English Agogo

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKING TEACHER
By Getro BERNABE

Being a non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) has its advantages and disadvantages as well. Let's start with the advantages of being a NNEST. First, a NNEST can be a better guide to the students facing confusion through their learning process. A NNEST has literally enough good insight into the language learning to understand what the students are going through, and guide them accordingly because he has been down that road before. The NNEST is the one who had faced confusion in English to some extent before he got to overcome it by contriving some ways ( and these ways are to be shared). As a NNEST my teaching philosophy is in this thought: " if it worked for me, it can possibly work for my students." Second, a non-native English speaking teacher has the leeway to switch to the students' first language (L1). Based on my experience with my students, switching to Haitian creole or French (our common L1) is sometimes efficient and beneficial in that it helps the students better understand certain complex structures of the English language quickly. They understand better when I refer to L1 to show them similarities. In addition, the NNEST knows in advance where the difficulties are for his students. In my case, since I know where the problems are, I contrive a way to in advance to facilitate my students understanding or production (all that happens in the preparation of the lesson plan). For example, the production of "R" sound is not an easy task for French speakers. At this point, I usually put at my students' disposal the techniques that worked for me. Once again " if it worked for me, it can possibly work for my students."

While being a NNEST has some advantages, there are indeed certain disadvantages. With a NNEST, the students are likely less motivated to speak English than they would be with a native English teacher. The fact that I speak the students' L1 literally works as an unconcious incentive for the students to use L1 in class, especially when it is difficult for them to express ideas in English. The repercussions of that is that they don't feel constrained to think and speak in English. So when they speak English, they think in French or Haitian creole, which is not good. They often speak with sentence structures that are only acceptable in French ( Ex: before that I leave, ..../ instead of before I leave, ....). Another major disadvantage is that the NNEST is very limited when it comes getting the students to explore the culture behind the language through some expressions, especially slang and some other aspects of the English language that are deeply connected to the culture. I Sometimes find myself limited in some way when it comes to explaining certain cultural burdens hidden behind certain expressions. Actually that has to do with pragmatics in teaching English as a foreign language.

To top it off, non-native English speaking teacher and native English teacher both have advantages and disadvantages. By the same token, in English teaching it is not about advantage or disadvantage of native or non-native teacher. Well, think about this. In one hand we have five fingers, they are all different from one another. Nothing is perfect on this planet; everything is different in some way. So the bottom line should be about the teaching knowledge of the teachers to meet the students' needs, about whether they have intrinsic motivation or not. Teaching is a question of passion, dedication for the sake of the students' success. I usually say to my colleagues back in Haiti that the teaching profession has three rules: 1) love it; 2) love it; 3) love it.

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