The English Language of Novices Interface the Native English Speakers in a Teaching Centre
by Aadhi Ramesh Babu & A. Komuraiah
This paper focuses on the problems faced by non native English speaking students studying abroad at English speaking universities. It points out the difficulties that Indian students are facing many problems when they participate in group work activities with the native English speakers and offers some recommendations on how these can be overcome. The English language speakers, though they are native or non-native English speaking students, must have good command of English and also they should know how to use the teaching techniques. In some instances, due to cultural differences and differences in expectations, these teachers are not as effective as they could be. For this purpose, the group work and interaction in English will improve their skills in a proper way that enables the learners in listening and speaking.
Group discussions and debates are very important tasks that will permit the students speaking skills. In English classroom, it is a familiar technique to English teachers. The educational benefits range from ‘improving the quality of student listening and student speaking’ and they will help and motivate students in language learning. By participating in group work, the students will obtain meanings, conversational interactions, and high-quality thoughts. These benefits will apply to the teacher training context also. It is very beneficent to both the teachers and learners; they can share their opinions and knowledge. Supporting the idea of learners combining to share ideas, Bailey states that “A crucial component of this course design was a creation of a class community in which peers could learn both with and from one another.”
Though the chances are equal to all the participants, who will speak better? Native speaker or non-native speaker, everyone knows the answer is obviously native speaker. Native English speaker can speak appropriately and clearly and we are not going to say that the non-native English speaking learner can’t speak properly. Native speakers of English as learners or teachers usually demonstrate good Standard English, along side with idiomatic language and slang. If the native speakers dominate in a group work or teacher training centre, the opportunities to benefit from the class community may be severely limited, so it is the responsibility of the native speakers who should give the chance to the non-native speakers to speak in English and motivate them.
We, as teachers, conducted a project to the English language novices and native speaking learners to search out the differences in their English. Both groups felt that the native learners were exerting more control over the interaction than the non-native learners. As a result the following questions came out:
1) In a teacher training context where native speakers and non-native speakers work together in small groups, do the native learners dominate or not?
2) If they do, what elements support non-native speakers to participate effectively?
3) Can we see the non-native speakers’ participation more effective than native speakers?
4) Either novice of English language or native English speaking learners have more ideas but who will speak out fluently.
Teaching is an art and teaching English to non-native learners is very difficult thing. Swaffar claims that “teaching is a dynamic.” What are the most important problems in the field of language teaching? Mackey argues is that “much of the field of language method has become a matter of opinion rather than of fact.” So we conducted a group activity to the learners in the teacher training centre to overcome the problem. The activity with twenty students was audiotape recorded, transcribed and analyzed to determine if native speakers dominated the activities. The students were taken the instructions how to be in group discussion and they were asked to make recommendations on how these types of activities could be structured to better meet the students’ learning needs.
The total participants were twenty members, twelve of whom were non-native students and eight of whom were native students. Of the twenty students, fourteen took part in the actual classroom. Later the project separate group discussions were held to investigate students’ impressions about contributing to group work activities and what factors dictated their level of participation. In group discussions, they produced deeper responses regarding group work interaction. Six additional students, who are very much interested non-native learners’ parties, joined with them.
There is no need to ask the questions of native speaker domination on the non-native speakers. But the same questions were asked to both the parties. It was thought that the non-native students might feel inhibited talking about the topics with a native speaker classmate present, so one non-native classmate introduced the questions and took part in the subsequent discussions. In the native students group discussions we introduced the questions. They were asked a few questions of group work interaction:
1) How did you feel about working in groups that were a combination of non-native English speaking teacher/learners and native English speaking teacher/learners?
2) Did you ever feel uncomfortable working in groups that were a combination of non-native English speaking teacher/learners and native English speaking teacher/learners?
3) If so, can you give more details about the situation or situations?
4) What suggestions could you make to remedy these types of situations?
Analysis of the information is very central thing in probing the answers from any activity. To examine the information, the teachers should observe that how many number of words produced by each participant in each activity. We should look at the average number of words per turn produced by each participant in each activity and total number of turns taken by each participant in each activity. Though the learners get the more time, do they utilize it or not. The thing is neither native learners nor non-native learners spoke for any extended time should be taken into mind.
We are giving a detailed examination of all the factors that are given above. The teacher and a class observer made contributions to the work group. In all the activities the native speaker participants are nominated as A1, A2 respectively, the non-native participants are designated as B1, B2 respectively. The total number of turns for each participant is compared to the amount of time each participant spent speaking in each activity. When the group was ready to start, the native speakers dominated the non-native learners speaking.
Participation was recorded:
The consequential discussions were also taped and transcribed. The issues frequently referred to in all the conversations were then isolated. Some of the important topics raised were the following:
1. Accepting group work
2. Previous experience towards group work
3. Difficulties with communication strategies and language proficiency
4. Cultural influences
5. Subject knowledge.
All these topics will now be discussed in more detail.
1) Acceptance of group work:
The discussions revealed that there were positive attitudes among the majority of the non-native speaking students towards work group activities. The group work will give the positive points to both the learners, who might acquire the second language. Luft explans “working in a group promotes unity.” Rabow also emphasizes “the idea of using discussion to encourage learning and the students’ enjoyment of learning. It seems that this is not a Western educational idea that is being imposed on international students.” many non-native learners accepted that they like the group work, and also they do not have these kinds of activities in their teaching situations. If the class room with minimum members, the students will surely enjoy it. The group work is an involvement of the students in their own learning process, Rabow and co-members say “that is crucial to the true acquisition of the material.”
