TEFL Yingcheng

I was extremely dubious when initially approached about working as a non-native english speaking teacher in a school where most teachers are tefl certified native english speakers teaching students whose first language happens to be mine too. I was however convinced that my experience of learning the language in itself was sufficient to compensate the absence of such a certificate, let alone the impressive results. I consequently took the chance and now I am irrevocably in love with this energizing job! Back when I started this job, I was scheduled for lower-level classes whose members were primarily at beginner levels – the rationale being that a local teacher would appear more approachable to lower-level students as their role model presenting the lesson content in english. Typical logic states that it is daunting to even teach beginner students let alone teaching them in a language they know next to nothing about as someone with whom they can easily resort to their first language and therefore spare their brains from being wrecked. I, in many ways, defied this typical strictly following some of the key principles of teaching beginner students covered in this course. It proved to be a rewarding experience to demonstrate to all students that it is no mission impossible to be an efl speaker qualified to help more similar-minded people achieve their language learning outcomes. Two years into this job, I have been able to consistently adapt my teaching style to an assortment of learner personalities as well as english abilities, teaching both high and low level students who respect and acknowledge me as a language educator as they do my native speaking equivalents. Apart from that, I am frequently consulted for advice on improving their english by my students with various language ability levels as they naturally hold me against all their expectations as language learners. In return, I have been more than happy to guide them through this eventful journey of their efl study and practice every step of the way. My students are well aware of the fact that I am more able to sympathize with them about learning the language that I myself went to the trouble of learning so that their areas of improvement are well identified and addressed while their strengths are fully recognized and subsequently magnified. It is just as much of a win-win to me as to the students. For the purpose of completing this tefl course I have recently conducted an interview to obtain an insight from both native speaking teachers and their non-native peers regarding this ‘Teaching-english-as-a-non-native-speaker’ conundrum. The results suggest that most of my native speaking fellow teachers have also gone through the process of learning a foreign language but were understandably not as committed to it as the students that we are teaching here in china. In other words, they are theoretically able to inspire the students with their own foreign language learning experience but the students would mostly prefer to gain such inspiration from non-native english speaking teachers like myself who have successfully dealt with the issues of learning english as a foreign language. As far as I am concerned, the subject of non-native english speakers teaching english as a foreign language will continue to be of great interest to more and more employers from educational institutions all around the world. Meanwhile, I appreciate the non- discriminatory policy on teacher recruitment that my employer practices. All the above-mentioned research results and my teaching experience are true and valid. Thank you very much for reviewing this independent research article. I look forward to your feedback, as always.