Self-awareness in NNS EFL Primary and Secondary School Teachers

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Self-awareness in NNS EFLPrimary and SecondarySchool TeachersEnric Llurda & [Agrave]ngel HuguetPublished online: 29 Mar 2010.

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Self-awareness in NNS EFL Primary andSecondary School Teachers

Enric LlurdaUniversitat de Lleida, dep. d’Anglès i Lingüística

Àngel HuguetUniversitat de Lleida, dep. de Pedagogia i Psicologia

The characteristicsandparticularproblems facedbynon-native speaking (NNS) teach-ers of foreign languages are being increasingly addressed. NNSs currently constitutethe majority of language teachers in the world, but they have different needs andconcerns from native speakers (NSs). Research is being conducted to uncover theseneeds and provide better teaching conditions for this group of teachers. This paperpresents the results of a questionnaire distributed to NNS EFL teachersworking in alltheprimaryand secondaryeducation schools in themid-sizeCatalancityof Lleida.Thequestionnaire focused on their self-perceptionas NNS teachers,with particular atten-tion to three aspects: language proficiency, teaching views, and the NS-NNS debate.Results indicate that primary and secondary teachers clearly differ in theirself-awareness regarding each of the above three aspects.

Keywords: non-native, teachers, methodology, English as an internationallanguage, EFL, language proficiency

IntroductionIn 1991,Teachers of English to Speakers ofOther Languages (TESOL) issued a

statement in which it was argued that English as a second language (ESL)employment decisions based on native language proficiency are discriminatoryand therefore the organisation committed to ‘make every effort to prevent suchdiscrimination’ and ‘to work towards the creation and publication of minimallanguage proficiency standards thatmay be applied equally to all ESOL teacherswithout reference to the nativeness of their English’ (quotation taken fromBraine, 1999: xxi). Since then, someworkhas been done towardsa better appreci-ation of non-native TESOL professionals, and towards a more accurate descrip-tion of their actual strengths and weaknesses. Recent publications dealing withthis issue have presented arguments for the advantages of non-native speakingEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) teachers (Lee, 2000; Seidlhofer, 1999), refut-ing the common perception that native-speaking teachers are superior tonon-natives by virtue of their language proficiency alone.

The idealistic notion of ‘the native speaker’, prevalent in the 1960swhen greatimportance was assigned to oral skills in second and foreign language teaching,has since been called into question; indeed some have labelled it a myth(Phillipson, 1992). Kramsch (1998) pointed out the extraordinary influence ofChomsky’s use of the expression ‘native speaker’ as the ‘ideal speaker-listener, ina completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language

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Self-awareness in NNS EFL Primary and Secondary School Teachers

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perfectly’ (1965: 3). She argued that it is erroneous to believe that native speakersare the best equipped to teach oral language, as native speakers themselves arenever ‘ideal’ in the Chomskian sense: they are necessarily influenced by theirgeographical and socialorigins.Widdowson(1994)hadpreviously affirmed thatnative speakers, in spite of having a certain advantage over non-natives inlanguageusage, aredisadvantagedwith regard to language learning experience.

However, in spite of a widely held position of respect towards the profes-sional capacities of non-native teachers, and despite the above-mentionedTESOL statement, many ESL employers do not even consider appointingnon-native speakers in their schools, and there is no systematic researchbased onneutral and objective data that looks at the language and teaching skills ofnon-native teachers in comparison to native ones. Some of the papers that haverecently appeared on this topic have argued the need to disregard the dichotomynative/non-native (e.g. Cook, 1999). There are a few authors who haveattempted to dealwith the issue fromadata-basedperspective (e.g. Lasagabaster& Sierra, 2002; Liu, 1999a, 1999b; Samimy & Brutt-Griffler, 1999) and who havegreatly contributed to a better understanding of NNS teachers, but with theexception of Lasagabasterand Sierra (2002) their work is based on a very limitednumber of subjects. Fortunately more studies will appear in the near future intwo edited volumes dealing with non-native English language teachers(Kamhi-Stein, in press; Llurda, in preparation), thus increasing the rather limitedamount of literature on this topic.

