What's right with native speakers as English instructors?
By A. Chaedar Alwasilah
BANDUNG (JP): The letters' column in this paper has featured opinions on native speakers as English instructors. They weighed the strengths and weaknesses on native speakers compared to nonnative English speaker instructors, and their relevance to employability and success in the field of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), especially in private courses.
All the opposing views approached the issues from pragmatic points of view, overlooking the essence of the issue and its educational implications.
The undeniable strength of native speakers is their endowed native intuition in the language. By dint of intuition, native speakers are able to judge right from wrong grammatically and in the acceptability of expressions.
A grammatically correct expression could be pragmatically unacceptable if it does not sound like English, that is, not the way that English speakers actually speak. Native linguistic intuition is almost impossible to be acquired by nonnative speakers unless they are exposed to English since childhood in the target culture.
EFL learning is distinguished by the following. First, EFL is not commonly used for daily communication outside the class. Therefore, EFL learners tend to be better at receptive skills (listening and reading) than productive skills (speaking and writing). Besides, their grammatical mastery tends to be better than their vocabulary, including idiomatic expressions.
Second, EFL students learn the language when the critical period or puberty is over. A theory exists that such learners develop what has been termed "interlanguage", i.e., a range between the mother tongue and the target language. Their acquired English lies on the continuum between Indonesian and English. A significant feature of interlanguage is "fossilized accent". By native speaker intuition, no matter what, the Indonesian accent is always there. It suggests that in EFL contexts, native- likeness is impossible and, in fact, is not necessary.
Third, in formal schools students learn English from nonnative speakers who are relatively good at receptive skills and grammar, but weak at productive skills and idiomatic expressions. The students therefore become good imitators of their teachers. Their productive skills and vocabulary are less developed.
Fourth, in formal schools the size of English classes is usually between 40 students and 50 students, which is an unrealistic setting to expect learners to develop productive skills to the full. Caught in this dilemma, the teachers resort to presenting grammatical rules, unison and substitution drills, and reading comprehension. By curricular design, the emphasis of EFL teaching in Indonesia has been on developing reading skills, which are believed to be the surest way of absorbing science and technology.
Given the objective situations above, private English courses in the country play significant roles in EFL education. Schools, be they public or private, and private English courses should be perceived as two different institutions with a different mission and orientation. The argument of the significance of native speakers versus nonnative English speakers in teaching English dwells on the perceived gap in this orientation.
Formal schools, both public and private, provide students with English as mandated by the national curriculum. By design, the depth and breadth of the subject is expected to be the same across the nation. Students get what the curriculum states, and not much more. It is included in the curriculum as a mandatory school subject and part of general education. It is obvious then that formal schooling is motivated by humanitarian purposes.
Private English courses, on the other hand, are not meant to be part of general education, which is a responsibility of the government. The prevailing weaknesses of EFL teaching in schools come as a blessing in disguise for the private courses' advantage. Productive skills, especially speaking, is therefore well promoted to compensate for what is missing in formal schools. Conversational courses with native speakers make for enticing advertisement, and here the lucrative business begins.
Indeed, many believe that EFL mastery is identical to speaking, thus sidelining listening, reading and writing. Laymen tend to take native speakers at face value, overlooking the fact that being native does not necessarily mean being professional. By way of comparison, American universities offer diplomas and master's degrees in teaching EFL. This program is designed to train students, be they native or nonnative speakers, to be EFL professionals.
A key to success in English training is professionalism. To be a professional EFL instructor, one must possess perceived knowledge as well as experiential knowledge. The former comprises basic concepts, research findings, theories and skills in the field of EFL. Intuitively, native speakers raise their eyebrows when they hear someone say "I have done it yesterday" instead of "I did it yesterday". To be an EFL professional, one must have a metalinguistic knowledge, viz. the ability to state explicitly the difference between the present perfect and past tense. Apparently, in this context, metalinguistic and procedural knowledge are more helpful than intuitive knowledge.
Experiential knowledge, on the other hand, comprises knowledge in action through practice of the profession. It relates to the professional's ongoing experience. This type of knowledge develops through teaching apprenticeships, simulations, tutorials, workshops and minicourses, microteaching and case studies.
Over the years, through continued practice, one reflects his or her received and experiential knowledge. It is through this reflective model of training that EFL professional competence is established.
Nonnative English speaker instructors hold some relative advantages over their native speaker counterparts. As EFL learners themselves, they received firsthand experience in wrestling with English.
The learning strategies they used and the teaching strategies their English teachers employed constitute the acquired experiential as well as observational knowledge instrumental for developing EFL professional competence.
Their struggle, ups and downs, trials and errors in learning English in the past result in established empathy, namely the quality of being able to imagine and share the thoughts, feelings and points of view of EFL learners. This kind of empathy contributes to the degree of success in developing EFL professional competence. For native speaker instructors, this empathy is more time consuming to establish because they come from a different culture.
Their empathy is manifested, for example, in their use of "foreigner talk" or "teacher talk", namely a learner friendly and simplified variety of English. This variety is characterized by slow and accentuated speech and avoidance of slang and sophisticated idiomatic expressions and proverbs.
The use of the students' mother tongue is not prohibited, as the objective is primarily to establish a communicative and interactive classroom discourse. Gradually, students will become used to expressing themselves in English.
From the discussions above, a guideline of developing EFL training and education can be inferred as follows.
* It is essential that EFL instructors, both native and nonnative speakers, have a reasonable degree of cross-cultural understanding. Without such understanding, it is impossible for them to establish empathy for the students.
* Native and nonnative speaker instructors have their relative strengths that can be utilized for managing EFL programs. Native speaker instructors have the native intuition while their nonnative speaker counterparts have better psychological as well as cultural understanding of the students. A synergy of this intuition and understanding is a key to success in teaching a foreign language.
* Modeling is inevitable in learning a foreign language. EFL learners observe instructors' behavior and then consciously or unconsciously attempt to imitate that behavior. Native speaker instructors demonstrate ease and naturalness as well as effortless use of rich vocabulary. However, these qualities are incomplete without mastery of EFL procedural and metalinguistic knowledge.
* It would be an exaggeration for English private courses to claim they are more successful as EFL institutions than formal schools. Six years of formal learning of English in schools have paved a smooth path for private English courses to walk. Private EFL courses should always give credit to formal schools for their success.
English has been a mandatory school subject for more than a half century. However, all of us are not satisfied with the students' mastery of the language. Recognizing its function as a medium for modern communication, we should make continued efforts to improve EFL education to function to the full. Both formal schools and private English courses are called on to play their roles in a professional way.
The writer is a senior lecturer at the graduate school of Teachers Training Institute (IKIP) in Bandung.