The Bright Side of Being A Non-NEST

1. The Bright Side of Being A Non-NEST 教授者: 陳錦芬 國立台北師範學院 兒童英語教育研究所

2. Good Points of Being NNESTs • Provide a good model for imitation • Teach learning strategies more effectively • Supply learners with more information about the English language • Anticipate and prevent language difficulties better • Be more empathetic to the needs and problems of learners • Make use of the learners’ mother tongue

3. Provide a good model • Not all successful language learners are proficient language users - However, • How to measure the level of English proficiency objectively? • Is a fluent speak also a better writer? • Is a successful learner a successful teacher? 一個大學的國文教授會比一個小學老師更會教國小的學生嗎? • But a successful teachers must be a good learner.

4. Provide a good model • Whether teachers with better command of English should teach more advanced and leave the beginners to the less proficient teachers?

5. Provide a good model • Non-NESTs set two modes: a language mode and a learner mode. • N-NESTs are also deficient but at a higher level. Compared to NEST, they are less deficient but the high level N-NEST reach inspire effect on students, a more credible learner model. • NESTs usually go to the class unprepared and is impatient with slow and listless students. They don’t learn but acquire.

6. Teach Learning Strategies • Factors for successful language learning: age, background, motivation, intelligence, education and language-learning strategies, make learning easier, faster, more effective and more transferrable to new situation.

7. Language Learning Strategies LLS • Memory (memorize and retrieve) - social (learn with other people) - affective (regulate emotions) -metacognitive (coordinate the learning process)- compensation (use the L despite limited knowledge)- cognitive(understand / produce) strategies. • Can LLS be taught?

8. Good Language learners • Have insight into their own LLS, • are actively involved in the learning task • are willing to run the risk of making mistakes • are good guessers • are prepared to attend to form as well as meaning • use the target language as early as possible • are tolerant to ambiguities inherent in the target language.

9. Good Language Teachers • A knowledgeable teacher can tailor students to master their LLS. • A language teacher expertise : language proficiency, language awareness and pedagogic skills. • Differences in teaching behavior between native and non-native: pg.59

10. Native Language Teachers • Acquisition being largely unconscious, NESTs, without teaching training and any experience of learning foreign language, are not aware of the internal mechanism operating language use, and therefore are unable to give their students relevant information about language learning.

11. Non-Native Language Teachers • During the learning process, non-NEST have amassed a wealth of knowledge abut the English language. They can notice even the minutest item as a possible learning difficulty that NESTs take no notice. - prepositional Phr. • Sharing learners’ mother tongue, from the same cultural and linguistic background, NNEST are more sensitive to students’ difficulties, discovering trouble spots.

12. Error Prevention • Discovering divergences in cultural patterns may shed light on why students are unable to comprehend a specific language element. • They can predict what is likely to go wrong before students open their mouths- error prevention. • With mass media and travel, non-NESTs can be informed as well as native NESTs

13. Self-aware - Empathy • Huiora, 1972: Empathy is the ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes. • Roger, 1983, Freedom to Learn, the humanistic movement. • Bowers, 1986, hot and cold education. The former harbors such concepts as learner-centered, equal roles in class, interaction, problem solving and simulation activities. • Moskomitz, Affective edu. is effective edu. • To be provider, facilitator, counselor

14. Empathy - Non-NESTs • Attend students’ real needs to a greater extent • Set realistic aims for students by matching their individual potential with social demands. (得知標準課程之限制 國家考國試 國內可取得之教材 學生之學習動機 • Tend to stricter in choosing teaching emthods and assigning homework to meet the national exam,

15. Sharing of Mother Tongue • L1 is an indispensable teaching device for explaining structures, and vocabulary, giving instruction, doing various kinds of exercise and so on. Though some advocated target language only. • Monolingual principle made non-NESTs feel “defensive and guilty at their inability to native speakers. • Using mother tongue can make teachers more confident about their teaching and save a ,lot of class time.