The current study presents data obtained from English language teachersworking in primary and secondaryschools in theEFL context ofLleida, aCatalancitywith an approximate population of 110,000 inhabitants, located 150 kmwestof Barcelona. There, the teaching of English within regular schools is conductedexclusively by NNSs who have the required qualifications. These are basicallytwo: a three-year primary education teacher degree for primary education teach-ers, and a four-year degree (it was a five-year degree until 1996), in EnglishPhilology for secondary education teachers. Differences in the two types ofprogrammes are important, as primary teachers receive somewhatmore holistictraining, involving fewer English-specific courses and more education-relatedones. Secondary education teachers, on the other hand, have to take a consider-able number of courses in English, American, and Commonwealth literature, aswell as some language-related courses.

Method

ParticipantsThe participants in this study were 101 NNS primary and secondary school

English language teachers working in regular primary and secondary schools inthe city of Lleida. As indicated above, it must be noted that no NSs work asprimary or secondary school teachers in Lleida. A different proportion wouldhave appeared had the study focused on private language schools offeringevening extra-curricular classes.

After obtaining permission from local educational authorities, the researchercontacted the directors of the schools to let them know about the study and toenquire about the number of English language teachers in the school and how to

Self-awareness in NNS EFL Primary and Secondary School Teachers 221

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contact them. In most cases, the researcher was informed of the times when thedifferent teacherswould be available, so thathe could talk personallywith them.In some cases, especially in secondary schools, which normally had more thantwo teachers, the researcher was referred to the English language departmentcoordinators, who generally offered to talk to their colleagues and to provide acalendar of days and timeswhen the interviews could be carried out. In all cases,it was made very clear that participation could not be imposed and participantshad to be free to opt out of the study. Only two teachers chose not to participate,and a few could not be contacted despite several attempts.

If we focus on the distribution of the participants, 38 were primary schoolteachers (27 working in public schools, and 11 in private institutions), and 63were secondary school teachers (48 in public schools, and 15 in private ones). Thedistribution between sexes was clearly unequal: 89 of the teachers were female,and only 12 were male, but this is representative of the language teaching situa-tion in Catalan schools. Ages ranged from 21 to 55; themean agewas 35.8.Whenthe respondents were asked to give their L1, 75 said Catalan, 23 Spanish, andthree said they were completely bilingual.

Because all the schools in the citywere approached, the 101participants in thestudy account for the majority of the active teachers in Lleida at the time of thedata collection. The inclusive nature of the sample suggests that the distributionis fairly representative of the population of language teachers in Catalonia.

InstrumentsA questionnaire was administered individually to the 101 participants by the

principal researcher and three trained research assistants, each of whom hadexperience of conducting one-to-one interviews. The questionnaire consisted oftwo types of questions: five-point Likert scales, and closed sets of categories (seeAppendix).1

The questions were partly inspired by Medgyes (1994), and were designed todetermine the teachers’ self-awareness in three aspects:

(1) Their ownlanguage skills andhow their teachingwasaffected by them, aswellas the teachers’perceptionofhowtheir language skillshadevolvedover time.

(2) Their teaching ideology, expressed through two questions in which theyhad to indicate their teaching preferences for designing a language courseand their goals as language teachers.

(3) Their positionwith regard to theNS-NNSdebate,with a two-fold emphasis:the preference of NSs or NNSs as language teachers, and their inclinationswith regard to the need for culture knowledge on the part of the Englishlanguage teacher. The third aspect is relevant to the discussionas it has beenargued recently thatwith the transformationofEnglish into an internationallanguage, it is becoming less necessary to tie language teaching to eitherBritish or American culture in foreign language contexts (Llurda, in press;McKay, 2000; Modiano, unpublished manuscript).

ProcedureThe researchers met individually with each of the 101 participants at their

convenience. Although the teachers had a copy of the questionnaire in front of

222 Language Awareness

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them, the interviewers asked the questions orally and were thus given oralreplies, which were subsequently transcribed. On average, the interviews took30 minutes.

