Perception of physician students about studying English with native and non native English speaking teachers

Teachers play an important role in the classroom, especially in teaching a foreign language. This paper reports on the students’ perception of choosing native or non-native English teachers when learning English using the questionnaire as a research method.

PERCEPTION OF PHYSICIAN STUDENTS ABOUT STUDYING ENGLISH

WITH NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING TEACHERS

Pham Cu Thien1

1 Ho Chi Minh City University of Education

Information:

Received: 09/08/2018

Accepted: 20/09/2018

Published: 03/2019

Keywords:

Student’s perception, English

teachers; English as foreign

language

ABSTRACT

Teachers play an important role in the classroom, especially in teaching a foreign language This paper reports on the students’ perception of choosing native or non-native English teachers when learning English using the questionnaire as a research method Twenty-four physician students in the second year at Saigon Polytechnic College joined this study in January,

2016 The result showed that physician students preferred learning listening (62.5%), speaking (58.3%), reading (54.2%) and pronunciation (75.0%) with native English-speaking teachers For grammar and writing, most of them (87.5%) indicated the preference to study with non-native English-speaking teachers Therefore, Rector of the College and Dean of English Department should take into consideration the importance of teachers in teaching English for students Further research with a larger sample size and long term should be conducted to support this study’s result

1 INTRODUCTION

English is widely used nowadays Students of all

ages all around the world have been learning

English for different reasons; as a subject at

school, for immigration to an English-speaking

country, for travelling purposes or entertainment

(Harmer, 2010) Besides the curriculum, the

syllabus, and the materials for learning English

such as books, videos, tapes, pictures, and so on,

teachers play an important role when teaching a

foreign language like English There are two main

kinds of teachers; namely the native and

non-native English-speaking teachers The term

“non-native speaker” is often defined in contrast to the

“native speaker” of a language, but it is very

difficult to define precisely (Luk & Lin, 2007)

The number of non-native English-speaking

teachers have been increasing and exceeds that of native English-speaking teachers in the world (Ma, 2012) The question is that between native and non-native English teachers, which ones do the students prefer learning skills and aspects including listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and pronunciation with Findings then can help Rector of the College and Dean of the English Department choose suitable teachers for students to learn to get the most effectiveness Therefore, a research on students’ perception of studying English with native or non-native English-speaking teachers in class at Sai Gon Polytechnic College was carried out

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The term “native” and “non-native” have been used to refer to speakers of a language (Ulate,

2011) The position of non-native teachers of

English has been a controversial issue when this

language started being taught internationally

(Madrid & Canado, 2004) There has been a lot of

research to examine the differences in the

teaching of non-native English-speaking teachers

and native English-speaking teachers in recent

years Medgyes (1994) stated that native and

non-native teachers differed from the level of L2

competence and in terms of teaching behaviors

The research result from Madrid and Canado

(2004) showed that students’ preferences for

native teachers increased with the academic level

Ma (2012) found that there were differences in

teaching approaches, teaching objectives and

classroom atmosphere between native and

non-native English-speaking teachers in Hong Kong

A dissertation by Tsou (2013) was conducted on

184 non-English major students in Taiwanese

University, their perception was that both two

groups of native and non-native English-speaking

teachers had their strengths and weakness in

English instruction; the disadvantages of this

group were the advantages of the other groups in

terms of English proficiency, the communication

and the solution for students’ problems Alseweed

(2012) studied at Qassim University with 169

Saudi male university students (non-English

major) and the results were that they liked

studying with native English teacher, especially at

the higher level; however, they also showed their

interest in studying with non-native English

speakers because of their provision of the serious

learning environment and clear answer for

students’ asking Walkinshaw and Duong (2012)

carried out a research on 50 third-year English

major students in two universities in Vietnam and

got that English competence was the one which

the respondents chose the native English-speaking

teacher Moreover, all other qualities such as

teaching experience, qualifications, friendliness,

enthusiasm, the abilities to deliver interesting and

informative classes were valued for both groups

of teachers Xiaoru (2008) studied 75 university

students majoring in English and got the results that each kind of teachers had its own strengths and weaknesses, so they should complement each other when teaching English Lasagabaster and Sierra (2002) studied on 76 university students, in which there were 38 students majoring in English; the results were that they liked studying with native English-speaking teachers of the combination of both groups Clouet (2006) said that teachers from each group had different advantages and the same class should have both native and non-native teachers so that the students could get better knowledge

