A COMPARISON OF TEACHER AND NON-TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF THE SECOND LANGUAGE COMMUNICATION OF ADVANCED ESL STUDENTS WHO ARE NATIVE SPEAKERS OF CHINESE

The purpose of this study was to compare teacher and non-teacher perceptions of the second language communication of advanced ESL students who are native speakers of Chinese. Eight native speakers of Chinese were videotaped speaking extemporaneously about the same topic. These videotapes were shown to ESL teachers (n = 25) and non-teachers (n = 32) who completed a questionnaire about their perceptions of each speaker's presentation. All of the ESL teachers had had at least one year of experience teaching at least one ESL course; all of the non-teachers were undergraduate students. All of the respondents were native speakers of American English.;A MANOVA and series of univariate analyses of variance comparing the two groups on the five factors revealed in the combined-group factor analysis showed a significant difference in the teacher and non-teacher ratings of students' linguistic ability. Non-teachers rated students' linguistic ability significantly higher than the ESL teachers did. Differences in teacher and non-teacher ratings of students on the other factors were not significant.;Data from the questionnaire were subjected to a factor analysis, first by respondent group and then with groups combined. The factor analysis of the ESL teachers' data revealed five factors: comprehensibility, social acceptability, linguistic ability, personality, and body language. The factor analysis of non-teachers' data revealed four factors: comprehensibility/linguistic ability, social acceptability, body language/paralanguage, and personality. The factor analysis of the combined-group data revealed five factors: comprehensibility, social acceptability, linguistic ability, personality, and body language.