Podcasts about tracy they

The Who What How When and Why of Error Correction - TranscriptionTracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." The bite‑size TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers and managers.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone.Tracy: Hi, welcome to our podcast.Ross: A lot of the time when we're hanging out and we speak Chinese to each other, I often ask you to correct my Chinese if I make any mistakes. When you do, it's really annoying.[laughter]Tracy: Why is that?Ross: I don't know. It's like there's something about being corrected. You always feel that you're making a comment about how bad my Chinese is and it really annoys me. I don't know, it's funny. I always say, "Can you please correct me more?" but when you do, it's really annoying.Tracy: Do you think that helps you?Ross: Yes, but it's bad for your motivation because you feel annoyed by it.Tracy: What's the point? [laughs]Ross: The point is that today our podcast is about error correction and helping students and trainees and stuff learn from their mistakes.Tracy: As usual, we got three main questions or areas that we're going to discuss.Ross: First one is, why do students make errors?Tracy: The second one, should we correct errors?Ross: Finally, what principles are there in correcting students' errors?Why do students make errors?Ross: Why do students make errors?Tracy: One reason is, is an evidence of learning and is a part of the learning process. We learn how to drive and we learn how to...Ross: Swim. [laughs]Tracy: ...cook, how to swim and new skills. We usually make some mistakes and then from the mistakes, we can learn how to do it better.Ross: Yeah, no one does anything perfectly the first time.Tracy: The first time, yeah.Ross: That's impossible. Something I found really interesting about developmental errors is this thing called...we're not going to go too much into the weeds here with Second Language Acquisition, but I just wanted to mention this because I thought it was so cool.This is an example of U‑shaped acquisition from Rod Ellis' book, "Second Language Acquisition." Instead of me reading them out, Tracy, can you just make a sentence with each of them and I'll do a commentary?Tracy: Sure.Ross: This is for students acquiring ate, as in the past tense of eat.Tracy: I eat pizza last night.Ross: This is when you've not been able to mark the past tense, that's all, which is the first stage, and then...?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Really interesting, right? The first type of past tense verbs that students acquire are irregular ones, which Tracy just learned. Next?Tracy: I eated pizza last night.Ross: This is after you've started to learn the past tense rule of adding ‑ed onto the end of things, but you've overused it. You've overgeneralized it.Tracy: I ated pizza last night.Ross: Here you've made some hybrid between the two, and the final one?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Great.Tracy: Which is correct.Ross: Which is, yeah, you've now acquired it. Congratulations.Tracy: [laughs] Thank you, but the second and the fifth stage, I used the words correctly, but it doesn't mean I was at the same stage of acquiring the language.Ross: Yeah, which is so interesting. This is such a great example, because it shows how making errors is evidence that you're developing.Anyway, that was the developmental kind. What's the other main reason that students make errors?Tracy: Maybe they directly translate from their first language to the language they study?Ross: It's not always a direct translation, but yeah, call it L1 transfer.Tracy: Transfer, yeah.Ross: A long time ago, people thought that all the errors came from that. Gradually, they came to realize that that's not the case and a lot of the errors that students make are the same regardless of their first language. Part of the transfer errors, they're actually harder to get rid of than the developmental errors.Should teachers correct students’ errors in ESL classes?Ross: Let's talk about the next one. Should we correct errors? What do you tell teachers on teacher training courses?Tracy: I think it really depends. Sometime, I tell them to ignore that.Ross: Wow, OK. When do you say to ignore errors?Tracy: Two main scenarios. Number one, if it's not really in a learning setting. For example, you haven't seen the students for a while and saw the students, have a chat, and then students really talkative and very motivated and probably make some mistakes and then have errors in their sentences. Really, to be honest, I don't think that's a great context for us to correct their errors.Their motivation was not to learn much, they want to communicate with you. It's probably going to demotivate the students. The second scenario is if the error is really not impeding the communication that much, you probably want to ignore it.Ross: Yeah, right. Actually, I'm going to play you a little Jeremy Harmer quote about what you were talking about there, this process of deciding if you should correct an error or not.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Jeremy Harmer: Every time a student makes a mistake in class, you have to make a judgment. That's actually not true, you have to make about four or five judgments. The first judgment you have to make is, "Was it wrong?" The second judgment is, "Actually, what was wrong?" because sometimes it's not that easy to work out what was wrong.The third judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should I just let it go?" The fourth judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should somebody else correct it?" Suddenly in that one moment when students just make a mistake, you have to work out what to do.