Walkinshaw and Duong (2014) stated that non-native English-speaking teachers had better grammar explanation and classroom interaction, while others were good at pronunciation, language

use and culture Çakir and Demir (2013) reported

that native English-speaking teachers were better

at teaching speaking, listening and pronunciation whereas non-native English-speaking teachers were excellent at making communication with

their students; and teaching grammar (Çakir &

Demir, 2013; Tosuncuoglu, 2017) Sevy-Biloon (2017) and Yazawa (2017) also agreed that native English teachers had better pronunciation than non-native English-speaking teachers

The above information mentioned a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of studying English with native and non-native English-speaking teachers, mainly for university students There was no research on the students’ perception at vocational schools or colleges, especially physician students This research will find the perceptions of physician students at Sai Gon Polytechnic College in Ho Chi Minh City so that the policy makers can take into consideration the importance of teachers’ approach in teaching English for students in this level

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

One cross-sectional survey was done in January

2016 to collect data by using a questionnaire which was designed by referring to the previous

research (Walkinshaw & Duong, 2014; Ma, 2012;

Torres, 2004) However, the question in this

research only focused on students’ perception of

studying listening, speaking, reading, writing,

grammar and pronunciation with native and

non-native English-speaking teachers The

questionnaire was written in Vietnamese to

prevent from a misunderstanding from the

responding students then it was translated into

English later for the paper After the questionnaire

was designed, it was showed to the two experts on

TESOL teaching for comments After correcting

following the comments from two experts, the

questionnaire was tested by five testers to know

that whether they could understand or not, also to

be sure that the questionnaire was good enough

Data then were collected at one point of the time

in January 2016 with all senior physician students

(N=24) in the seventh batch of Sai Gon

Polytechnic College in Ho Chi Minh City,

Vietnam The unclear questions were explained

directly to the participants They had to choose

either native English-speaking teachers or

non-native English-speaking teachers for each skill,

and they have to decide to select the most

important reason for their choice The

implementation of the data collection referred to

the Five steps in the Process of Data collection

(Creswell, 2012) including identifying the

participants and sites, getting permission,

obtaining data from the designed questionnaire, organizing the collected information correctly, and doing survey in the class for this study

Microsoft Office Excel was used for data entry and statistical analyses Double entry was done to prevent from errors and to be sure no errors appeared Descriptive analysis, mainly the percentage was used for data analysis

4 FINDINGS 4.1 Students’ perception of studying listening skill with English teachers

Table 1 showed that the native English-speaking teacher was preferred to non-native English-speaking teachers when studying listening with the percentage of 62.5% and 37.5%, respectively Most of the students (62,5%) liked studying listening with native English-speaking teachers The main reason was that their English would be improved faster (46,7%), some of the students liked native English-speaking teacher because they could have a better understanding (20,0%) and they had no shyness to ask questions when they had a problem (20,0%)

The non-native English-speaking teacher was also chosen by 37,5% students They liked studying with them as they could follow without constraints when being asked or given instructions during the lesson

Table 1 Students’ perception of studying listening skill with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with native

Like studying with

non-native English teacher 9 (37,5)

