THE JOURNAL OF ASIA TEFL Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.

107-130, Autumn 2012

Deconstructing aspects of native speakerism:

Reflections from in-service teacher education

Stephen J. Hall
Sunway University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia

In many Asian contexts, issues of who teaches and educates teachers in

English Language Teaching remain challenging with status accorded to so-
called ‘native speakers’. Issues still remain after two decades of research
calling for deconstruction of the native speaker fallacy. Drawing on critiques
of the concept, as well as teacher education research, this paper suggests
ways to deconstruct the maze of native speakerism. Recent Malaysian in-
service training research shows that positioning and modeling can override
the origin of the teacher educator, namely a so-called native speaker
background. Descriptions of techniques to help deconstruct native
speakerism at the interactional level are derived from teacher educator
reflection on data. Possibilities for countering native speakerism are
suggested through descriptions of how teacher educators may model and use
humour to address perceptions of hierarchy. With the growing use of English
as an additional language, research into who teaches or educates teachers
could also address the challenges of hidden professional racism sustained by
factors such as so-called Standard English. Practical approaches from teacher
educator reflections on their interaction with Malaysian teachers suggest
ways to reconstruct aspects of native speakerism.

Key words: teacher education, native speakers, reflection

INTRODUCTION

While the privileged position of the English language ‘native speaker’ (NS) has

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been extensively critiqued, there still remain concerns about a hidden racism in the
TESOL and TEFL profession. In this paper which addresses related concepts and
practices, the term native speaker will refer to English language native speakers
(NS) and use of this term which is often contrasted with non-native English
speakers (NNES). There are well known views that sustaining the native speaker as
an expert may link to ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Phillipson, 1992). Holliday (2006)
elaborates on earlier research with the term ‘native speakerism’ asking that as
professionals we problematize the native speaker concept and related practices in
the English language teaching community to develop internationally based and
culturally attuned professionalism. Anderson (2003) examined the status and
experiences of varied teacher trainees from undergoing British teacher training and
found numerous examples of discourse which Holliday (2009, p.671) terms
‘chauvinistic professional discourse’. Holliday also suggests that many of the
profession may be unaware of how there is an embedded cultural chauvinism
which ‘resides so deeply within the ideological structure of the profession that
teachers can be either unaware of it or ignore it’ (Holliday, ibid). Others foreground
the notion of a native speaker privileged and sustained in language teaching
marketplace practices (Derivey-Plard, 2005; Lee, 2005; Llurda, 2004; Medgyes,
1994). Further research describes how the majority of English language teachers
who were not born into an English as a first language home may be treated as step
children of the teaching profession, in such settings as American college level
English Language Programmes (Mahboob, 2004). This sustaining of the native
speaker as a privileged norm is also very impractical when it is estimated that
globally up to 80% of English language teachers have other languages as their first
or second languages (Canagarajah, 1999). As we shall see, there are conceptual and
professional reasons why one needs to construct professionalism beyond the
questionable nonnative/native construct.
This paper argues that the very concept of the English language native speaker
(henceforth native speaker) is a flawed notion requiring reconstruction and
describes how the reconstructive process arose during in-service teacher education.
Research, including that of this writer researching Malaysian rural in-service
education, suggests that the native speaker concept is a myth sustained by

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perceptions based on questionable categories. One way of countering this is by

supporting effective bilingual or multilingual teachers of English, no matter what
their hereditary language background, as they model learner success having been
through the process of learning an additional language. Research into the issues of
accent and learners’ perceptions also suggests that one can go beyond the
commercial sustaining of a Standard English norm and its related “native
speakerism” (Holliday, 2006). Later in this paper techniques derived from teacher
education practices are suggested for ways of situating learning while modeling
oneself as an ongoing learner. These techniques are derived from research into
native speaker teacher educators and their interactions with teachers as they began
courses. The native speaker teacher educators found themselves using techniques to
foster interactivity and consequently these techniques also deconstructed
perceptions of reliance on so called native speaker norms. First we turn to the
questionable concept of a native speaker.

DECONSTRUCTING THE NATIVE SPEAKER MYTH

The term non-native speaker has been perceived by some of the English
language teaching professional community as a negative term. The source of native
speaker foregrounding runs at least as far back as “the 1961 Commonwealth
Conference on the Teaching Of English as a Second Language in Makarere,
Uganda which stated that the ideal teacher of English is a native speaker” (Maum,
2002, p.1). This term therefore aligns ideal teacher with native speaker as one and
the same. This construct has moved on far less than one would expect in the
subsequent half a century of English Language Teaching, as will be seen.

