Perspectives: native English-speaking teachers have more to offer
Variety is the spice of life, or so the old proverb goes. In my view, variety is the essential ingredient for the successful deployment of Native English-speaking Teachers or NETs as we are, it is hoped, affectionately called. During a debate for the past two months, which has featured in the Letters-to-the-Editor pages of the , legislator and New People's Party Leader Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee has felt that the NET's main role is grammar-based.
Ms Ip has argued that NETs need to inculcate Hong Kong students with a strong foundation in English grammar. This could be done by frequently correcting their grammar in both their written assignments and oral presentations. As she put it in her letter "A question of standards" on August 9, "We need plenty of teachers with a high standard of English who can fix grammar and instil good writing and speaking skills."
Ms Ip also suggested that NETs' talents would be wasted if we were only to be deployed as "resource" teachers. In making these arguments, Ms Ip was answering fellow NET Betty Bownath's July 3 letter "NETs are making a huge difference to students' confidence".
I agree with Ms Ip that NET should be very much involved with extending Hong Kong students' grammar skills. I also believe that many of us as NETs would want to rise to the challenge of being "key leaders in charge of the English curriculum in each school", as Ms Ip phrased it.
However, I would not see correcting grammar and doing a resource person's job as being mutually exclusive. Therefore, the other caveat I would have is that surely grammar is not the only area where we NETs can make a big contribution. We should be involved with grammar, but not exclusively. We should be involved as resource people in our schools, but not exclusively.
Rather, it would seem more sensible to be inclusive and to blend our roles as grammarians and resource people. Blended roles would have the advantage of benefiting our students in different but ultimately harmonious ways.
Ms Bownath, has highlighted the fact that many NETs are also involved with teaching full classes at our respective schools.
Canadian ESL teacher and researcher Johanne Myles has said that there is a positive value to having teachers like NETs interacting with full local classes and interpreting the local syllabus. However, she has cautioned that not too many full classes should be given and that foreign teachers should not be working as mere carbon copies of their local counterparts.
NETs and Local English Teachers (LETs) both have a valuable part to play but the roles should be complementary rather than directly substitutable. After all, NETs and LETs are not one and the same. What we share is our commitment to work together for the benefit of Hong Kong students.
The problem has sometimes been that NETs have been deployed in just the same way as LETs, with several full classes and precious little time to develop extracurricular activities such as debating and drama or to serve as resource people. The net effect, no pun intended, is to short-change Hong Kong students who need energetic and creative NETs to inspire them to reach new heights of English language competence.
NETs cannot perform this complementary role if they are doing exactly the same thing as LETs, for example, the same dictations in the same order, as happens in some schools with less well thought-out deployment plans.
So deployment is key. There are many cases of intelligent deployment plans for NETs. I naturally feel that my own school has one of these. NETs in general will eagerly take up the challenge of correcting grammar or teaching a full class or two, as long as there is a balance in the job requirements as Johanne Myles argues.
The great advantage of having NETs is to bring in different ideas, as well as the latest optimal teaching practice, into Hong Kong's English language classrooms.
Hong Kong students are in possession of multiple intelligences, such as psychologist Howard Gardner identified for student learning styles. A frequent criticism of English-language teaching here in the past was that it only concentrated on areas such as verbal-linguistic intelligence, ignoring Gardner's other areas such as bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, so important for acting and speechmaking.
NETs are ideally placed to cater to these multiple intelligences by bringing a variety of teaching styles into the Hong Kong education system. If NETs are intelligently deployed, they can encourage the various abilities and aptitudes of Hong Kong students to come into full flower. Perry Bayer is secretary of Nesta (Native English-speaking Teachers Association)