Improve English fast

4.2 Students’ perception of studying speaking

skill with English teachers

The percentage of students choosing the native

English-speaking teacher (58,3%) for speaking

skill was also higher than non-native

English-speaking teacher (41,7%) (Table 2) The ones

selecting the native English-speaking teacher gave

the very persuasive reason that these teachers

could speak more accurately than the others

(71,4%) because of their mother tongue language

The term “speak accurately” is the popular one

when mentioning about speaking a certain language On the contrary, the students chose the non-native English teacher explained that they chose this option because they could understand easily when teacher required them to practice speaking (70,0%) Both sides had their own ideas, but the results showed that the selection of native English-speaking teacher was much higher than non-native English-speaking teachers in speaking skill

Table 2 Student’s perception of studying speaking skill with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with

native English teacher 14 (58,3)

Easy to understand

Like studying with

non-native English teacher 10 (41,7)

Improve English fast Speak more accurately

4.3 Students’ perception of studying reading

skill with English teachers

Similar to listening and speaking skills, the total

number of students choosing the native

English-speaking teacher (54,2%) in learning reading

skills was higher than the non-native

English-speaking teacher (45,8%) (Table 3) Although the

percentage was not very different, it showed the tendency of students Most of them thought the native English teacher could make them improve English fast (53,8%) The counterpart group said that the non-native English teacher could explain the lesson more clearly, simply and made them understand more easily

Table 3 Students’ perception of studying reading skill with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with native

Like studying with

non-native English teacher 11 (45,8)

Improve English fast

Easy to understand 7

4.4 Students’ perception of studying writing

skill with English teachers

For writing skill, it was very interesting that 21/24

learners (87,5%) liked studying with the

non-native English-speaking teacher (Table 4) The

reasons were easy to follow (61,9%) and easy to

understand (38,1%) the lesson This writing skill

should be considered by the school leader when

inviting the teacher It was surprised that only three students chose the native English-speaking teachers when studying writing skill, two of them chose those native English teachers because they felt no shyness when asking, only one student thought it was easy to follow what his or her native English teacher taught

Table 4 Students’ perception of studying writing skill with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with

native English

teacher

3 (12,5)

Improve English fast

Easy to understand

Like studying with

non-native English

teacher

21 (87,5)

Improve English fast

No shy when asking

4.5 Students’ perception of studying grammar

with English teachers

The same as writing skill, 87,5% students liked

learning grammar with the non-native

English-speaking teacher (Table 5) They said that it was

easy for them to understand (42,9%), and it was

also easy for them to follow the lecture (52.4%), especially with the complex grammar structure Only three students chose native English-speaking teachers because they thought it was easy for them to follow the grammar lesson, and they had

no shyness to ask questions in the class

Table 5 Students’ perception of studying grammar with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with native

Improve English fast

Easy to understand

Like studying with

non-native English teacher 21 (87,5)

Improve English fast

Easy to understand 9

4.6 Students’ perception of studying pronunciation with English teachers

Table 6 showed that three-fourths students (75%) liked studying this skill with the native English-speaking teacher All of them gave the same reason that the native English-English-speaking teacher pronounced completely accurately while the non-native English-speaking teacher sometimes made mistakes The term “pronounce accurately” was also very popular when talking about the pronunciation of a language

It was obvious that no one in the research had a different idea except for 25 % leaners chose the non-native English teacher because of being not shy in the class (5 cases) or being able to improve English faster (one case)

Table 6 Students’ perception of studying pronunciation with English teachers (N=24)

Like studying with native

Improve English fast Easy to follow

No shy when asking

Like studying with

non-native English teacher 6 (25,0)

Easy to follow Pronounce accurately

5 DISCUSSION

There have been arguments against the native and

non-native dichotomy (Ma, 2012) Different

teachers have different strengths and weakness,

and it depends on how students view individual

teachers, of course, students will not give the

same opinions (Harmer, 2010) However, the

students would master and understand the lecture

much more easily and successfully when they like

the teacher they are studying with This part of the

paper does not show who is the better teacher but

only discuss student’s perception when choosing a

teacher in learning English

Most students in this research like studying

grammar and writing skill with the non-native

English teacher (87,5%) This can be explained

that these two skills are being required highly to

the students because of the tradition way of studying They have to master these skills to pass the tests at school and university or college Besides, the details of the lesson and the content must be remembered carefully Also, if students have some difficulties in learning or doing the exercises or even the content of the lesson, teachers can find suitable ways to show them to understand fast These problems may not be solved easily by the native teacher in details because of the language barrier Moreover, native teachers were lack of knowledge of the students’ mother tongue, this influenced the lack of sympathy between the teacher and students, especially at the elementary and intermediate levels (Madrid and Canado, 2004) like the students in this research Therefore, the reasons why they chose non-native English-speaking

