Week Eight: Socio-cultural, political, and institutional contexts & When the Teacher is a Non-Native Speaker

Socio-cultural, political, and institutional contexts
One point which was really important in the reading or this week is the importance of culture in learning and teaching. For sure, it is of great importance that students must get acquainted with the culture of the target language in order to understand and be understood in a natural way. This is really important for the students who are immigrants as well as students like me who comes to an English speaking country for higher education. If particular attention is not paid to the culture of the target language, misunderstanding is much likely to happen in communications between NS and NNS.

Similarly, this is significant for NESTs to learn to know about the culture of their students to some extent in order to make the teaching effective and avoid misunderstandings. Furthermore, I think this especially important for NNESTs in EFL contexts to learn about the culture of the English speaking countries in order to be able to understand and teach English effectively to the EFL learners who do not have access to cultural understanding of the target language.

I really liked the guide lines for EFL context that is mentioned in the book to help the EFL teachers provide an opportunity to EFL learners to get involved with the activities that help them learn English pragmatically outside or inside the classroom. One example of that is “form a language club and schedule regular activities” (HDB p. 135). This because in the EFL context like my country English Learners suffer lack of listening to native speakers and the opportunity to be involved in the communicative activities outside the classroom (even inside the classroom).

When the Teacher is a Non-Native Speaker
I think the answer for the question that “is a more proficient speaker a more efficient teacher as well?” Is “Maybe” I think it depends upon the need of the place where the teacher teaches. NESTs are usually more appreciated in EFL contexts rather than ESL contexts only because he/she is a native speaker of the language, no matter how proficient he/she is in teaching. This is due to the need for natural and pragmatically correct way of communication (esp. spoken English) that is usually absent in EFL contexts like in my country Afghanistan. EFL learners need more for a qualified teacher not for a qualified speaker of English. As in HDB, the writer said that in the EFL settings where there is lack of native communicative access, the teacher can improve the communicative skills of the learners through ingaging them into various activities inside and outside classrooms. For example, movies, news, and language labs and clubs where students can be involved with native-like environment.