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Humanities
- ISSN: 2155-7993
- Journal of Modern Education Review
Beyond the Ideology of Native Speakerism of English on Teaching: Views from the Field of Intercultural Communicative Competence
Mei-Lan Huang
(Chang-Gung University of Science & Technology, Taiwan)
Abstract: For more than two decades, English has long been portrayed and perceived as a prestigious foreign language which represented a passport to better economic gains, education, and social status in Taiwan’s cultural politics background. Therefore, to many Taiwan people, foreign language education means “English education”. This perception of English has not only brought about a phenomenon of English fever (i.e., the dominance/cultural hegemony of English in Taiwan) whose sufferers holds misperception of English such as native speakerism (Krashen, 2003, p. 100), but also led to the uncritical view of teaching and learning the language such as English is only for job qualification, certification and test, not on intercultural dimension.
Through the concept of native speakerism, Holliday highlights the hegemony of Western culture in English language education worldwide and defines native speakerism (Holliday, 2006, p. 385). But within the field of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) (Byram, 1997), a certain amount of emphasis has been placed on no longer associating English to cultures of Inner Circle Countries (Kachru, 1992). In other words, the model of ICC rejects the notion of the native speaker as a model for foreign language learners. Also, there is no doubt that English has become a global language (Crystal, 1997; Graddol, 1997, 2006), and that the majority of its non-native Speakers (NNSs) use it as a lingua franca among themselves rather than as a “foreign language to communicate with its NSs (Jenkins, 2007). Therefore, like the field of EFL, ICC model is also concerned with successful communication and has fundamental implications for ELT.
Semi-structured interviews conducted with five informants (three are native English speakers, and two are non-native speakers) are surveyed. In reflecting on theory and drawing on findings from the analyses of five informants’ perceptions by ICC approach, their perspectives on the nativeness criterion and the ownership of
English, reflections and suggestions will be taken into consideration for further pedagogical practices and
research.
Key words: native speakerism, ideology, English language education, Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Model