The group which is often compared with native speaker (NS) is that of non-
native English speaker (NNES). Negative perceptions of the nonnative English
speaker could occur because the term is a contrastive label comparing the majority
of English language teachers to the native English speaker. However, Matsuda
notes (2001) that related words such as nonsmoker or non-traditional teaching are

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not seen as negative. It is suggested that

It is not really the non-part that people find unfortunate. For nonnative to
be a pejorative term, its counterpart would have to be positive. Nonnative
is unfortunate because native is supposed to be fortunate. Nonnative is
marked, whereas native is unmarked. Non-native is marginal and native is
dominant (2001, p. 4).

In Davies’ early thorough study of the positioning of the term (1991), he

concluded that the native speaker construct is a social concept, not a linguistic
construct. Moving away from the populist notion that the language your mother
spoke is your one native language, Davies notes that the binary division native/non-
native avoids the fact that more and more fluent speakers of English are
multilingual in the home setting, raising the question of ‘native’ in what.
Another aspect of the difficulty in accepting the conceptual validity of the
nonnative native speaker dichotomy is that is not easy to sustain an ‘either or’
situation when one examines the growth of English as an international language or
lingua franca (Jenkins, 2000, Seidlhofer, 2001). Higgins (2003) discusses the wider
development of English as an international language by drawing on concepts of
ownership of English in the Outer Circle, namely countries such as Malaysia,
Singapore and India. She draws on Kachru’s well-known model of inner and outer
circles of English speakers (1992) acknowledging the widespread use of these
categories linked to native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS). The paper
highlights that those who uncritically apply the division as well as the construct of
Inner and Outer Circles, ignore increasing change related to World Englishes.
Citing Mufene (2001) Higgins notes that both the dichotomies of NS/NNS and
Outer Circle and Inner Circle can lead to views and actions based on the notion that
‘only a minority of speakers around the world speak legitimate varieties, the rest
speak illegitimate offspring of English’ (p. 139). Kachru in more recent work
(2004) has suggested that the ‘inner circle’ is best seen as a group of highly
proficient speakers of English, namely those who have ‘functional nativeness’
regardless of how they learned or how they use the language. One could add the

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more obvious factor of where they learned their English.

The challenges in defining multiple situations of English with a growing
minority of monolingual English speaking teachers also make the concept of native
speaker a questionable one. As Cook (1999) notes, English is no longer the
property of a few powerful countries but is the communicative medium of many,
taught by many in multilingual settings. Cook suggests that if the proficiency of the
users of the language is related to birthplace (English as a hereditary language) and
not to the capacity of speakers to use the language fluently, one may support the
term ‘native speaker’. However, this may be of little relevance to professionalism in
language learning or teaching. This is especially evident when English is no longer
the realm of native speaking communities but is a global language scene in which
newly arrived speakers have the right to a voice (Graddol, 1997).

Deconstructing NS myths of the speaker as the teacher

Even if one settles for defining native speakers as ‘habitual users of English for
all communicative purposes’ (Timmis, 2005, p.123) there still remains an issue of
the language skills level and teaching expertise if the native speaker is seen as an
expert, teacher or teacher educator. Being born in a setting where English is the
major language for communicative purposes and one of the first languages acquired
in a naturalistic setting may fuel the definition of a native speaker. Yet being a
hereditary speaker is a curious rationale for hiring educational professionals,
namely his or her birth place: an environment where English predominates. One
may be left questioning the usefulness of empowering the infant acquisition of a
language as a statement of language proficiency; a statement then mistakenly
viewed as relevant to professional language settings (Bailey, 2005).
With the English speaking community as the originating matrix of a native
speaker, one may overlook the fact that a native speaker is not necessarily a fluent
speaker or skilled as a language teacher. To use a universally loved pursuit of
cuisine as an analogy, being experienced and knowledgeable about food does not
make you a cook or a chef. Derivey-Plard’s research in France describes a “strong
social construct which confuses ‘speaker’ with ‘teacher’ and native speaker’ with

