A NNEST’s confession
This post is going to be long, personal and its outcomes will probably differ based on who you are. If you are a fellow NNEST, you may sympathize and start feeling better (or disagree and think I’m a whiner). If you are a NEST, you may very well think there’s nothing to talk about (or realize that, luckily for you, there are challenges in the field of teaching the language you’re not faced with). And if you are a student of English, you will most likely not know what (N)NEST stands for to start with. If you keep reading, you will not only find out, but also make a better informed choice when picking your next English teacher.
Let’s look at the labels first. If you aren’t foreign language teachers, you may not know that teachers of English are traditionally divided into two categories based on their first language – native English-speaking teachers (NESTs for short) and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs). In this post, I will frequently refer to Péter Medgyes, whose specialization is the study of NNESTs. Péter was one of the speakers at last year’s 25th P.A.R.K. conference and I opted to attend his workshop for at least two reasons. First, I loved his book, and second, I’d been interested in this rather controversial topic for a long time and I was hoping to get some reassurance/answers to my many questions. I was not disappointed, to say the least.
To provide more context for those who’re outsiders (meaning not English teachers) – there’s been a schism in the community caused and fuelled by (sometimes blatant) discrimination of NNESTs on the labour market. What are usually the arguments for hiring only NESTs and paying them considerably more? Their command of the language is unattainable for NNESTs, their accent is authentic and they have a profound knowledge of the culture of their country. Fair enough. But it is anything but justified to presume that someone can actually teach the language just because it happens to be their mother tongue. Try this with an average Czech person!
Now let’s turn to my own persona of a non-native English teacher. I spent years doubting myself terribly in terms of both my knowledge and skills. And pronunciation? The worst nightmare of all. But I’m far from alone in this matter. In my whole teaching career so far, I haven’t met a NNS colleague who would feel completely secure and confident in all aspects of using and teaching the language. Is there a correlation between being a NNEST and suffering from low self-confidence? I have no hard data but would bet on it anyway. To make it all worse, most of my English teaching friends also suffer from this condition called perfectionism. A coincidence? Go figure.
OK, so take a dedicated, educated and enthusiastic NNEST full of the above mentioned insecurities and let them search for work. It doesn’t matter that it’s now illegal to discriminate against people based on their nationality (as far as I know, at least in the EU and the USA; in Asian countries such as China, the situation is quite the opposite and they only hire NESTs). You can feel it and it can be proven. I was recently quite shocked when I discovered by accident that my NS colleague with a B.A. totally unrelated to TEFL gets paid 50 % more per hour than I do with a Ph.D. degree and 15 years of teaching practice under my belt. Hard to say (for me) who’s to blame – do the employers automatically value native speakers more as teachers because of the reasons listed above, or do they comply with the demand? It’s not such a long time ago when I got a request to teach a woman. She was happy with all of my conditions but one – she said that my hourly rate is too high for a non-native speaker. I’m planning to write a post on my pricing policy later on. For now, I will just say that her unfair and uninformed opinion (as much as she was entitled to it) made me angry.
If you haven’t lost patience with me by now, I’ll stop crying and will move on from talking about something I can’t change to looking into something I can. In my opinion, the argument of who’s better based on the single criterion is long outdated, or – as Péter puts it: “Good command of language is a necessary but NOT a sufficient condition.“ There are far more aspects that need to be taken into consideration and the question should be “Who’s a great teacher regardless of their country of origin?“ I have come to terms with the fact that I will never know the whole of English vocabulary, all the grammar rules and I stopped trying to get rid of my accent. It’s not a flaw, it’s part of my English personality. I’m hoping that the good things I can bring to my students do not depend on where I was born. And what are they?
According to Péter’s presentation, we as non-native teachers:
- can provide a better learner model (we are immitable);
- teach learning strategies more effectively;
- supply more information about English (that we amassed during our learning process);
- can anticipate and prevent difficulties more effectively;
- show more empathy to our students‘ needs and problems;
- benefit from the students‘ mother tongue.
Does it suffice to be a really good teacher? I believe so. The point is that I don’t think teachers in either category are better by default. And even if you think otherwise, there are enough teachers – both native and non-native – to choose from so that every student can work on their language with someone they like and can learn from. We can all be great and we all make mistakes. As a teacher, I decided to work on my strong points day by day instead of trying to fake whatever in order to fit a meaningless category.
All photos taken by myself.