2) Previous Experience towards group work:
We find many new things in language while practicing the work with group members. The promotion of group work activities in the formal educational system of other countries seems to be an important issue, as familiarity and past experience with this style of learning were identified by the discussion participants as significant. Several students indicated that previous experience with working in small groups was a very important factor. Some European students mentioned they had participated quite often group activities at university and in the public school system in their countries. This is in sharp contrast to the Asian students’ previous educational experiences. Besides the positive points, there are some negative things by the group work. Some of the well-known persons mention that group work is a problem in communication for the non-native speaking learners. They did not catch the native speaking learners words and unable to follow them.
The discussion of the native speaking students revealed that they expected the non-native speaking students to be more comfortable and forthcoming in the small group activities. The fact that some students had little or no experience with this type of learning and that the situation would be threatening to the novices of the English language, had not occurred to them. We think that there should be more aware ness in the minds of native students regarding the different educational systems that exist in other countries.
3) Difficulties with some aspects of communication and language proficiency:
In communication analysis, taking turn is well known from one to one. Most of the non-native students, mainly the Asian students, were unsure about it. Some of them expressed unfamiliarity with the communication strategy. Thus not knowing when or how to take a turn is seemingly a factor that may inhibit non-native learner participation.
4) Cultural influences:
The native speakers and non-native students made several mentions of the unique cultural values of their respective nationalities as probable influences on their levels of group work contributions. The way different cultures view silence in a conversation proved also to be a key issue. For native students, they were unaware of the fact that in some cultures silence is highly valued. While the Indian students were unaware that silence is not highly prized in conversations among native English speakers and often Europeans.
5) Subject Knowledge
With the group discussion, both the native and non-native learners get the subject knowledge. Zuenlger examined the interaction and found “subject knowledge to be a noteworthy factor.” Her results revealed that non-native learners’ active participation in conversations could be explained by the amount of subject or discourse knowledge the students had. We have evidence that a non-native speaker’s active conversational involvement can be explained as a function of relative knowledge of the topic or discourse domain. It is important to consider topic knowledge as relative since knowledge is negotiated. Most of the native speaking learners think that the non-native learners have very less knowledge about the teaching English. Furthermore, though native speakers do not have the subject knowledge, they speak effectively because they might have communication ability.
Recommendations:
Many valuable recommendations were put forward by the learners. However, a complete listing is beyond the scope of this paper. In what follows, the most frequently raised issues were compiled. These will touch on:
1. The lecturer’s role in the classroom.
2. The benefits of pre-teaching non-native learners the principles of successful group work.
1) The lecturer’s role in the classroom:
A large impact on the learners is the teacher’s or lecturer’s role. All the learners are not attentive in the whole class room. Some non-native speaking students suggested that lecturers should organize students into groups. One lecturer was specifically mentioned by students who liked this system. They said that they need the group work to discuss in English and they enjoyed that very much. However some native speaking learners felt this idea was perhaps inappropriate in all the cases. Some non-native speaking students also agreed with this opinion, and told that the duty should be on the learner side. The learners should join and talk with the teachers.
2) Pre-teaching the principles of successful group work to non-native speaking learners:
Participants, who have lack of previous experience in language, get the confidence by practicing in group wok. It plays significance role in the learners’ learning. They will learn many things by the pre-teaching. Most of the non-native speaking students supported this idea completely. One student commented that it helped them in language learning. They will improve their language by active learning through their own exploratory teaching experience. Experience shows that the principles usually help in introducing modern tendencies for English language teaching. In the final account the teachers will demonstrate a fine blend of the modern and traditional features and this is to be expected as normal and justified.
Conclusion:
The native speaking learners are in the minority (only eight) in the teacher- training context, they seem to dominate small group activities when interacting with non-native speaking learners. Though the non-native speaking learners were highly motivated, these kinds of things happened sometimes. This work attempts to identify some of the factors that discourage non-native speaking students from participating in small group work. The factors examined were;
(a) The participants desire to be involved in small group activities.
(b) The amount of previous experience they had with small group work.
(c) Difficulties with some aspects of English discourse and concerns about language proficiency.
(d) The part cultural influences played in their interaction in groups.
Based upon participants’ suggestions regarding factors and the following strategies for improvement were discussed and put forth as recommendations that are listed below;
1. The role of the lecturer in the teacher training classroom
2. The advantages of pre-teaching the tenets of successful group work to NNS teacher/learners.
Notes:
Bailey, F. “The Role of Collaborative Dialogue in Teacher Education in Freeman” D and J. Richards (eds) Teacher Learning in Language Teacher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (1996): 262.
Swaffar, L. K., et. al, “Teacher Classroom Practice: Redefining Method as Task Hierarchy.” Modern Language Journal, NFMLTA.: Monterey 66, (1982): 24-33.
Mackey, W. F. “The Meaning of Method.” English Language Teaching Oxford UP: Oxford, 5, (1950): 4- 10.
Luft,J. Group Processes: An Introduction to Group Dynamics. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, (1984): 41.
Rabow, J, et.al Learning Through Discussion. Thousand Oaks, California, USA: SAGE Publications, Inc. (1994): 2-3.
Rabow, J, et.al Learning Through Discussion. Thousand Oaks, California, USA: SAGE Publications, Inc. (1994): 8-9.
Zuengler, J. “Performance Variation in Native Speakers and Non-native Speakers Interactions: Ethno Linguistic Difference or Discourse Domain?” S. Gass, C. Madden, D. Preston and L. Selinker (eds) Variation in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. (1989): 241.