Employing native English speaking teachers for English courses: Stakeholders’ perceptions

This article reports on research carried out with university students and leaders at University A (A pseudonym was used for the researched institution) in Vietnam, exploring stakeholders’ (specifically students and institutional leaders) perceptions of employing NESTs to teach English speaking skills.

EMPLOYING NATIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING TEACHERS FOR ENGLISH COURSES:

STAKEHOLDERS’ PERCEPTIONS

Nguyen Vu Phuong1, Nguyen Thị Bich Ngoan1

1 University of Economics and Law - Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh City

Information:

Received: 18/04/2018

Accepted: 07/07/2018

Published: 02/2019

Keywords:

Native English-speaking

teachers, communication in

English, speaking skills

ABSTRACT

Native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) are needed to teach English at many universities in Vietnam because they are commonly regarded as models for communication in English Yet, does this rationale correspond with the views of students who enrolled in high-quality programmes and administrators (departmental and functional leaders who are administering the programmes)? This article reports on research carried out with university students and leaders at University A (A pseudonym was used for the researched institution) in Vietnam, exploring stakeholders’ (specifically students and institutional leaders) perceptions of employing NESTs to teach English speaking skills Data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire with 65 students and in-depth interviews with 40 students (those who participated in the interviews also responded to the questionnaire) and interviews with four leaders Data were thematically analysed through an inductive approach The major factors that could help NESTs meet students’ expectations were their teaching methods and the extent to which they could interact with students together with communicative competence and cultural knowledge Students viewed NESTs

as models for communicating in English but also had difficulty in understanding these teachers when there were differences in culture and language uses It was indicated by leaders that NESTs are employed as a motivating and diversifying source of teaching staff and marketing communication figures for the institution The findings suggest that to meet students’ expectations, it is necessary that NESTs improve their teaching methods, receive training and be under a screening procedure of recruitment and quality assurance Employing NESTs is a trend in Vietnam, but quality procedures need to be established for assuring that these NESTs comply with the quality expectation at the institution

1 INTRODUCTION

There has been a trend in many higher education

institutions: employing native English-speaking

teachers (NESTs) to teach English speaking skills

Native speakers are in need due to the lack of

qualified local teachers of English to meet the rising demand for English as an international language (Alptekin, 1991) Thus, NESTs are employed for their fluency and accuracy in English no matter how skillful they are in teaching (Şahin, 2005) The use of NESTs has

been a subject of debate Some researchers claim

that NESTs are more successful in teaching than

non-native teachers The premise for this

argument is that a good oral English teacher

should have a good command of English (Jie,

1999) or being ‘foreign’ (Ma, 2012) to bring new

styles in teaching methodology For example,

many NESTs have been teaching successfully in

China (Jie, 1999) Another reason is from leaders’

assumption that the employment of NESTs could

help increase learners’ enrolments and to stay

competitive (Ardó, 1997) On the contrary, other

researchers believe that having teaching skills is

more essential than being a native speaker of the

language being taught In fact, it is motivation and

enthusiasm, not nativeness or accent, of teachers

that make a difference in teaching to support

learners (Lee, 2000)

The employment of NESTs at University A was

based on the institutional leaders’ assumption that

NESTs could make a perfect model for students to

practice speaking English (a member of Board of

Rectors, personal communication, 8 October

2018) These teachers from English-speaking

countries could provide an English-speaking

environment However, there have been students’

complaints about the quality of NESTs (students

in high-quality courses, personal communication,

17 October 2017 and 6 March 2018) The

situation at this institution has led to the

questions: Is the employment of NESTs helpful

for students’ learning? What problems have

students faced and what should be done to

improve NESTs’ teaching?

