Teach English in Xihuaiba Zhen - Hanzhong Shi

Nowadays English has become a common language that helps facilitating the communication between people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities. English may not be the most widely used language in the world, but it is the official language of 53 countries and it is used by around 400 million people worldwide. As a result being able to speak English does not only mean communicating with native English speakers, but it also means opening the door to new international chances and opportunities. Therefor being an ELF English teacher can literally mean making a difference in someone’s life. But is being a native speaker is an absolute must for teaching English? Can a nonnative ELF teacher be as good as a native ELF teacher? These kinds of questions can cross your mind while surfing the internet looking for English teaching jobs abroad; in a research made by Peter Medgyes in 1994, which aimed to conduct an international survey to study perceptions of native speaking language teachers and nonnative speaking language teachers. In this pioneering study, they gave questionnaires to 216 teachers from 10 countries to verify whether native speaking teachers (NSTs) and nonnative speaking teachers (NNSTs) perceive differences in teaching and how their perception influences teaching behaviors. It was concluded that both can equally be good teachers regardless of native/nonnative division, further details about this survey can be found on his book ‘The nonnative teacher ’. It has become almost impossible for a nonnative EFL teacher to find a Job abroad due to the fact that his not a native English speaker which can be described in most cases as an irrational reason. In order to distinguish whether a nonnative EFL teacher is worth hiring or not we must mention the most common strengths and weaknesses points of a nonnative EFL teacher :  Strengths of a non-native EFL teacher (Mentioning three): • He can understand better the difficulties and challenges faced by his students: All learners that English is not their first or sometimes not even their second language face just about the same challenges when it comes to learning the language; which can be a great advantage for the nonnative English teacher since he is more likely to be qualified when it comes to better relating to the difficulties each of his student is facing, and he would sometimes even know exactly what needs to be done. After all, he was an English learner himself once. • He can have a low self-esteem when it comes to spelling: It might sounds strange but the fact that the nonnative teacher has an accent can be a privilege, it can make him a better spelling and pronunciation teacher. Because he will doubt his pronunciation, he will be more accurate when it comes to teaching pronunciation to his student. Now of course that can a double-edged sword and end up being a disadvantage in a lot of cases. • He is bilingual : A nonnative English teacher is a bilingual even sometimes multilingual person and that by itself can play a big role in the way he teaches since he understand the process therefor he can know better how to motivate the student and get their attention during the class.  Weaknesses of a non-native EFL teacher (Mentioning three): • Having an accent : In some cases a strong accent can be a hug problem for the learners, which can either cause understanding difficulties or learning hesitation, therefor it’s the duty of the teacher to try to speak with a native like accent. • He can have a low self-esteem when it comes to spelling: As mentioned before this feature can be a double-edged sword, it can either make the teachers more accurate and hardworking when it comes to spelling classes or make them avoid having one, which can deeply affect the learning process. • the discrepancy in language proficiency Nonnative English teachers might find their English less competent than native speakers and has a lack of inspiration of western cultures, which might have a bad emotional impact on their confidence as teachers that will consequently a seriously affect their teaching process. As a conclusion, the teacher must be judge on his abilities and achievements rather than his identity and origin, a lot of surveys have been done in this matter with all settling down on the same conclusion: despite being a native English speaker or a nonnative English speaker being a teacher requires a lot more than that, it requires having the spirit of a teacher.