HypothesesThe current studywasdesigned to respond to the following three hypotheses:

(1) Secondary education teachers will rate their own language proficiencyhigher than primary education teachers rate theirs.

(2) Secondary education teachers will be more form-oriented than primaryteachers, who will show a higher preference for a communicative orienta-tion in language teaching.

(3) Secondary education teachers will be more aware of ‘political’ issuesconcerning ELT (native vs. non-native teachers, cultural aspects in languageteaching).

Results

Awareness of their own language skills

Question 1: Self-assessment of language proficiencyThe first question had nine sub-questions, each referring to a particular aspect

of language proficiency, except for the first one, which asked respondents abouttheir proficiency in a general fashion. In all nine sub-questions, respondents hadto choose a number from 1 (very weak) to 5 (very good). As can be observed inTable 1, the mean scores of the results obtained from secondary teachers weresuperior to those coming from primary teachers in all aspects of proficiency.However, the ANOVA tests indicated that significant differences were found inonly four sub-questions: proficiency in general (F (1, 97) = 10.539, p < 0.01),grammaticalaccuracy (F (1, 98) = 15.359,p < 0.01), knowledge of grammar rules(F (1, 99) = 4.270, p < 0.05), and reading comprehension (F (1, 99) = 8.241, p <0.01).


Table 1 Self-assessment of language proficiency

Primary SecondaryGeneral proficiency* 3.528 3.968Grammatical accuracy* 3.514 4.063Knowledge of grammar rules† 4.000 4.286Breadth of vocabulary 3.579 3.742Pronunciation 3.474 3.571Oral fluency 3.579 3.841Listening comprehension 3.921 4.111Writing 3.711 4.000Reading comprehension* 4.184 4.556

* ANOVA significant (p < 0.01)† ANOVA significant (p < 0.05)

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Question 2: Evolution of language proficiency after graduationIn the second question, respondents had to choose one among a set of

pre-established options: they had to indicate whether their English languageproficiency had improved, stayed the same, orworsened from the time they hadobtained their university degree. Results to this question are presented in Table2. A Chi-square test confirmed that the distribution across the three categorieswas significantly different for primary and secondary teachers.

Table 2 Evolution of English language proficiency after graduation

Improved Equal WorsenedPrimary 73.7% 18.4% 7.9%Secondary 41.3% 31.7% 27.0%2 = 10.594 (df = 2; p < 0.01)

Question 3: Activities contributing to language developmentFour different options were given to respondents in this question (interacting

with NSs, watching TV and films in English, reading books and newspapers inEnglish, consciously studying the language), plus an additional ‘others’ option.The results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Activities contributing to language development

Primary SecondaryInteracting with NSs 16.2% 21.3%Watching TV/films 18.9% 24.6%Reading books/newspapers

5.4% 31.1%

Studying 48.6% 19.7%Others 10.8% 3.0%2 = 14.511 (df = 4; p < .01)

Question 4: Influence of language difficulties on teachingAlthough both groups of teachers generally rated the perceived problems

created by language difficulties as very low (see Table 4), significant differenceswere found between themwhen anANOVAwas conducted (F (1, 96) = 5.940,p< 0.05), indicating that primary teachers are more sensitive to the influence oflanguage difficulties in their teaching.

Table 4 Influence of language difficulties on teaching

MeanPrimary 1.528Secondary 1.210

ANOVA: F (1, 96) = 5.940, p < 0.05

Teaching viewsQuestions 5 and 6 probed the respondents’ tendencies and preferences in the

hypothetical situation of having to set up a language course. Question 5 dealtwith the preferred elements around which a language course should be


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designed, forcing participants to rank from 1 (most preferred) to 3 (leastpreferred) the following three options: (a) communicative functions and topics;(b) language structures and habit creation; (c) textbook-based comprehensionand production training. The results are shown in Tables 5, 6 and 7.

Question 6 addressed the general goals the participants had as languageteachers. They had to choose one among three given options: (a) to learnlanguage structures; (b) to develop communicative strategies; (c) to knowcommunicative functions of the language. Results can be found in Table 8.