teachers was easy to follow for writing (N=13)

and grammar (N=11) This high percentage of

students chose the non-native English-speaking

teachers when studying grammar also agrees with

Walkinshaw and Duong (2014), Çakir and Demir

(2013), and Tosuncuoglu (2017) that these

teachers had better grammar explanation and

teaching experiences for these subjects

Pronunciation is one of the most important aspects

of a language (Çakir & Baytar, 2014) when

studying a foreign language In this research,

three-fourths students liked studying

pronunciation with the native English teacher It is

obvious that the native ones can pronounce more

accurately both the sound and the ways of

pronouncing because of their mother tongue

Sevy-Biloon (2017), Çakir and Demir (2013),

Walkinshaw and Duong (2014), and Yazawa

(2017) also agreed that native English teachers

had better pronunciation than non-native

English-speaking teachers Native English-English-speaking

teachers can have better accurate pronunciation

because they master the language they teach, have

a greater self-confidence (Madrid & Canado,

2004) As a result, using English accurately is the

most important one voted by students in this study

when they gave their perception of studying

pronunciation (N=18) with foreign English

teachers Obviously, the increase in using English

in the world will affect both local languages and

English then it gives the increase to new hybrid

language varieties (Foley, 2014), that is what the

learners want to minimize Moreover, human

communication can happen between the speaker

and the listener if they understand each other

Both speaker and listener have to perform their

language in simple terms The speaker has to

convert his message into spoken language and

transfer to the listener, while the listener has to

understand the language of the speaker If one

pronounces the words incorrectly, the other

cannot understand Therefore, the accurate

pronunciation is the most essential element in

communication When pronunciation is correct, it

is easy for students to follow and practice speaking and pronunciation because they have complete confidence Therefore, the native English-speaking teacher should be in charge of guiding this skill if possible

For the other skills such as listening, speaking and reading skills, the percentage of students liked studying with the native teacher is higher than the non-native English-speaking teacher This agrees

with Çakir and Demir (2013) that native

English-speaking teachers were better at English-speaking and listening These findings can be considered that native English-speaking teachers for these skills were always in the higher priority in general as native teachers could speak English better than non-native counterpart and used it as a natural means of communication in class (Árva &

Medgyes, 2000; Madrid & Canado, 2004), so the students would prefer to study with native English-speaking teachers

The paper showed some interesting findings about student’s perception when choosing the teachers

to learn English However, the result should have been better if the sample size had been bigger and the data had collected from more sources The data from this paper is only got from one physician class in Sai Gon Polytechnic College and then analyzed, discussed and came to some conclusions Furthermore, no students had the ideas to welcome both native and non-native English teachers in the same class like the research of Clouet (2006) that native and non-native English teacher in the same class was ideal for English teaching In summary, the opinions of the students from this research were sometimes very different; however, it could present the real situation and ideas of students when choosing teachers for studying English This result can be used as references in the school when inviting teachers for each skill or topic, and also for further research in the future

6 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Physician students of the seventh batch in Sai Gon

Polytechnic College preferred learning listening

(62,5%), speaking (58,3%), reading (54,2%) and

pronunciation (75,0%) with native

English-speaking teachers For grammar and writing, most

of the learners (87,5%) wanted to study with

non-native English-speaking teachers Therefore,

Rector of the College and Dean of English

Department should take into consideration the

importance of teachers in teaching English for

students Further research should be continued

doing with larger sample size and long-term study

to find more useful results

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