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Tracy: There are four main things that we need to consider immediately when the student make mistake. They are who, when, what, and how.Ross: What was the error? Yeah, because this is sometimes difficult to tell. Is it a pronunciation mistake or is it lexical or is it grammatical or...?Tracy: Who's going to correct it?Ross: It could be the teacher. You could try and do peer correction, you could try and get the person to correct themselves, I suppose.Tracy: Yeah, or even small groups some times. When? Should you correct the error immediately, or you're waiting? We always say delayed.Ross: The last one was?Tracy: How. What kind of techniques you are going to use?Ross: Good, hang on to that thought, because we'll talk about that in the next segment. I actually wanted to play another quote. This one's from Stephen Krashen. This is what Stephen Krashen thinks about error correction.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Stephen Krashen: Output plus correction. You say something, you make a mistake, someone corrects it. You change your idea of what the rule is. The six‑year‑old ESL child comes into the class and says to the teacher, "I comes to school every day."Teacher says, "No, no, I come to school every day." The child is supposed to think, "Oh yeah, that s doesn't go on the first person singular, it goes on the third person singular."I think that's utter fantasy, but that's the idea.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Ross: It's quite interesting. He thinks error correction is a complete waste of time. Dave Willis, the task‑based learning guru, pardon, he's someone else, just thinks error correction doesn't work.Tracy: Oh really?Ross: Not everyone says that but I just wanted to give an example of both.Tracy: That's quite confusing though. Should we correct or...?Ross: There's other research that says that you should and it does make a difference in some situations, but not in other ones. I think there's the research, not quite conclusive.Tracy: Definite law students haven't read about this research.[laughter]Tracy: They have really high demand in classroom from teachers to correct their errors, because otherwise, you don't think they learn anything.Ross: For me, that's true. That at least some of the value in coming to a language class is you get your errors corrected, because input, you can buy a book or you can watch TV. There's lots of ways you could get input, maybe not always great for practice. A lot of people in a lot countries do have opportunities to practice English.Here in Beijing, you could just go to a Starbucks and try and find a foreigner or some people might have to speak English for work. The big advantage of going to a language class is that you get correction.Tracy: This makes me think of the students actually, in my class which I just taught this afternoon. Is about some phonological aspects and she told me at the end of the class, she said, "Oh no, I've finally realized I have no knowledge, no idea and no awareness of the features of connected speech, because I study English for so long, but I always have trouble to understand people in the listening."If I didn't have that correction in my lesson, I think she'd probably not be able to aware of the features for a long time.Ross: Yeah, absolutely. Good, you should send that to Stephen Krashen.How should teachers correct students’ ESL errors?Ross: Let's talk about some principles for error correction. We'll just pretend that we've ignored Stephen Krashen, we've decided that when students actually made an error. What do you think are some good ideas or best practices or advice on correcting errors?Tracy: I will say, the first one is, don't correct all the errors.Ross: Yeah, it'd be way too many, right?Tracy: Yeah.Ross: That'd be really annoying.Tracy: [laughs] Yeah. They won't have much time to really practice.Ross: I think as well, we know from Second Language Acquisition that not all of the errors that you correct are actually going to help the students.Tracy: Just try to prioritize errors. Of course, again, the fundamental stuff. Was your lesson aims are and then what kind of language or skills that you are trying to focus on in your class. Stick to those. That should be prioritized.Ross: Another thing to add is correct errors that effect more students instead of fewer students. I agree, if it's in your plan, then correct it, but I also think if it's a problem all the students are having or most of the students are having, then it's probably worth correcting.That's a bit about what to correct, how about some how to correct? Actually, can I play you another quote? I want to make a record for the number of quotes, someone talked, it's number three.Tracy: OK, go on.Ross: This is Herbert Puchta, I think his name is, talking about an error correction technique.Herbert Puchta: Imagine a class where lots of students have problems getting the famous third person "S" right. Take a piece of paper and write an "S" on it. Stick it somewhere on the wall. When a student makes that mistake, point to the paper, wait and smile. Most probably, the student who's just made the error will notice what you want them to do and correct themselves.Ross: I thought that was interesting, he also chose the third persons "S" as his example. I think what he's trying to say there is that's a really in‑obtrusive way of correcting a student. You can correct someone as their speaking, by pointing at something, but you don't have to interrupt them.Another one for how, this may be also related to who, is to try and get the students involved in their correction.Tracy: Yeah, I get it, but sorry, I just feel like sometimes...We talk about who and we always want to encourage students themselves to correct