Table 8 General goal as language teachers

Primary SecondaryLearn language structures 0.0% 15.9%Develop communicative strategies 97.2% 65.1%Know communicative functions 2.8% 15.9%Others 0.0% 3.2%2 = 13.476 (df = 3; p < 0.01)

The NS-NNS debate

Question 7: The preference of NSs or NNSs as language teachersQuestion 7 directly enquired whether the participants would employ more

NSs or NNSs, or an equal number of both, if they had the responsibility forrecruiting the teaching staff for a language school. The results clearly indicated adifferent pattern for the two groups involved in this study. As can be seen inTable 9, primary teachers evenly divided their preferences between ‘employingmore NSs’ and ‘employing as many NSs as NNSs’, with a marginal 5.9% of


Table 5 Preferences for communicative functions and topics

Most preferred Second choice Least preferredPrimary 81.6% 13.2% 5.3%Secondary 54.0% 25.4% 20.6%2 = 8.287 (df = 2; p < 0.05)

Table 6 Preferences for language structures and habit creation

Most preferred Second choice Least preferredPrimary 7.9% 50.0% 42.1%Secondary 38.1% 39.7% 22.2%2 = 11.821 (df = 2; p < 0.01)

Table 7 Preferences for textbook-based comprehension and production training

Most preferred Second choice Least preferredPrimary 10.6% 36.8% 52.6%Secondary 7.9% 34.9% 57.1%

non-significant

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respondents opting for the ‘employing more NNSs’ option. Secondary teachers,in contrast, generally opted for the balanced ‘employing asmany NSs as NNSs’,and 12.1% chose what may be labelled as the more critically aware option of‘employing more NNSs’.

Question 8: Special advantage of NNS teachersAnswering ‘yes’ toQuestion 8, inwhich participantswere askedwhether they

thought that having learned English as a second language provided themwith aspecial advantage to teach EFL over NSs, implied an increased awareness andappreciation of their ownNNS condition. A negative answer was indicative of acertain lack of self-esteem as NNS language teachers when compared to NSteachers. Results were almost balanced between the two options in the case ofprimary teachers, and clearly favoured the affirmative answer in the case ofsecondary teachers, as can be observed in Table 10.

Table 10 The advantage of being a NNS teacher

Yes NoPrimary 47.4% 52.6%Secondary 73.0% 27.0%2 = 6.717 (df = 1; p < 0.01)

Question 9: The need for cultural knowledge by the language teacherParticipantswere asked to rate from 1 (very little) to 5 (very much) the need to

have a good knowledge of British, local (Catalan and Spanish), European, andCommonwealth culture in order to teach English in Catalonia. Results, reportedin Table 11, indicate a strong agreement in the range of responses given by thetwo groups with regard to the need of knowing British culture (fairly high) andEuropean culture (intermediate). Responses given by the two groups to the needof knowing local and Commonwealth culture were much more divergent.

An ANOVA conducted for each question revealed that only the differencesexpressed with regard to Commonwealth culture were significant (F (1, 96) =6.335;p < 0.05).An additional comparison involving the values given to the four


Table 9 The preference for NSs or NNSs as language teachers

More NSs Same number More NNSsPrimary 47.1% 47.1% 5.9%Secondary 22.4% 65.6% 12.1%2 = 6.213 (df = 2; p < 0.05)

Table 11 The need of culture knowledge by the language teacher

Primary SecondaryBritish 4.026 4.098Catalan and Spanish 3.079 3.450European 3.000 2.933Commonwealth 2.757 3.279

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sub-questions was conducted, with responses given by primary and secondaryteachers grouped together. An ANOVA revealed the existence of significantdifferences among the four variables (F (3, 388) = 23.044; p < 0.01). A Fischer’sPLSD analysismade it evident that significant differences existed between ‘Brit-ish culture’ (x = 4.071) and each one of the other cultures: ‘local culture’ (x =3.306); ‘EU culture’ (x=2.959);and ‘Commonwealthculture’ (x=3.082).Only oneother difference was significant, that between ‘local culture’ and ‘EU culture’.

