PTT 3/4 April 1995 index
This article is a report on the way in which native speaker and non-native speaker teachers in our department have cooperated with each other through team teaching. It is at the same time a report on how non-native teachers can build confidence in their own teaching, and stop comparing themselves unfavourably with native speaker teachers.
But what is being compared? In many cases only language competence, from which comes the illusion that NS teachers are superior to non-NS teachers, and the resulting disillusionment and discouragement of Slovak teachers of English, who come to believe that they cannot be as good teachers as their counterparts.
From the point of view of language speaking ability clearly native speakers are superior. But for a teacher and her teaching, pedagogic skills and an individual teacher's attitudes are equally important as language proficiency. Taking this broad understanding of what makes a good English teacher, I am sure that Slovak teachers can be as effective as NS teachers.
* What prevents many language teachers from being
as effective as they can be ?
* Are teachers aware of their own strengths and skills
?
* By being aware of their own strengths and skills
can teachers increase their own confidence?
* Why is it that in teaching situations many
language teachers are under permanent
stress, suffer from inferiority complexes, and have
got low self-confidence?
Together with my colleagues and other English language teachers we tried to find answers to the above questions.
Firstly, we agreed that we are under constant stress because of the permanent conflict between the demands of our work, and our capabilities. Language teachers constantly need to be able to concentrate not only on the content of teaching but also on the medium of instruction - the foreign language. Those language teachers who did not have the chance to study or to spend a longer period in an English speaking country (and most Slovak teachers of English belong to this group) are aware of language difficulties.
Secondly, there has never been a serious attempt to compare the results of teaching English by NS teachers and non-NS teachers. The assumption that NS teachers must be better teachers might be based on prejudices and also on the fact that we have never tried to compare our pedagogic skills with those of native teachers. This might be the reason why we often are not aware of our own strengths and weaknesses .
Believing that it is not so important to discuss who is "better" - or "better at what" (which creates for many NNS teachers an atmosphere full of stress and anxiety), we decided to see how NS and NNS teachers can cooperate in order to improve the effectiveness of ELT in our schools.
We decided to take advantage of the presence of well qualified and experienced native teachers in order to improve our teaching. In my own case, my British Council counterpart teaches methodology to the university undergraduate students of English. As I have started to specialize in methodology too, we agreed to share our experience and I was invited to observe the classes of my colleague. After a few observations we agreed to take equal roles in teaching the group in a form of team teaching.
What were my initial reasons for cooperating ?
a) to help myself; to overcome my personal problems with self-confidence; to get rid of my own fear and anxiety at being compared with a native teacher; and to increase the awareness of my own skills and capabilities
b) to encourage my colleagues (both NS teachers and non-NS teachers) for similar cooperation
c) to give our students the chance to observe at the same time the NS teachers' and the non-NS teachers' different styles
The results were:
a) I now have an increased awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses. I found ways to build my self-confidence. To some extent the level of anxiety was lessened.
b) Some of my colleagues are following our experimentation with success.
c) From the NS teachers point of view team teaching is really a useful means of finding out more about the learning styles of our students and about teaching styles which are appropriate to the culture of Slovakia
d) The students' responses have been very informative
In the near future we want to expand our research into other ways of cooperating, firstly by encouraging cooperative observation among language teachers, and secondly by teaching practice observation.
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