Non-Native Language Teachers Perceptions, Challenges and Contributions to the Profession

Non-native language teachers have often been viewed as an unavoidable fate of the profession, rather than an asset worth exploring and investigating. Now that non-natives are increasingly found teaching languages, and particularly English, both in ESL and EFL contexts, the identification of their specific contributions and their main strengths has become more relevant than ever.

As a result, there has recently been a surge of interest in the role of non-native teachers but little empirical research has been published so far. This volume is particularly rich in providing different approaches to the study of non-native teachers: NNS teachers as seen by students, teachers, graduate supervisors, and by themselves. It also contributes little explored perspectives, like classroom discourse analysis, or a social-psychological framework to discuss conceptions of NNS teachers.

Looking at the Perceptions, Challenges, and Contributions... or the Importance of Being a Non-Native Teacher.- Setting up the Stage: Non-Native Teachers in the Twenty-First Century.- A History of Research on Non-Native Speaker English Teachers.- Cultural Studies, Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Practices, and the NNS Practitioner.- NNS Teachers in the Classroom.- Basing Teaching on the L2 User.- Codeswitching in the L2 Classroom: A Communication and Learning Strategy.- Constructing Social Relationships and Linguistic Knowledge through Non-Native-Speaking Teacher Talk.- Non-Native Speaker Teachers and Awareness of Lexical Difficulty in Pedagogical Texts.- Perspectives on NNS Teachers-in-Training.- Non-Native TESOL Students as seen by Practicum Supervisors.- Chinese Graduate Teaching Assistants Teaching Freshman Composition to Native English Speaking Students.- Pragmatic Perspectives on the Preparation of Teachers of English as a Second Language: Putting the NS/NNS Debate in Context.- Students’ Perceptions of NNS Teachers.- Differences in Teaching Behaviour between Native and Non-Native Speaker Teachers: As seen by the Learners.- What do Students Think about the Pros and Cons of Having a Native Speaker Teacher?.- ‘Personality Not Nationality’: Foreign Students’ Perceptions of a Non-Native Speaker Lecturer of English at a British University.- NNS Teachers’ Self-Perceptions.- Mind the Gap: Self and Perceived Native Speaker Identities of EFL Teachers.- Non-Native Speaker Teachers of English and Their Anxieties: Ingredients for an Experiment in Action Research.