DiscussionAt first sight it is clear that secondary teachers showed a higher regard for

their own language skills than primary teachers did. However, although thissuperior appreciation was observable in all categories, differences were onlysignificant in four aspects of the nine listed in Question 1, namely: general profi-ciency, grammatical accuracy, knowledge of grammar rules, and readingcomprehension. An interpretation of the results must certainly refer to theimportance of the educational setting and the influence of the longer and moretheoretically oriented training secondary teachers normally receive. Leavingaside ‘general proficiency’, it is interesting to note that these categories corre-spond to aspects of the language that are highly developed in academic settings.A remarkable exception to the quite logical pattern that seems to emerge is theabsence of significant differences for ‘writing’, anotherhighly academic skill thatis supposedly more strongly developed in training programmes for secondaryschool teachers than for those who will teach in primary schools. The lack ofsignificant differences across groups for ‘breadth of vocabulary’, ‘pronuncia-tion’, and ‘oral fluency’ may be explained by less self-appreciation of secondaryteachers, rather than an increase in primary teachers’ self-ratings. Primary teach-ers’mean scores for the above three categories arequite similar to those found for‘grammatical accuracy’ and ‘general proficiency’. In the case of writing,however, primary teachers’ approximate ratings to those of the secondary teach-ers. The case of reading comprehension is peculiar, as it is the only area in whichboth groups’ mean ratings are above 4. The greater self-confidence secondaryteachers manifest in this area (x = 4.556) is responsible for the significant differ-ence compared to primary teachers.

The condition of non-native speaking teachers is inextricably linked to that ofsecond language learners. Considering that native speaker proficiency in adultsecond language learning seems to be virtually impossible (Flege et al., 1995;Long, 1990), it is understandable that most NNS teachers face the prospect ofkeeping up and improving their skills for life. Questions 2 and 3 of the question-naire were intended to provide a view on the teachers’ perceptions of their ownlanguage-learning process. The questions particularly sought to obtain a globaljudgement on whether they felt their language skills had improved, diminishedor stayed the same, andwhat learning activity they considered themostuseful ofall. Results showed that a great majority of primary teachers have a positiveperception of their ownevolution sincegraduation,whereas secondary teachers’views aremuchmore evenly distributed among the three options.Thismay indi-cate a higher level of self-criticism on the part of secondary teachers, although itmayalso be true that they have receivedmore extensive language and linguistics


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training, and may therefore feel that their proficiency level had already reachedits peak atuniversity. The routine practice of language teaching to teenagersmaynot be, according to them, the best setting for their own language development.However, this clearly highlights the fact that primary teachers, whose languageskills are not likely to develop much through classroom language practice, feelvery positive regarding their language evolution after university.

Acomplement to the resultsobtained inQuestion 2comes from lookingat thosein Question 3, in which half of the primary teachers attach the greatest importancein their language development to the conscious study of the language. Whetherthis is due to their likely perception of incomplete language training at universityor to a lack of opportunities for more communicatively oriented activities is diffi-cult to tell. Still, it must be noted that the areas in which primary and secondaryteachers show a significantly different appreciation of their own language profi-ciency are the sameones that are traditionallydeveloped through someamountofconsciousstudy, namely, grammaticalaccuracyandknowledge ofgrammarrules.These differences could indeed be related to the choice of ‘conscious study’ as themost effective activity for language proficiency improvement by almost half theprimary teachers, and by less than 20% of all secondary teachers, whose prefer-ences are evenly distributed among the four possible options.

The lack of total mastery of the target language by adult second languagelearners is also relevant in Question 4. As became clear from the responses toQuestion 1, the NNS teachers involved in the study did sometimes experiencecertain difficulties using the target language. Question 4 asked whether and towhat extent these difficulties represented a problem for their work as teachers ofEnglish. The responses were clearly grouped in the lower area of the range,suggesting that, in general, they did not think their difficulties with the languageshould be blamed for any teaching problems. Still, the significant differencefound between the two groups of teachers is indicative of a greater sense of inse-curity in primary teachers. An interesting connection may possibly be estab-lished between this result and the heavier reliance of primary teachers on theconscious studyof the language for language development, as the higher insecu-rity that is evident in Question 4 may explain the higher trust in conscious-ness-raising activities.