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‘native teacher” (2005, p.62). Some native speakers may lack proficiency or be
fluent in a marked vernacular or a less known dialect. Kachru and Nelson have
gone so far as to say that the “label ‘native speaker’ is of no a priori significance, in
terms of measuring facility with the language” (1996, pp.78-79). Bailey (2005)
makes the point that proficiency is not the same as ‘nativeness’ and that people can
continue to develop or diminish proficiency, although pronunciation may be
resistant to change. She argues for the need for relevant education in preparing a
language educator with both proficiency and professional skills to counter native
speakerism and this point will be elaborated further and linked to techniques which
teacher educators used during in-service education.
The so called native speaker is often sought after when recruiting for mass
programmes, particularly at the lower levels of professionalism, such as the
backpacker teaching environment of South Korea which my son encountered(Hall
J., 2010, personal correspondence). This action is perhaps based on assumptions
which are a product of the emphasis on communicative competence in TESL and
TEFL. It is assumed that models of spoken proficiency linked to the ‘Inner Circle’
are what are needed in classrooms while such a view is perhaps sustained by a
learning culture of teacher-driven delivery (Hall & Yulisari, 1995). Such a focus
within the industry compounds ‘speaker’ with ‘teacher’ and does not build
TESOL/TEFL professionalism.
Recent work by Selvi (2010) documents how job advertisements sustain native
speakerism. Internet search engines and a plethora of web sites such as
www.tefl.com reveal that little has changed with many jobs calling for ‘native
English’ applicants. Here we encounter the construct that confuses a ‘speaker’ with
a teacher or educator and a ‘native speaker’ with a competent teacher. There is the
notion that a correct accent related to hereditary acquisition of language is more
important than educational skills, particularly at the entry level of ELT. Advocacy
in fostering professional standards in hiring practices still requires much
development. This is not to favour non- native speakers of English per se but to
suggest that all English language educators should be by skilled and trained
educators, as in other professions. However the construct is sometimes sustained by
views of so called standard English, an issue to which we now turn.

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WHOSE ENGLISH IS IT ANYWAY?

Standards and Accents

While English is spoken by an increasing people as a second or third language,

there remains a strong push for native speaker ‘standards’ originating out of English
as a first language context. These standards often link ‘standard English’ to
pronunciation based on British or American norms. John Honey (1997) argues for a
promotion of a prescriptive set of standards. Modiano (2001) in his provocatively
entitled “Linguistic Imperialism, Cultural Integrity and EIL’ paper discusses
Pennycook, then summarises Honey’s argument and views of so called standard
English.

It is through a mastery of standard English that the disenfranchised are

given an opportunity to partake in the discourses which will lead them
‘forward.’ For Honey, to be without a command of an educated form of
English is to be denied the tools which are required to lift oneself up, so to
speak, and to get on in the world. Thus to those on the left, English is
exploitative, while those in the conservative camp insist that the
‘disenfranchised’ must conform to specified standards in order to acquire
‘wealth’ (2001. p.342).

The debate on standards and standard English is an age old one (Canagarah,
1999). It is to the regional setting of South East Asia that I will now turn, for
examples of the empowering of native speaker models and teachers through
insistence on so called standard English. One such standard is that of ‘Good
English’ in Singapore.
In Singapore one finds it hard to pin down the definition of ‘Good English’.
However there is an organized movement for good standard English, led
unsurprisingly by the government. This writer was part of a debate in April 1999
held at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore in which I argued that there is no such
norm as a native speaker ‘Good English’ norm and that any standard should be

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functional and situational. I meant that one should have the capacity to switch codes
depending on who one is speaking to. This linguistic skill is common in the
Singaporean and Malaysian setting (Lee, 2003) and little used by monolinguals for
obvious reasons. Yet the industry in South East Asia continues to hire native
speakers, many of them monolingual and as will be discussed later, to engage
native speaker teacher educators for national projects in Malaysia. The rationale is
linked to the idea of good spoken ‘standard’ models, namely the so called ‘good’
native speaker who is seen as in a superior position as a transmitter of standards.
Yet it is worth noting that now even proponents of ‘Good English’ argue for a
vaguely defined ‘neutral intelligibility’, not a native speaker norm, a position
change acknowledging the role of varieties of English (Koh, 2005). Kirkpatrick
(2006) working from his multilingual expertise in China argues that only the small
minority of learners learn English to communicate with native speakers or are
interested in understanding the culture will benefit from choosing native speaker
teachers as models. He develops this further arguing for recognition of other
Englishes and English as an international medium where the focus should be on
international comprehensibility and the strengths that bilingual or multilingual
teachers can model.
Within more global research, indications of the changing role of English beyond
dichotomies include frequent references to World Englishes, along with recent
writing on English as an International Language and English as a Lingua Franca
(Jenkins, 2000; Llurda, 2004; Seidlhofer, 2001). There are other critiques of earlier
dichotomies related to the native speaker notion. Holliday (2006) critiques some of
the binary thinking in the problems of labeling in what he calls the ‘we’ of world
TESOL including the Centre-Periphery grouping and native / non-native speaker
divisions. He notes that the English speaking West is a source of dominant thinking
while recognizing that this is too monolithic and simplistic a construct. As a multi-
lingual speaker born in the southern realms of New Zealand I have problems with
being labeled a ‘periphery’ participant, although I recognize that we were once
colonized. Holliday also critiques the professional culture division of BANA and
TESEP noting numerous exceptions to commercially run and transnational
divisions (ibid., pp. 3-4). He then describes deconstructing native speakerism and

