Native And Nonnative-English-Speaking Teachers In China: A Case Study Of Chinese University Students' Attitudes Toward Their English Teachers

With the advancement of globalization, English, the main language of intercultural communication, is used more and more frequently and extensively in the world. As a result, more qualified English teachers are needed in the field of ELT around the world. Although the majority of these English teachers are not native English speakers, their contribution to ELT profession is gradually recognized and confirmed. Foreign researchers and scholars have focused their attention to the different roles of native speakers and nonnative speakers in EFL and ESL teaching and particulars to the issue of the dichotomy of native-English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and Normative-English-speaking teachers (NNESTs). However, in China, the existent researches in this field are rather limited, which are disproportionate to the daunting numbers of EFL teachers and learners. Meanwhile, China sees an increasing enrollment of EFL students and a shortage of qualified English teachers in recent years. Under such circumstances, it is of necessity and urgency to conduct a research study of NESTs and NNESTs to compare advantages and disadvantages of these two camps of teachers in EFL teaching profession. The present research study surveys one hundred Chinese EFL university students for their evaluation of their English teachers including both NESTs and NNESTs. The study also analyzes the correlations between these differences between NESTs and NNESTs and the students' evaluation. The findings of the study are expected to better understand these two camps of teachers and exert their teaching potential.Many scholars have redefined the term "a native speaker", which involvesa consideration of many factors including sequence, competence, culture, identity, environment, and politics. NESTs are often considered superior to their counterpart, NNESTs in ELT, and their advantages mainly lie in linguistic proficiency. However, in recent years, increasing influential voices have begun to focus on NNESTs' strong points, especially in pedagogy, which tend to counterbalance their deficiency in language competence, and even make them more successful than NESTs in ELT profession.Based on the major views of NESTs and NNESTs and the previous research studies conducted by other scholars, a survey is conducted to find out whether NNESTs and NESTs under Chinese EFL context also fit the description of the published researches. In addition to the questionnaire, group interviews are conducted to investigate Chinese EFL students' expectation of course assignment for NESTs and NNESTs and evaluation of their teaching features in terms of linguistic proficiency, cultural knowledge and pedagogy.The results of the study coincide with the findings of the major researches concerning NESTs and NNESTs. The subjects confirm NESTs' advantages in linguistic proficiency and cultural knowledge, and highly evaluate their capability in creating an active classroom atmosphere. Similarly, NNESTs' strengths in pedagogy are also recognized by the subjects, who seem to be more satisfied with NNESTs' teaching practice.The informants expect NESTs to teach English pronunciation or oral English classes thanks to NESTs' superiority in language competence and their ability to create an active classroom atmosphere. NNESTs' familiarity with pedagogical knowledge, language learning process combined with their understanding of the students make them more competent for the courses ofintensive reading, extensive reading, linguistics, translation and grammar. The assignment for the rest courses involves a consideration of many factors, and one of key determintors is EFL learners' English level.The teaching features of NESTs and NNESTs have different effects on the subjects' satisfaction. The results of the survey show that in the aspect of linguistic proficiency, pronunciation has the strongest correlation with the subjects' satisfaction with both NESTs and NNESTs, while other items in this aspect have no significant influence. In pedagogy, the items of grammar explanation, class preparatio...