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Definitions of NESTs

The term ‘nativeness’ has been viewed from

different perspectives From the standpoint of

theoretical linguistics, the native speaker is

viewed as one that is capable of judging the

grammatical correctness of sentences (Chomsky,

1965) In addition, the acquisition of English

during infancy and childhood is a major attribute

of a native speaker (Strevens, 1992) Besides childhood acquisition of the language, other attributes of ‘nativeness’ include the ability to comprehend and produce idiomatic expressions, understand regional and social variations within the language, and understand and produce fluent and spontaneous discourse (Davies, 2004) The term ‘NESTs’ used in this paper is based on the attributes proposed by Davies (2004)

Studies of the employment of NESTs in the Vietnamese context

NESTs have been commonly employed in Vietnamese higher education institutions, which has been critically examined through research For example, Walkinshaw and Oanh (2012) examined the common belief that Vietnamese learners of Eglish prefer native-speaker teachers to non-NESTs in learning English The study was conducted on 50 students from two public universities in Vietnam though a survey and an open-ended self-report questionnaire The finding was that the participants valued the qualities of an English language teacher (namely teaching experience, qualifications, friendliness, enthusiasm, the ability to interesting informative classes, understanding of students’ local culture,

competence), and they believed that NESTs presented as ideal models of pronunciation (Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2012) Walkinshaw and Oanh (2014) studied students’ perceptions of the employment of native and non-native English language teachers in Vietnam and Japan through a qualitative short-response questionnaire The Vietnamese group of participants comprised 38 female and 12 male Vietnamese learners of English at an upperintermediate level at two universities in Vietnam The student participants from the first university were taught by five NESTs (from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States), while those from the second were taught by three NESTs (from Australia and the United States) (Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) Their findings indicated both drawbacks (such as

difficulty in explaining grammar and tension due

to cultural differences) and benefits (such as being

as models of pronunciation and repositories of

cultural knowledge) in the employment of NESTs

in teaching English These studies provide

background for the understanding of the

employment of NESTs in teaching English to

Vietnamese learners

Benefits of using NESTs

The use of NESTs has derived from the possible

benefits they may offer students They have been

believed to have good oral skills, a large stock of

vocabulary, and knowledge about their own

culture (Mahboob, 2003; Walkinshaw & Oanh,

2014) NESTs were viewed by learners as models

of pronunciation and correct language use with

experience of their culture (Arva & Medgyes,

2000; Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) Therefore,

they could be viewed as motivating models for

learners to imitate and use English (Benke &

Medgyes, 2005) and have been believed to

provide an authentic example in learning

pronunciation and speaking skill (SuriatiJusoh et

al., 2013) This premise means that NESTs

provide learners with a native-like environment of

English communication

A number of studies such as Benke and Medgyes

(2005), Lasagabaster and Sierra (2005) and Wu

and Ke (2009) on the employment of NESTs

suggested that NESTs represent a motivating

figure to encourage learning For example, Benke

and Medgyes’s (2005) study of 422 Hungarian

learners of English at different universities

revealed that NESTs were friendly lively good

models for imitation that were skilled at

encouraging learners to speak

Another advantage of NESTs is that they tend to

put more emphasis on fluency than accuracy, so

they push learners to use more English because

NESTs may not be capable of using learners’

native language (Şahin, 2005) The findings from

this study indicated that learners who were

exposed to NESTs were more successful in English lessons than those who were not

In addition, NESTs may help learners develop positive attitudes towards learning English Reviewing several studies, Şahin (2005) suggested that attitude and motivation may help learners gain achievement in foreign language learning NESTs can be a source of encouragement to students (Wu & Ke, 2009) When learners find themselves successful in communicating with NESTs, they may have joy

in learning (Miyazato, 2002) Thus, if learners have positive attitudes towards the target language, they may be motivated to learn and achieve objectives in learning the target language Finally, learners can benefit from learning communication skills and cultural knowledge with NESTs In addition to being a model of language, NESTs were viewed by learners as a model to provide immersion culture (Meadows & Muramatsu, 2007) Findings from a study by Ha Nam (2010) indicated that the students confirmed that regular exposure to NESTs’ teaching helped them gain insight into the Western culture These NESTs were viewed as repositories of cultural knowledge (Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) In other words, native speaker teachers appear to be a model in learning the culture and speaking