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links this to the need to be culturally sensitive in an era where English is a lingua
franca. He infers that all have a professional role to play in deconstructing ‘the
problems of the divisive native speakerism.’ (ibid., p.16).

Market Forces

While much of the research field supports a wider ownership of English with
caucuses of NNEST in TESOL and a long standing policy of non-discrimination in
major professional associations (Tang, 1997), market forces and teaching practices
may well drive change. I shall address three aspects of this: market forces in the
media, the growth of English for Specific Purposes in education and English
language teaching professional needs.
Market forces demanding other than conventional native speaker norms are
evident in everyday communication. More people are acknowledging and
experiencing that English is no longer owned by native speakers with a Received
Pronunciation or mid-Atlantic accent (Crystal, 2002). There is a huge array of
Englishes in popular media such as BBC, CNN, travel programmes, regionally
specific advertisements for McDonalds or on regional MTV. Textbooks are more
culturally inclusive even to the extent of being somewhat like a ‘cultural
supermarket’ (Mathews, 2000). On a macroeconomic level, forces are at work
which leave little choice but to accept greater English language diversity and an
acceptance of NNES teachers and teacher educators as a crucial part of the
profession.
Macro changes are pushing for less emphasis on what one could term English as
First language expertise-native speakerism. One can discern trends that call for less
reliance on native speakers as ‘native speaker norms are becoming less relevant as
English becomes a component of basic education in many countries’ (Graddol,
2006, p.14). English is now becoming a basic element of education with a drive for
English for Young Learners creating a practical need for more than so called native
speakers. This can be seen in Europe, migrant education in the United States with
the English First policy and language policy changes in Thailand (Pandian, 2004)
and Korea. This move to large scale primary English creates a need for large

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numbers of primary teachers, far more than can originate from the BANA countries
at an economically viable level.
Secondly, as more multi lingual English speakers are involved in internationally
diverse settings there will be a demand for more specialized English for Specific
Purposes where content is interwoven with language. This may range from cross
cultural training (which this writer conducted for Singapore Airlines international
ticketing staff in 1999-2000) to Content Learning Integrated with Language
(http://www.clilcompendium.com/). CLIL refers to any dual-focused educational
setting in which an additional language, not usually the first language of the target
learners is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of non-language content
Such learning requires professional training and experience as the content and
accountability levels are high. It is not enough to be able to speak ‘good’ English.
Thirdly, the English Language Teaching profession has seen a much needed
upgrading of professional training so that being only a native speaker has now been
pushed to the lower end of the industry. I will begin with some personal
information then move to a broader perspective. When this writer first undertook
post-graduate TESOL study at a university which begun teacher training in 1964
for Commonwealth teachers, 12 New Zealanders including the writer were on the
1978 course. By 1983 the course was limited to 40. The post-graduate diploma now
involves a selection process for 50 places. On a more global note, Graddol notes
that ‘in 2003-2004 an estimated 1500 Masters programmes were offered in English
in countries where English is not the first language’ (2006, p.74).
There then remains little choice both in terms of growing professional awareness
and in terms of the wider English language scenarios but to embrace greater
professionalism and deconstruct dependencies on the non-native / native speaker
framework. It is to the ‘how’ that we now turn with reference to research into
Malaysian in-service teacher training which involved native speakers.