Questions 5 and6 showed differences between the groups of teachers in termsof how they think a language course should be organised, andhow they conceiveof their language-teaching goals. Primary teachers overwhelmingly preferred‘communicative functions and topics’ as the basic element on which to build aforeign language course (81.6%), compared to roughly half of the secondaryteachers. Consequently, there is a remarkable difference in the degree of adher-ence to ‘language structures and habit creation’: 7.9% of the primary teachersversus 38.1% of their secondary counterparts. As for general teaching goals,almost all the primary teachers consistently chose ‘communicative strategies’(97.2%),which contrastswith a lower preference for such strategiesby secondaryteachers (65.1%). It is clear, then, that in spite of primary teachers’ preference foractivities that involved the conscious studyof the language in their own learningprocess, they clearly favoured a communicative approach, whereas secondaryteachers’ opinions on this issue were far less homogeneous.

Critical awarenesswith regard to theNS-NNS debate (Braine, 1999;Medgyes,


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1994) and to the recent proposals claiming the need to consider the teaching ofEnglish as an international language, rather than as the language of just the Brit-ish or theAmericanpeople (Modiano, 2001;Widdowson,1994),wasanotherareain which primary and secondary teachers differed considerably. In essence,primary teachers seemed to have amore idealised image of theNS, as nearly halfof them said they would employ more NSs than NNSs in a language school(Question 7). An equal number of primary teachers preferred themore balancedoption of employing asmanyNSs as NNSs. As for secondary teachers, althoughit is true that 22.4% preferred a NS majority of teachers, as opposed to the 12.1%who would recruit a majority of NNSs, the great majority (65.6%) chose thebalanced option of having an equal number from both constituencies.

It has been claimed (Lee, 2000; Seidlhofer, 1999, among others) that NNSs arein a better position to teach a foreign language than NSs, as the latter have notexperienced the process of learning the language in the same manner as theirstudents will. The argument stresses that NNSs have gone through the samedifficulties andhavemost likely used the same strategies as their students,whichplaces them in an excellent position to be more empathic to their learners’ needsand thus successfully teach the language. Results toQuestion 8 show that 73% ofsecondary teachers (versus only 47.4%of primary teachers) thought that being aNNS was an advantage. This is pointing to the same direction as Question 7 ofprimary teachers’ greater faith in NSs. Undoubtedly, NNS teachers who preferNSs over NNSs must suffer from insecurity and a feeling of inferiority complexvis-à-vis NS teachers. It may not be at all coincidental that primary teachers, inaddition to being more severe critics regarding their own language proficiency,are alsomoreworried about the problems createdby their language deficiencies,and tend to prefer NSs over NNSs. Fortunately for the participants in this study,there are no NS teachers currently working in regular private or public schools.However, insecurity is always an unwelcome feeling as it may eventually createsome further tension and stress to the teachers who suffer from it.

The issue of what cultural knowledge a language teacher should have provedinteresting, as it gave ameasure of the extent to which English language teachersin Catalonia still identify English language teachingwith British language teach-ing. Results clearly show that both groups hold very similar views on this issue.The only difference found was with regard to the need to know the culture ofCommonwealth countries. Secondary teachers, the majority of whom tookcourses at university that dealt with the literature, and therefore the culture, ofCommonwealth countries, were much more prone to incorporate such knowl-edge than primary teachers, who possibly regarded this as a distant reality, notso relevant to their immediate tasks as language teachers. The comparisonamong the four different options (British, local, EU, Commonwealth) offers aninteresting result. It becomes absolutely clear that British culture is preferred.Following it, at great distance, is the appreciationof local culture, which is signif-icantly higher thanEuropeanculture appreciation. It isworthnotinghowcontra-dictory this finding is to the reality of an increasing integration among countriesin the EU and the fact that English is the most commonly used language inintra-European interactions (see arguments regarding the use of Euro-English,in Jenkins et al., 2001). It must be borne in mind that many of the Socratesexchange programmes funded by the EU take place among countries in which


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English is not spoken as an L1, but teachers and students nevertheless useEnglish as the language of mutual understanding. It is most striking to observehow oblivious to these facts primary and secondary English language teachersare, as they still mainly identify the use of English with situations involving Brit-ishNSs. In their defence, it must be added that the university departmentswherethose same teachers have been trained andare likely to attend in-service trainingcourses still focus almost exclusively on the NS as the target for language learn-ing and intercultural development (Llurda, in press).