Drawbacks of employing NESTs

Being a native speaker of English does not necessarily mean that NESTs can explain the linguistic aspects of English Although NESTs were good at spoken communication, they could not facilitate good grammar use and could have difficulty explaining complex concepts (Mahboob, 2003) Findings from a study by Wong (2009) indicated that inexperienced and untrained NETs were being incapable of explaining grammar and vocabulary, and their confidence could last for a short period of time with anxiety about the length of the course Learners found NESTs poor at explaining grammar (Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) These

native teachers may find it troublesome to deal

with lexis and grammar because “sometimes they

haven’t got the knowledge to explain it”

(Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2005, p.230) This matter

means that being able to produce fluent English is

not necessarily being capable of teaching English

(e.g., explaining linguistic aspects of the

language)

Although NESTs’ cultural background can be

motivating to learners, it sometimes constrains

communication As Arntsen (2017) argued that,

regards of communication, NESTs may be

incapable of clearly communicating complex

ideas and structures to learners in case they lacked

understanding of the local language Then, their

different cultures created tension because learners

experienced a cultural and communicative gap

(Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) Thus, their

knowledge about their own culture (e.g., language

use and cultural values), which is different from

that of second language learners, can be an

obstacle to the learning process (Benke &

Medgyes, 2005; Millrood, 1999) For example,

NESTs’ lack of sharing of linguistic and cultural

background made learners fear NESTs, as found

in a case study on 13 Japanese university students

by (Miyazato, 2002) Furthermore, NESTs’ lack

of insights into the local educational context made

them fail to establish rapport with learners (Han,

2005)

Being able to pronounce English correctly does

not always imply that NESTs can help learners

with their pronunciation Although learners of

English affirmed that they could benefit NESTs’

pronunciation (Benke & Medgyes, 2005), they

often struggled to comprehend NESTs’ speech

Lasagabaster and Sierra’s (2005) participants

appreciated the exposure to NESTs’ pronunciation

but pointed out that NESTs often fail to correct

learners’ own pronunciation

Examining the advantages NESTs may offer

learners and the problems learners may face

suggests that the employment of NESTs may be

useful for students’ learning English The extent

to which NESTs are helpful to learners depends

on their quality, whether they possess a body of pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of English linguistics, learners’ local cultures, and teaching experience

Possible solutions

Although NESTs may benefit learners as aforementioned, there exist problems that need to

be solved First of all, it is necessary to provide them with training on pedagogical methodology and learners’ culture and difficulties in learning Findings from Ma’s (2012) study suggested that it

is crucial to increase NESTs’ understanding of students’ learning difficulties NESTs can teach effectively if they are qualified with experience and appropriate training (Wong, 2009)

Another solution to the weaknesses of NESTs may be engaging them in co-teaching with local teachers of English (i.e., non-NESTs) In Chun’s (2014) study in Korea, NESTs were attributed to linguistic competence while Korean teachers of English were viewed as psychologically helpful to students and sensitive to students’ needs for their shared mother tongue and experience as learners

In a review, SuriatiJusoh et al (2013) also found that the learners value “the collaborative teaching

of native and non-native speaker teachers of the language when learning the target language” (p 30) These findings suggest that learners can benefit from being taught by both NESTs and non-NESTs Liu (2008) suggested that for dynamic co-teaching, close attention should be paid to “effective collaboration between co-teachers, their desire to improve learning outcomes for their students, and support from school administrators and other colleagues” (p 115)