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THE MALAYSIAN CONTEXT: A STUDY OF NS TEACHER

EDUCATORS

To begin to deconstruct ‘native speakerism’ one needs awareness of structural

challenges and from that awareness to work with that which can be changed by
many of us , namely techniques which may work in teaching and learning. These
will be outlined, paradoxically, within the context of a national project where the
client insisted that teacher trainers were native speakers. While perceptions of
native speakerism are a factor, teacher development techniques could reposition the
questionable concept through professional co-construction within teacher training.
Examples of techniques which contribute to this will be drawn from doctoral
research into behaviors observed during the early phases of teacher in service
courses. It will be argued that it is possible to lessen dependence on the notion of an
NS by the teacher educator (TE) modeling herself as an ongoing learner situated in
local contexts. This is described in the context in which teacher educators found
that creating interactive, less hierarchical interaction changed perceptions of the
imported expertise. I will begin by briefly describing the national Malaysian Project
setting and then relate the teacher educators’ techniques to concerns raised earlier in
this paper, namely the reliance on the concept of native speakers.
In Malaysia, where English is viewed as a second language, there has been a
general decline in the standard of English over the past 20 years, and this is
particularly apparent in rural and semi-rural areas (Pandian, 2004). As a result, the
Malaysian Government has been and still is investing in a number of initiatives
designed to address the imbalance. The Centre for British Teachers (CfBT), a
registered charity, and one of the UK's largest provider of educational services, was
working closely with the Curriculum Development Centre at the Ministry of
Education, to recruit and manage two project teams one of whom are native speaker
teacher trainers. This writer managed the earlier phases of this teacher training
project before researching.
Thirty English Language Coordinators (ELCs), teacher educators all of whom
come from BANA or Australasian backgrounds, fostered classroom change
through interactive task-based courses, workshops and specific skills development

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in rural districts. I will use the term teacher educators’ (TE) to refer to these ELCs.
The TEs worked alongside the Curriculum Development Centre of the Ministry of
Education, District and colleagues in each locality for in service training. The
project involved over 20000 Malaysian teachers throughout East and West
Malaysia, providing alternatives to reliance on translation and teacher-fronted
delivery. Core courses addressed methodology while fostering confidence to
develop greater student use of English language. Shorter-term workshops and
observations by trainers aimed to build a collegial approach and motivate rural
learners. The Project ran for five years in rural districts. Subsequent projects
continue with a more intensive model.
In the Malaysian Schools English Language Project, it was the client’s concern
that teacher educators were ‘native speakers’ and more importantly that they had
international experience. In reality this means ‘matsallehs’, a Malay or Malaysian
English term meaning those of European origin. All the ‘matsalleh’ teacher
educators held post-graduate specialist qualifications and teacher development
experience, in other words the provider worked with a high level of professional
expertise. I will now outline four areas where teacher educators in the project found
that they were deconstructing the myths of native speakerism through teacher
education techniques although they were not explicitly tasked with this.
I will draw on a qualitative study of four native speaker teacher educators (TE)
from four differing nationalities and diverse sites to outline techniques used in the
first hour of beginning in-service methodology courses (Hall, 2009). There has
been little work on describing the process of teacher education interaction when
introducing in-service courses. This writer cannot find research linking the
interaction during in-service teacher education with critically evaluating the
acceptance of teacher development courses in terms of how “human learning is
emergent through social interactions” (Singh & Richards, 2006, p.151). One may
ask why focus on the early phases interaction; aside from the view that first
impressions count and the practical concern that you want teachers to return to
subsequent sessions. Hogg’s (1988) research points to people latching onto their
early impressions of others. He calls the early impressions ‘central traits’ and found
that these have a disproportionate influence on how people are perceived when

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compared to later impressions. His work which still has currency within the social
psychology field found evidence of the primacy effect. Hogg describes the primacy
effect as “an order of presentation effect in which earlier presented information has
a disproportionate influence on social cognition” (Hogg, p. 47) and suggests “that
perhaps people simply pay more attention to earlier information”. The study
therefore looked at the first hour of interaction and found interesting techniques
which teacher educators described in later reflective interviews as deconstructing
perceptions of being a native speaker.
The area of analysis was teacher educators’ discourse strategies when
introducing their pedagogy for English as an International Language. Analyzing the
talk, with content analysis driven by data, was augmented by the researcher’s field
notes which recorded the non-verbal behaviors linked to introducing tasks and
procedures. Teachers’ reactions to the native speaker teacher educators were
captured in two semi structured interviews, one very soon after the early phases of
the first course session and the other later in the six to eight week course. Teacher
educator perceptions had similar elements of more immediate recall and
retrospection through later more reflective interviews. A third teacher educator
interview used the transcript of the early phases lesson and the researcher’s field
notes as the springboard for teacher education reflection on how the course was
introduced. It is these teacher educators reflections on the research data, triangulated
with field notes and discourse analysis, which is the source of descriptions of
techniques I will describe four approaches and use select teacher educator reflective
quotes as comments on how the NS teacher trainers approached deconstructing
native speakerism. These selected quotes are those which concur with teachers’
perceptions, an area described elsewhere.

