relatively reserved and serious.Meantime, the teaching languages and teaching methods are plain and the classatmosphere is rigid. As a result, most of the students agree that they are tired afterfinishing Chinese teachers’ classes and they have less passion to learn in suchclasses.In the English classrooms in Chinese colleges or universities, greatdifferences of salient teaching styles lie between English teachers from native-English-speaking countries and non-native-English-speaking countries. The thesisaims to study and contrast the teaching styles of the two groups of teachers bytracking and comparing20non-native teachers as well as20native teachersthrough qualitative methods like classroom observations, questionnaire andinterview and quantitative methods as data processing to find the differences andsimilarities between them. Meanwhile, it discusses and analyzes the positive andnegative effects of the differences on teaching effectiveness. At the same time, theauthor encourages the two groups of teachers to learn from each other and makethe best of the both worlds; in the end, some implications and suggestion from theteaching styles’ similarities and differences of these teachers are put forward bythe author.