Based on the problems with NESTs as aforementioned, it may be necessary to have a process for quality assurance of English courses taught by NESTs This is an administrative procedure that leads to continuous improvement

of teaching The process may include establishing

standards for recruitment, monitoring their

teaching practice through the use of students’

formative feedback, and support for improvement

3 RESEARCH METHOD

NESTs have been employed to teach English for

high-quality programmes at University A, which

is a member university of Vietnam National

University – Ho Chi Minh City (considered as the

centre of high-quality tertiary education

institutions in Ho Chi Minh City) It has about

360 academics and administrative staff In 2018,

the number of students was around 6,800, ranging

from undergraduate to postgraduate levels The

study institution’s organisation includes the Board

of Rectors as top management which administers

faculties, departments, and centres The

Department of Foreign Languages is responsible

for teaching Business English and Academic

English to all students

The institution’s high quality programs are of two

types: the first programme (called C) includes

40% of basic and specialised courses delivered in

English; the second one (called CA) most courses

(except Marxism and Leninism) delivered in

English NESTs are employed to teach intensive

English (generally speaking skills) to help

learners in these programmes prepare for other

courses in English The speaking course lasts 45

hours The courses of intensive English recruit

learners (mostly freshmen) from various

disciplines These NESTs are from English

speaking countries such as Australia, Britain, the

United States of America, and Ireland The

research question the study aims to answer is:

What are stakeholders’ (students and relevant

administrators) perceptions of employing native

English-speaking teachers to teach English in

high quality programmes?

The study used a qualitative case study which

provides insights into the meaning of social

phenomena in natural settings (Merriam, 2001b)

It examined what the stakeholders perceived of

employing native English-speaking teachers to teach English in high-quality programmes Because it was exploratory in nature, the study was conducted within the constructivist paradigm, which depicts relativist reality, a subjectivist epistemological stance, and a naturalistic methodology (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011) The study aimed to understand the meaning constructed by these stakeholders through their experience with NESTs in the process of teaching and learning academic English In other words, the authors acknowledged that “knowledge is socially constructed” by the participants (Mertens,

2005, p 12), which suggested diverse interpretations of the reality (Mertens, 2005; Stake, 2010) Therefore, the research context facilitates a case study within the constructivist paradigm (Yin, 2009)

The employment of NESTs has raised concerns

on teaching quality University A was chosen because it employs NESTs, which provides convenience in sampling For recruiting the most productive sample to address the research question, purposive sampling was used (Marshall, 1996) The criteria to select the student participants included their attendance in the speaking course of academic English taught by NESTs and their registration for the high quality programme Participants were 65 freshmen (15 males and 50 females aged 18) who enrolled in

2017 high quality programmes, namely the so-called CA programmes whereby most courses are delivered in English Students from different disciplines registered for the intensive courses in Academic English These students’ level of English proficiency varied, around 54 of the participants had scored from 5.0 to 5.5 on IELTS tests while 11 others were at pre-intermediate level (around 4.0 scores on IELTS tests) Leader participants included four leaders including a member of Board of Rectors (MBR), two administrative leaders in quality assurance (LQA) and academic affairs (LAA), and a departmental leader (DL) These leader participants’

responsibilities included administering the high

quality programme and have assessed to student

feedback on NESTs’ teaching Therefore, their

administrative viewpoints could be relevant for

being triangulated with data from student

participants

Data were collected for the study through a

self-report questionnaire in English (see Appendix A)

which were delivered to 65 students The

questionnaire focused on the participants’

expectations from learning with NESTs, benefits,

problems, and solutions These guided open

questions were relevant to elicit these

stakeholders’ general perceptions of employing

NESTs The themes that might emerge could not

be anticipated, so this open format better fit the

research purpose (Dornyei, 2007) In-depth

interviews were conducted with four focus groups

(40 students among 65 students, from four

classes) in Vietnamese for the accuracy and ease

of communication Each focus group consisted of

from 9 to 11 participants Focus group interviews

are appropriate for collecting rich, high-quality

data in a social context (Patton, 2002), exploring

participants’ understanding and experiences about

an issue in an interactive manners; are regarded as

a quick and convenient way to collect data from

some participants simultaneously (Kitzinger,

1995) Each focus group interviews lasted 30

minutes to clarify student participants’ responses given in the questionnaire Individual semi-structured interviews with four administrators were also conducted in Vietnamese for the accuracy and ease of communication and lasted