Working with English as an International Language

The first concern to address is that of the native speaker as an infallible source of
language knowledge and standards in which there is a perceived standard English,
whether, as in this study, he or she be American, Canadian, Welsh or Scottish.
Teacher educators worked with answering questions about detailed language items

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but pointed out that there are regional variations. Their focus was that one should
concentrate on language items which are most common in the local context or
needed for the rather dominant examinations. However, there was tendency for
some teacher trainees to focus on accuracy details rather than communicative needs.
As a response to one such concern, one TE pointed out that the pronunciation of
tortoise was not worthy of much effort (Tweedie, email May 20 2007). This aspect
of preoccupation with detail and reliance on the native speaker trainer as a walking
dictionary was addressed experientially through acknowledging that there are
varieties of English for varied contexts.
The teacher educator at Site 2 working with articulate secondary teachers found
that she was viewed as a source of knowledge for finer points of usage. She
reported that the senior high school teachers were interested in communicative
appropriateness, much as Timmis (2005) found in his research into grammar and
native speakerism. TEB’s situation was also complex when she was asked about
correctness in oral English, as she was a North American teaching in the Malaysian
system which examined using British models of what is seen as correct, often with
an arcane preoccupation with minute details. In defining correctness, she often
explained the differences between teachers’ American English television input and
the examination-driven correctness. As some of her teachers were TESOL trained,
they then saw the teacher educator as a model who knew things ‘beyond the
textbook’ to quote an experienced teacher and who modeled English is an
international language in which there are many varieties.
The Canadian teacher educator in Site 3 described his approach as switching like
a tabbed browser between his own cultural programming, local mores and the need
for a structured classroom. Part of his positioning of the native speaker of English
was to highlight the number of points of origin that the matsalleh could come from
in both his introductory Powerpoint presentation and in interaction. He made the
diversity of origins of English language explicit in order to show the complexity of
defining English language speakers and also so he could be identified as a Canadian.
He was very explicit in describing an inner conflict between what he viewed as
hierarchical structures, that which Hofstede (1997) terms Power Status and his own
agenda as a teacher educator interested in non-hierarchical collaborative learning.

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With TE D in Site 4, differences in classroom culture was the main response to

questions about native speakerism, as he spoke of the approaches to learning being
of more importance to him than perceptions of native speakers. TE D rapidly turned
to comparison of ‘cultures of learning’ (Cortazzi, 2000) with statements such as
“they come expecting it to be difficult, you know there is a culture in Malaysia –
that you know- people are more motivated by getting things wrong. I don’t believe
that for a minute’ (TE D 2 L 37-39). He then discussed cultural difference in terms
of classroom management and this point was one which teachers also commented
on - the novelty of the interactive task based pedagogy and a high level of
enjoyment. TE D spoke of facilitating tasks where learners are successful,
encouraged and praised. Drawing on his multilingual experience as he also teaches
and trains in other languages, he noted that there is a different learning culture in
Malaysia and he consciously set out to increase the use of positive reinforcement.
He then spoke of consciously fostering change based on local needs rather than
external norms. Positive feedback towards this was evident in the teachers’
interviews for TE D’s site.
In summary, even after probing and prompting, teacher educators addressed the
issue of native speakerism with comparative statements about differences in
cultures of learning. While TE B and her teachers responded most strongly to
positive aspects of involving a speaker of English as first language, citing the
knowledge of cultural aspects in accuracy, most teachers did not make native
speakerism a central concern. For most teachers and teacher educators the central
concern is how learning can be maximized by building a sense of success by
learning applicable techniques and tasks relevant to classrooms. In other words, the
approach was to situate the learning in local educational needs, rather than to offer a
quick answer suggesting one correct NS approach.

Presenting as an Ongoing Learner

The second concern was when the trainer was seen as being a superior by virtue
of being a native speaker, rather than a fellow teacher and teacher educator engaged
in ongoing learning. This issue was compounded by perceptions that an outside