ConclusionsThe present study has provided data on the self-awareness of English

language teachers in the Catalan city of Lleida. Results have partially confirmedthe first hypothesis and totally supported the remaining two, thus revealing thedifferences between primary and secondary school teachers. Such differencespoint to secondary school teachers’ increased self-appreciation of general profi-ciency, and of some language skills (i.e. grammatical accuracy, knowledge oflanguage skills, and reading comprehension), as well as a higher preference forthe teaching of grammar structures, and a stronger critical awareness of theirconditionasNNS teachers involved in the teaching of English as an internationallanguage. Primary school teachers, instead, tend to have a more communica-tively oriented teaching philosophy, but suffer from a greater insecurity withregard to their own language skills, and appear strongly attached to themyth ofthe NS as the ideal teacher.

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the participants and the Departament d’Ensenyament de la

Generalitat deCatalunya for their help and support.We are very grateful to TraceyDerwing and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions. This studywas funded by the Spanish Dirección General de Investigación, grant n. BSO2001-0978.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Enric Llurda, Universitat de

Lleida, dep. d’Anglès i Lingüística, Pl. Víctor Siurana 1, 25003 Lleida, Spain([email protected]).

Note1. The actual questionnaire was longer, but only the questions relevant to the present

paper are reported here.

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Appendix: The Questionnaire

(1) Howwould you qualify your level of proficiency in English? (Your answershould be based on what you consider the ideal situation for an Englishlanguage teacher)

very weak very good(a) In general: 1 2 3 4 5(b) Grammatical accuracy in use: 1 2 3 4 5(c) Knowledge of grammar rules: 1 2 3 4 5(d) Breadth of vocabulary: 1 2 3 4 5(e) Pronunciation: 1 2 3 4 5(f) Oral fluency: 1 2 3 4 5(g) Listening comprehension: 1 2 3 4 5(h) Writing: 1 2 3 4 5(i) Reading comprehension: 1 2 3 4 5

(2) Your level of proficiency in English has . . . from university graduation.(a) improved(b) stayed unchanged/improved in some aspects and worsened in some

others(c) worsened

(3) Besides possible long stays in an English-speaking country, what otheractivity has helped you more in reaching your current proficiency level?Choose only one option:(a) interacting with NSs(b) watching TV and films in English(c) reading books and press in English(d) consciously studying the language(e) others; please specify:

(4) Do the language difficulties you may experience represent a problem foryour work as a teacher of English?very little very much

1 2 3 4 5

(5) Rank the following elements according to your preferences as to whetherthey should constitute the basic element on which to build a foreignlanguage course (1 = most preferred; 3 = least preferred)(a) communicative functions and topics(b) language structures and habit creation(c) textbook-based comprehension and production training

(6) Which one of the following goals better corresponds to yours as a languageteacher?(a) to help students learn a large number of language structures(b) to help students develop a large number of communicative strategies(c) to help students know a large number of communicative functions of

the language(d) others:


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(7) If you were the director of a language school and were responsible foremploying teachers, what would you prefer?(a) to employ more NSs than NNSs(b) to employ as many NSs as NNSs(c) to employ more NNSs than NSs

(8) Do you think that having learned English as a second language providesyou with a special advantage to teach EFL over NSs, as NSs have not gonethrough the process of learning the language in adulthood?

Yes No

(9) Rate from 1 (very little) to 5 (verymuch) the need to have a good knowledgeof the following, in order to teach English in Catalonia:

(a) British culture 1 2 3 4 5(b) Catalan and Spanish culture 1 2 3 4 5(c) European culture 1 2 3 4 5(d) Commonwealth culture 1 2 3 4 5


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Documents

Self-awareness in NNS EFL Primary and Secondary School Teachers