20 minutes The in-depth interviews were organised based on these areas for the comprehensive understanding of these stakeholders’ perceptions

Data were inductively processed through thematic analysis whereby data were arranged into themes (Miles & Huberman, 1994) The data were broken into meaningful pieces of information with assigned codes (Maxwell, 2005) These codes were critically examined and grouped into common categories (Merriam, 2001a), which facilitated easy access to information for data analysis and interpretation (Merriam, 2009) Thorough critical reviews of the data facilitated finding connections between the themes from which findings were explored and discussed

4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This section presents the findings of the study and discussion associated with areas such as students’ expectations of NESTs, the benefits they received from learning with NESTs, the problems they faced and necessary measures to solve the problems Table 1 describes student participants’ perceptions of studying with NESTs

Table 1 Students’ perceptions of studying with NESTs

Expectations of learning English with NESTs

• Improve speaking and listening skills with pronunciation and intonation 41 63.08%

• Gain understanding of other cultures for future communication and

• Be helpful to their learning: friendly, well-organised, enthusiastic,

Areas of interest Responses (n = 65) Percentage

Benefits of learning with NESTs

• Gaining communication skills in a real-like international environment 11 16.92%

Problems of learning with NESTs

• Having difficult communication because of cultural difference 17 26.15%

Suggested solutions to the problems

• Have a standardised recruitment process, monitor teaching to assure

First of all, students’ expectations of learning

English with NESTs included the needs to

improve communication in English such as

communication skills (75.38% of responses),

speaking and listening skills with pronunciation

and intonation (63.08% of responses), having real

models for language practice (43.08% of

responses) – a good language environment for

communicative activities Students expected

NESTs would provide them with good language

practice whereby they could have interaction with

NESTs, imitate accents, learn intonation, and use

correct pronunciation

My expectations of learning with

NESTs were improving my speaking

and listening skills, using correct

pronunciation and intonation,

implementing natural communication,

and gaining knowledge of culture and

academic English (Lan-Pseudonyms

were used for the participants-QUESTIONNAIRE (QUE))

This finding concurs with a multitude of studies from which NESTs’ linguistic competence made them a motivating model of language (Arva & Medgyes, 2000; Mahboob, 2003; Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014) This attribute is helpful to learners

as they can imitate and use English (Benke & Medgyes, 2005) This explains why the demand for NESTs is high in many English courses

In addition, students also expected to gain understanding of other cultures for effective future communication as well as knowledge related to their major (46.15% of responses) They hoped that they would gain confidence in communicating with NESTs as real foreigners When enrolling in the course of academic English in the high quality programme, I expected to learn a lot from NESTs This learning would include communication capacity

(reactions with appropriate responses),

understanding of other cultures (e.g.,

religions) through communicative

activities (Khue-INTERVIEW(INT))

This result indicated that NESTs were perceived

as a model to provide immersion culture

(Meadows & Muramatsu, 2007) Engaging in

teaching by NESTs may provide learners with

Western culture (Ha Nam, 2010) The cultural

knowledge gained (Walkinshaw & Oanh, 2014)

may lead to effective global communication

They also expected NESTs to have certain

characteristics that the students perceived as

helpful to their learning: friendly, well-organised,

enthusiastic, showing rapport, and supportive

(29.23% of responses)

I expected my NEST to be a friendly

enthusiastic teacher who is willing to

offer students support and rapport such

as giving detail feedback to individual

students (Linh-INT)

Because English is used for the whole

session, if NESTs are well-organised

they can deliver clear instruction and

make students interested (Nhat-INT)

