An analysis of non-native English-speaking graduate teaching assistants’ online journal entries

Abstract

There has been increasing acknowledgment of the need to pursue studies related to nonnative English-speaking (NNES) professionals. In the last 10 years, a number of studies have discussed the experiences of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in different educational settings and situations. However, the experiences of the NNES graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) teaching predominantly monolingual, White, native English-speaking preservice teachers have not been researched. This paper presents the analysis of personal journal entries in the form of weblogs of three NNES GTAs. The study reports on the experiences shared by these NNES GTAs. Findings will consequently contribute to a better understanding of the experiences, mainly challenges, faced by the NNES GTAs and will be used to offer suggestions and recommendations to teacher education programs and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) educators to evaluate the sources of support the NNES GTAs receive before or during their teaching. The study will also signify the need for the inclusion of the issues related to cultural and linguistic diversity throughout the whole curriculum of preservice teacher education programs and not in just a few courses. IntroductionIn the last 10 years, increasing amounts of studies in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and applied linguistics have focused their attention on the topic of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs;Braine 1999;Kamhi-Stein 2004;Llurda 2005;Moussu and Llurda 2008).Although the need for research has always been there, the interest and the amount of research in non-native English speaker (NNES) studies have recently increased (Llurda 2005). As Braine (2005) asserted, research on the self-perceptions of NNESTs or the way they are perceived by their students is fairly recent.The characteristics of native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and NNESTs have been discussed in TESOL and applied linguistics literature widely (

Learning to Teach English Language in the Practicum: What Challenges do Non-Native ESL Student Teachers Face?

“…The data analysis was carried out through the qualitative research method of thematic analysis (Boyatzis 1998;Ates & Eslami, 2012). Specifically, the analysis of the interview data and reflective journals occurred in a recursive and iterative manner (Merriam, 2009).…”

Research on “native” and “non-native” English-speaking teachers: Past developments, current status, and future directions

“…• e-auto narratives (Park, 2012); • e-journals (Ateş & Eslami, 2012;Park, 2012); • reflective journals (Loo et al, 2019); • diaries (Galloway, 2014); • metacommentary (i.e., commenting on communication and online blogs [Aneja, 2016a]); • self-interviewing (Yan, 2021); • stimulated recall interviews (Lee & Canagarajah, 2019);…”

“…Most of those studies do not specify a methodological genre in their research design. They tend to describe how they have followed the qualitative methods of data collection (typically interviews and observations) and analysis in general (e.g., Aneja, 2016a; Ateş & Eslami, 2012; Brown & Ruiz, 2016; Doan, 2016; Galloway, 2014; Park, 2012). Some of those qualitative studies solely used interview data (Atay & Ece, 2009; Copland et al, 2020; Huang, 2019; Leonard, 2019; Song, 2016b), while others drew from multiple data sources.…”

Toward De/Postcolonial Autoethnography: Critical Relationality With the Academic Second Persona

“…Sometimes academic culture is not hospitable to those who do not speak the standard English. Ates and Eslami (2012) observe how native speakers' prejudicial attitude against non-native speakers may influence the native speakers' comprehension. Lindemann (cited in Antes & Eslami) writes,…”