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expert had more to contribute than a local teacher educator. All TEs worked with an
interactive task alongside colleagues in group or pair work, while modeling that
they too were ongoing learners. This was a deliberate curriculum plan to
deconstruct the transmission mode of information delivery and break down the
social and linguistic distance which the trainer may be seen as embodying (Randall
&Thornton, 2001). In the early stages of the Project, TEs expressed concerns that
the perception of the native speaker as a superior source of English language
information would require deconstructing so as to foster teacher to teacher
interaction in English. This shared concern then arose out of TE’s experiences. I
will draw on teacher interviews to elaborate.
The majority of teachers described the role of the teacher educators in terms of
what TES did rather than in terms of who they were. Apart from the modeling of
standard English which appealed to three teachers out of sixteen, most comments
on the native speaker aspect focused on novel experiences facilitated by the teacher
education methodology. In response to open ended questions as to whether there
were any or no differences between the teacher educator’s approach and earlier
teacher training, teachers were forthright. General statements on the innovative
approaches, along with contrasts and comparisons were frequently made between
previous training and the approach of Project teacher educators. Both novice and
experienced teachers in every site compared previous teacher education experiences
with the interactive Project approach.
Teachers’ comments in order of frequency were that there were differences in the
teacher educators’ preparation, the use of gesture and movement, the presentation
of aims and instructions, humour which was part of introducing oneself and
facilitating interaction which linked or used classroom tasks. This aligns with
teacher educator aims.
Supportive follow up visits which were part of teacher educators brief were
described as important by five teachers. Four teachers mentioned the use of
questioning as important and new to them, both through experiencing the
questioning techniques and in as techniques which were part of how they changed
their teaching. As teachers’ earlier courses would have been large scale, it is clear
that the smaller project courses would involve more interaction with the teacher

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educator. Yet teachers were specific in that the teacher educators’ techniques
differed from earlier experiences “I enjoy. Because we never never got like this
one” (T1 1 L 88). Linked to a sense of novelty was the participatory learning as
‘trainees actively participate’ (T 10 1 L5) and experience tasks which they
described as relevant as they “can do to my student” (T1 1 L 40). This suggests that
the major difference is not derived from the teacher educators being a source of the
English language, or being a correct model but being a model of motivating teacher
education with experiential tasks which could be transferred to the classroom.

Using Selective Bilingualism

All the teacher educators expressed the view that the process of not wanting to be
“Othered” (Palfreyman, 2004) or stereotyped as an outsider with little concern for
local factors may be aided by the use of bilingualism. In the project this generally
involves the national language Bahasa Malaysia. The most fluent TE Malay
speaker at Site 1 raised the pedagogic issues of the use of Malay both in the actual
lesson and in the research interview. He commented that it made more sense to use
the vernacular when you could not show a vocabulary item visually or you were
talking of abstract qualities. When he espoused the use of Malay, the response was
positive and audible, especially from early primary teachers. I heard audible sighs
and exclamations of delight when observing the interaction. He consciously used
Malay as did all the other teacher educators, albeit to the greatest extent reflecting
his observable fluency. A sociolinguistic viewpoint underpins TE 1’s view which
was “As I said in the first interview, the use of Malay shows social convergence
so that it’s we are not the orang putih (white man) from far away, delivering
lectures and moving out” (TE A Ref Prac 17 mins). All the other TEs concurred on
this point, with one using the phrase “I use Malay to deforeignise myself” (TE C
Ref Prac L 129). TE B said she had begun her earlier days of Malaysian teacher
education by asking teachers for Malay translations so that she would use these for
comparative grammar. For her, the main use of Malay was social as with TE D. TE
C would use his beginner’s level Malay as occasional input to liven up interaction.
This range of reported and observed usage links to the notion that one’s greater

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advocacy of bilingualism in learning may reflect confidence in using both

languages.

Relating Locally through Humor

The third concern was to share all learning in a non-hierarchical setting where
learning was presented as a shared localized concern rather than imposed NS norms.
This was part of the project design. Trainers spent at least two months in schools
understanding and experienced local needs, aligning the specifics with a larger
needs analysis (Hall & Dodson, 2004) and talking to teachers and administrators
before the in-service courses. The ‘native speakers’ as the local press still calls them,
were also living in the local community and this made them aware of local needs,
put them in a learning situation and avoided a ‘one size fits all approach’ to teacher
development. Yet there was feedback that the cultural framework of perceiving NS
teacher educators as a superior source of imported norms still was evident in
classroom interaction. Teacher educators turned to humour, an area not originally
seen as important in the research.
The teacher educators all stated that they consciously used humour as a means of
deconstructing teacher reliance on the perceptions that being a so called native
speaker made them all knowing experts. Belz (2002) suggests that humour and
playing with the unexpected in language assist language learning. He suggests that
language play may help learners construct new multilingual identities and new
social relations. There is little to suggest that this would not be the same for the
teachers, in what is essentially a bilingual or multilingual encounter TE B
consciously used self deprecatory humour saying that she would rather make jokes
about herself than others. “I first started doing when I went overseas to counter the
impression of the arrogant westerner who comes in from overseas” (TE B 20mins).
All the teacher educators spoke of the importance of being humorous and positive
about what they were doing so not to appear as part of an educational hierarchy
which is often evaluative and therefore seen as judgmental, and at times negative.