These students’ expectations of NESTs’ qualities

align with findings from Benke and Medgyes’s

(2005) study in that NESTs were regarded as

friendly and lively, appropriate models for

imitation, and skilled at encouraging learners to

use English in speaking This finding implies that

native teachers need not only English proficiency

but also communicative competence to be

effective in teaching English

However, there were also a few ideas that students

expected their teachers to have teaching methods

appropriate for their level no matter whether they

were NESTs or Vietnamese teachers of English

Nga commented: “Whether my teacher is a

Vietnamese teacher of English or a NEST is good

for me so long as the teacher has appropriate

teaching methods” (Nga-INT) This idea reflected

in Chun’s (2014) findings that learners did not

uniformly favour NESTs over non-NESTs Either type has their own strengths and weaknesses Chun’s findings implicated that students may benefit from being taught by both types of teachers It can be implied that the students in the high quality programmes need effective teachers that can support their learning regardless of their

‘nativeness’ status

From the administrative perspectives, the leaders expected that NESTs could have insights into the Vietnamese culture, professional working style, and follow the assigned curriculum The departmental leader said: “I expected NESTs to have an understanding of the Vietnamese culture

so that they could communicate with students effectively, adopt the programme appropriately, and work professionally” (DL-INT) This means that NESTs could be useful, but they may need to gain insights into local culture (Jie, 1999; Şahin, 2005) They also expected that NESTs could follow the course content and have appropriate pedagogy

We expect NESTs to show their professional style and follow the course syllabus (DL-INT)

Our course was designed to orient students to their future career, so we expect NESTs to follow it in teaching

(MBR-INT) These concerns seem to concur with findings from several studies that NEST appeared to be less prepared and empathetic towards students’ language difficulties and lacked knowledge of language (Mok, 1994; Reves & Medgyes, 1994)

Benefits of learning with NESTs

The first benefit students received from NESTs was improved speaking and listening skills (72.31% of responses) such as presentation, correct pronunciation, intonation and imitating the accent For example, Na gave her comments:

“Engaging in communicative activities, I feel confident in speaking English I perceived that I could have appropriate communication for

specific contexts” (Na-QUE) The departmental

and administrative leaders had the same view that

NESTs were supportive in creating a language

environment for students For example, the

departmental leader explained: “With NESTs,

students could get used to English pronunciation,

the use of communicative language, and native

culture” (DL-INT) The member of Board of

Rectors said: “NESTs are for students’ practice”

(MBR-INT) This finding is common in other

studies in that learners perceived NESTs as

having confidence in using English cultural

knowledge of English-speaking countries (Arva &

Medgyes, 2000), good pronunciation, ability to

motivate learners to use English, and being good

models (Chun, 2014; Ma, 2012) These attributes

may make NESTs desirable for English courses

because learners need a model for practice

speaking English

One surprising finding was that students needed

NESTs as models for their practice provided that

they have appropriate teaching methods (92.30%

of responses) One participant said: “Well, we

need NESTs to practice using English”

(Nam-INT) This finding is similar to that of Meadows

and Muramtsu’s (2007) study They found that

students preferred to have NESTs as the model of

the language, a source for learning the culture,

accent and grammar of the language One of the

important reasons for the employment of NESTs

though not apparent is the teacher’s ability to

produce fluent English, and NESTs can easily

acquire this facility (Bedford, 1970; Şahin, 2005)

It implies that nativeness is a dominant attribute

that makes native speaker teachers a good model

for practice speaking English

Besides, students also gained communication

skills in a real-like international environment

(16.92% of responses) and had fun time in

classroom activities For example, a student gave

her comments: “Talking to NESTs is similar to

communicating in an international environment; I

had lots of fun with them” (Ngoc-INT) Besides,

students perceived that their interaction with

NESTs could help improve their confidence in speaking (12.31% of responses) Dung said:

“When I could communicate with NESTs, I perceived I could do it with other foreigners, gaining confidence” (Dung-INT) This finding aligns with other findings in that NESTs could stimulate the development of learners’ positive attitudes towards learning the target language and motivation to achieve it: more successful in English lessons (Şahin, 2005) When students realised that they could communicate successfully with their NESTs, they enjoyed learning (Miyazato, 2002) Thus, NESTs may have helped facilitate students’ communication and their development of communication skills, which may have built their joy of learning and confidence Another benefit of employing NESTs from managerial perspective is that NESTs pose a figure for the institution’s marketing communication One of the leaders indicated:

