Research Perspectives on
Non-Native English-Speaking
and
The Decline and Fall of the
Native Speaker

Within the ELT (English Language Teaching) field,
the nation that the native speaker of English is the
ideal teacher was a tenet formulated at the
Commonwealth Conference in the teaching of
English as a second language (Philipson 1992).
Native English
Speaker (NES)
Non Native
English Speaker
(NNES)
What
Is

The term of Native English Speaker (NES) is
commonly used to refer to people who
learned a language in a natural setting from
childhood as first or sole language
Kachru &
Nelson 1996
Philipson 1992
He assumed that Native English Speaker (NES)
teacher are:
• Better linguistic model
• Have the ability to use language more fluently
and idiomatically
• Are aware of the cultural connotations of the
language
• Can rely in intuition to make accurate linguistic
judgments
Canagarajah (1999)
state that Non-native
English speaker
(NNES) teachers
constitute up to 80%
of English teacher
around the world.

Other researcher also question the validity of the NES
construct, and by extension, challenge the notion that the
native speaker is the ideal English teacher.
Kramsch (1998a: 79-80) argues that the native english speaker
construct is an abstraction based on arbitrarily selected
features of pronunciation, grammar, lexicon, as well as on
stereotypical features of appearance and act, and that the
construct relies on the assumption that native English speaker
are monolingual and monocultural, and speak only standard
variety of the language.

Native English
Speaker
(NES)
Davies (1991, 1995, 2002,
2003) argues that the NES
construct is a myth, but we
need this myth as a model
and a goal.
Liu (1999) argues that research in this area
is needed since it would help to explain
the extent to which the labels affect not
only Non Native English Speaker
educators’ self-image but also their
instructional practices and ultimately
their students development

Perceptions of Non-native
English-speaking Educators
Research on students perception about NNES educators
has focused on two areas:
1. Teachers’ accentedness
2. Teachers’ pedagogical skills

Studies that have explored how teacher accentedness in
English affect students’ perception about teachers
lead to three conclusions:
1. NNES teachers may play a more important role in
the development of students’ attitude toward the
teachers than does the teachers’ accentedness in
English.
2. Students are capable of distinguishing between the
accent of NES and NNES teachers with ‘a high
degree of accuracy’
3. Language learners do not necessarily perceive
accentedness to be criterion for the ideal English
teacher.

Students’ perception of NNES teachers’ pedagogical skills
1. Both NES and NNES educators are perceived to be good
teachers, each with their unique strengths.
2. There is some support for the idea that ESL and EFL
students prefer to study listening, pronunciation, and
speaking with NES rather than NNES teachers.
3. ESL and EFL learner perceive NES teacher as being more
knowledgeable than their NNES counterparts in the area
of target language(TL) culture.
4. ESL and EFL students favor NNES educators in the area of
grammar teaching.
5. Students were aware that literacy skills and oral skills are
different in nature and that regardless of language
background, reading and writing skills require studying.

Looking to the Future
Considering the growth in research focusing on NNES
educators, future studies need to take into account
two factors, they are:
1. Future investigation would benefit from not treating
NES and NNES educators as having absolute
characteristic.
2. Future research should move beyond issues of self-
perception of language proficiency.

The Decline and Fall of
The Native Speaker
Non-Native Speakers refer to those teacher whose
mother tongue is not the same as the language
they are teaching (NNS)
Native Speakers refer to those teacher whose
mother tongue is the same as the language they
are teaching (NS)

Some Issues About NS-NNS
 Exemplify the approach NNS were paired to or
compared with NS
 Theoretical foundation of distinction NS and NNS
 Typically on perception native as positive and non native
as negative feature
 No purely linguistic properties could be exclusively
associated to native speaker

The views about NS and NNS
 Davies (2003) : NS is acceptance as a
significance portion of member of a
speech community
 Liu (1999) : A Continuum approach
reflect the reality of several people
who can not label them selves as either
NS or NNS
 Piller (2002) : An Advanced L2 users can
temporary take a native speaker
identity

The reasons L2 users flip into NS
• The particular type of communicative performance
the speaker is involved in
• The incorporation of local speech features in a way
that coincides with stereotypes of audiences
• The medium used for the communicative
encounters (oral, written and electronic) ; and
• The interlocuters

Research on Non Native Speaking Teacher
• In the past native teacher applied the method stressing on
the important of foreign language because they were not
available in a given context
• However, When CLT appeared, native speakers were ideal
for promoting natural and spontaneous communications.
• Native teachers as the ideal teacher were equivalent to
monolingual native speaker because of the good
knowledge of L1
• Native teachers were worth more than non-native and only
non-native with near native proficiency could enjoy a
certain prestige in the language teaching profession.
• The effects of being a non-native teacher on professional
self esteem and discrimination by NS teacher, NNEST
found typical preference for NS model and NS teacher.

Is there anything wrong with NS teachers
• A higher role and better appreciation of NNS
condition does not carry down-grading of NS.
• The quality of NNS may challenge to those NS who
are convinced that their sole NS condition makes
them good teacher
• A great in pulse to increase assertiveness of NNS by
many NS who have contributed with the work
• Finally, NS and NNS are all teacher need
pedagogical training and knowledge of the
language being taught

The advantages of vindicating the role of non
native speaker in language teacher
• They are a model for imitation
• They can successfully teach strategies of language
learning
• They have high level of awareness of the language
and can supply information about it
• They can anticipate the difficulties along the learning
process
• They can be more empathetic to the need and
problem of student
• They often have the same mother tongue as their
student and they can act as mediator between
difference language and culture
• They have familiarity of the local context

Internal Diversity among Native and
Non-Native Speaker
• NNS have often been reduced to a single
homogeneous group in many discussion and it
makes a simple stereotype valid for all individual case
• Native speakerism constitutes a manifestation of the
more general phenomenon of culturalism and racism
• Monolingual NS experience of language learning is
in the babyhood is and the process of learning is not
accesible for examination by the speakers

Critical Approaches to Language Teaching :
the decline and fall of NS
• The teacher use the process and the methodology
teaching such as Natural Approach, Audio Lingual
Method and Communicative Language Teaching
and It needs teacher’s fluency and capacity to use
the language. It’s contradicted to the traditional
grammar translation method which focuses on the
appraisal of native speaker.
• Non-native speaker may be as good teacher as
native speaker and the good language teaching
requires a good command of language of training
ability to teach a language.
• Native and non-native distinction are a one of the
characteristic element of language teaching, there
are no native speaker for physics and mathematics.
• NNS have now finally gathered to voice their
concern and claim their right to be heard in the
language teaching and research community.

SEKIAN
DAN
TERIMA KASIH