A recent Malaysian study of teacher educator preparation noted that well

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received teacher educators understand ‘the importance of not only being

academically prepared, but also possessing positive attitudes towards the process of
learning and behaving’ (Vethamani, 2012, p.104). One TE observed that although
he is not basically a humourous person, he would always be positive and would use
humour when “it flys by” (TE A Ref Prac 4 47 mins). While labeling herself as
basically a serious person, TE B noted that “I like to give off the wall examples. I
would rather use, like, the cop and the robber, than Ali and Bill. Or ( laughter ) Dick
and Jane. I like to get their attention with…you know, some strange people” (TE B
Ex Prac 3 20 mins). This approach was most clearly articulated by TE C who spent
much of the interview discussing cultural issues and less on the methodology. His
conscious view of humour as a tool to deconstruct distance and over reliance on the
NS as a knowledge transmission source was detailed, as can be read below.

8 I Humour comes in early in the course. The very first line in fact. You
9 notice here..and here (5secs) that you use humour ==
10 T ==I try to. I am always learning what is humorous ,cross culturally.
11 I don’t stop learning there.
13 I Why such a use of humour?
14 T I like a relaxed classroom atmosphere. My assumption based on the
15 last four years or so is that the teachers are stiff and guarded when they
16 come on a course
17 I __________Stiff and guarded? Can you say more about that?
17 T Teachers say..teachers tell me in private that they are afraid. They
18 say ‘we have to be careful.’ They feel they are being… well., judged
19 and evaluated. So my style is different. Somewhat Canadian style.

It is possible that when the NS expert with the sanction of the centralized
Ministry of Education comes into a classroom that teachers are guarded, as
described above. If one is to build interaction, self-effacing humour may help
diminish some of the distance and help to build collegiality. When discussing the
role of humour and cultural difference, one TE drew my attention to the limitations
of a simple division of Asian and European differences. She spoke of her

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experience in Japan and then described how much of the deconstruction of the
“expert role” she wanted to “counter” (ibid) occurred in the more informal setting
of the lengthy coffee breaks which occur at all Malaysian events. This, to her, was a
contributing factor in the ‘culture’ of teacher education courses in that
communication overrode accuracy concerns or any focus on NS norms:

T While we are talking about culture. There’s one thing in the rojak of
Malaysian culture which is good as a whole. That’s shooting the shit over
tea. It’s easy to build a group dynamic here because of that local culture,
compared to Japan say.
I Are you talking about the tea break in between==
T ==No. I’m speaking in a more general way. For a lot of Malaysians
they ..ah… Malaysians are very comfortable starting off with small talk
and then they start building friendliness. It all happens very quickly. In
other countries, I’ve been in it.. takes a long time to bridge distance
between strangers and acquaintances….and the whole Malaysian thing of
sittingaround for a long time and having these tea breaks ( laughter)

In reconstructing perceptions of reliance on NS norms the NS teacher educators

then used a variety of strategies to build empathy and collegiality with local
teachers. They modeled that English is not one standard norm and used humour and
presentation of oneself as an ongoing learner to create collegiality.

CONCLUSION

The definition and role of a native speaker in the English Language teaching
profession has long been an area of controversy, yet it is clear that the positioning is
still of professional concern even if the concept itself is problematic. With the
growth of English as an international language and the dynamic of increasing
numbers of skilled NNES professionals, the challenge is even more marked. Yet
working with native speakerism may require local action by NS teacher educators

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as well as increased advocacy and wider acceptance of critiques such as those

described earlier (Holliday, 2006, 2009). Techniques for the reconstruction of
perceptions of NS teacher educators have been suggested in the context of
Malaysian in service teacher education, most of them derived from interactional
experiences during in service courses. It has been argued that teacher educators may
model English as an international language to go beyond perceptions of a NS
standard. Modeling a role other than being perceived as a superior source of
knowledge also requires sensitivity to the differences in cultures of learning while
accepting the selective use of mother tongue. The research outlined has also
suggested that building social empathy through humour may aid learning between
professionals for whom English may be either a mother tongue or an additional
language.

THE AUTHOR

Associate Professor Dr. Stephen J Hall is Director, Centre for English Language
Studies, Sunway University, Malaysia. He has managed a national education
project, been a corporate trainer and trained teachers ASEAN wide. Stephen has
taught and trained at tertiary, secondary and primary levels. His recent books are
First Class Service. English for the Tourism and Hospitality Industry 1 and 2.
Email: stephenh@sunway.edu.my

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