“The employment of NESTs brought about a difference between high quality courses and other standard courses” (DL-INT) The member of the Board of Rectors said: “Employing NESTs aims

to bring about differentiation of our brand” (MBR-INT) This case is similar in non-English speaking countries where higher education institutions employed NESTs to increase learners’ enrolments and to stay competitive (Ardó, 1997)

Problems of learning with NESTs

However, when the students experienced learning with different NESTs, the students perceived that NESTs sometimes could not help them learn anything (36.92% of responses) The first problem students realised was NESTs’ ineffective teaching methods (84.61% of responses) The areas of teaching students gave negative feedback on were uninteresting teaching activities, teachers’ reliance

on textbook content without expansion of knowledge, lack of rapport and feedback, illegitimate instruction (making it difficult to understand NESTs’ messages), difference in

language uses, lack of interaction, motivation, and

pedagogical knowledge

Comparing my present NEST with the

previous one, I realised that he lacked

appropriate teaching methods Many of

my classmates have not come to the

class recently because classroom

activities were just boring The teacher

did not give detail feedback to our

presentation: he just gave a few words

like ‘good’ or ‘OK’ Sometimes I did

not understand what he was talking

about He used language differently I

was demotivated because I think the

NEST lacked sound pedagogical

knowledge – he did not have a clear

organisation of lessons (Khoa-INT)

The leaders also indicated similar problems with

NEST such as their lack of pedagogical skills and

knowledge and understanding local culture

NESTs employed at our university are

sometimes travellers that lack

pedagogical skills and knowledge

Consequently, they could not teach

effectively (MBR-INT)

Students may not attend classes because

they cannot use English and are afraid

of communicating with NESTs

(DL-INT)

This finding is similar to those of other studies

For examples, Wong (2009) found that untrained

NESTs were concerned about duration of the

course and were unable to explain grammar and

vocabulary and their confidence just lasted for a

short period of time Without training (e.g., in

classroom management and lessons in English

grammar) native speakers cannot be effective

teachers of English because explaining the

language is much more difficult than being able to

speak it (Arntsen, 2017) For instance, NESTs

failed to form a rapport with students because

they did not understand the local educational

setting, as shown in a study by Han (2005) It is

necessary to offer training to NESTs so that they could understand students’ learning difficulties (Ma, 2012) Our finding was useful for improving the quality of NESTs; it suggests that pre-service proper training for NESTs is necessary to assure their teaching effectiveness

Because students perceived NESTs as lacking pedagogical knowledge, they believed that NESTs were not well-qualified to teach them English (15.38% of responses) As a result, they believed that NESTs did not meet their expectations There was an idea that being a native was not equal to

‘having the ability to teach English’ Moreover, students expected to learn academic English, but not everyday English For example, a student expressed that: “I do not think the NEST is well-qualified ‘Nativeness’ does not mean ‘being able

to teach English” (Dao-INT) Tuan also commented on the appropriateness of the lessons:

“My teacher [NEST] just taught us everyday English, not academic English as I expected” (Tuan-INT) This finding concurs which that from Şahin (2005) in that “being adept in a language doesn’t necessarily make anyone successful language teacher” (p 29) The employment of NESTs to teach English all over the world derived from the application of the aural-oral approach (Bedford, 1970) However, if NESTs were not equipped with pedagogical insights, they could not be effective language teachers This finding suggests that NESTs need to be qualified with pedagogical competence to teach English

In addition, students also found it difficult to communicate with NESTs because of the difference in cultures (26.15% responses) As one student commented: “Our NEST is sometimes difficult to understand because what he said was quite different from our cultures Another sensitive aspect is that he dresses casually [untidily] and…” (Minh-INT) This result is similar to findings from a case in Russia whereby Millrood (1999) found that NESTs were not as effective as expected because of differences in cultures and expectations The author also