themselves. The techniques in how teacher try to raise their awareness of their error is repeating the error.Ross: It's interesting that you bring that up because...or the other one is called a recast when the students said something wrong and you repeat it back to them, but they say it right. There's research that shows that when you do that, a lot of students don't realize that you are correcting an error. They just think you're repeating something.Tracy: Exactly.Ross: What are some ways of raising students' awareness that they've made an error?Tracy: What I experimented today was WeChat. Of course, I think there is...Ross: For those of you know in China, WeChat's an instant messenger type thing.Tracy: I ask the students to join the group.Ross: A group chat.Tracy: Yeah, group chat. Yeah, before the lesson started. Almost at the end of the class, I listen to what they said, I posted on four or five sentences into the group chat so everybody can see it.Ross: What's in these sentences? Mistakes the students have made?Tracy: Mistakes and also correct sentences together. Of course, I changed some of the words they are using or the pronouns or places. Yeah, I just, talk to your partners and then tell each other which one you think correct and which one is not correct and the then you think the one is not correct and then you can type the correct ones and then send to the group.Ross: I think you also hit on another thing there, that's something to get students involved, but another thing is that, the anonymity. Not singling someone out.Tracy: Another thing, I always tell teachers. There should be a correction circle. You raise their awareness, usually we stop and they move on, but not, there should be another step to complete the circle which is, give students another chance to use the language correctly by themselves. For example, the pizza mistakes.Ross: I ated pizza yesterday.Tracy: I mmm pizza yesterday.Ross: I ate pizza yesterday.Tracy: What did you have for breakfast today?Ross: I ate cereal for breakfast today.Tracy: Really? Do you really? [laughs]Ross: No, I actually drank coffee today, but...[laughter]Ross: ...this is a different verb. I didn't think it would fit your point.Tracy: You know what I mean, just...Ross: Yeah, give the students a chance.Tracy: It's something can be really simple. Just ask a similar question and they can answer.Errors Wrap upTracy: We talk a lot about correcting errors, but the examples we were using really focus on the language itself, but don't forget about error correction also related to performance or behavior in class.Ross: What does that mean?Tracy: For example, teaching young learners and if the student wasn't well behaved, I think we also need to...Ross: Give feedback.Tracy: ...give feedback on that.Ross: Yeah, good point. Bye everyone, thanks for listening.Tracy: Bye.

Teacher talk. It was good, then it was bad, now it's good again. Are you confused? We are! We look at teacher talk from four different perspectives - time, aim, language and quality (or TALK for short).Tracy Yu: Hi, everyone, welcome to our podcast.Ross Thorburn: Hi. Something we do a lot on this podcast is...Tracy: Talking. [laughs]Ross: Exactly. Something that teachers are often told not to do is...Tracy: Talking.Ross: Yeah, right. I put teacher talk into YouTube and here are the short clips from the beginnings of three of the videos on the first page of YouTube.[video]James: Hi, I'm James and this week, I have three tips on how to reduce teacher talk time in the classroom.Man 1: What percentage of time do you talk in your class? The typical research shows that we as teachers talk somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of the time. Maybe we need to reduce that.Man 2: In this video, we're going to talk about how to reduce your teacher talk time.Tracy: It's really interesting. Seems the information kind of negative in terms of the teacher talk. Why is that?Ross: The general attitude in the industry a lot of the time is teachers should talk less so students can talk more. There's lots of other people that actually say the opposite. Penny Ur, who you know I'm a big fan of, she in her book "100 Teaching Tips" says that teachers should talk a lot.Our friend Dave Weller, he's got a blog post called Why I love Teacher Talking Time saying that sometimes it's really good for teachers to talk more.Tracy: Instead of discussing three questions, this time we are going to look at...Ross: Four aspects of teacher talk.Tracy: They are...Ross: First one is...Tracy: Time, and then how much time that the teacher should speak in the class. The second one...Ross: ...is the aim. Why are teachers talking? Third...Tracy: ...is language and what language they are using when they are talking. The last one...Ross: ...is the quality of what teachers are actually saying. Is it things that are going to be useful for the students or not.Tracy: They are T‑A‑L‑Q, no?Ross: T‑A‑L‑K.[laughter]Tracy: Kwality. TALK.TALKTracy: The first part is time. Like you mentioned at the very beginning, I think a lot of teachers were told, "Reduce your teacher talk time." What will that mean?Ross: I think before we talk about what it means, we can talk about why people say that. There's a misconception that the less teachers talk, the more students talk and the more students talk, the more students learn. I think that's a massive over‑simplification of what makes a good language class or what leads to language learning.Tracy: Yeah, because sometimes teachers, they do need to talk more. [laughs]Ross: Exactly. I remember, for example, observing classes before and marking teachers down for teacher talk because they didn't talk enough. They needed to explain something more to their students, for example, and they didn't talk enough.Tracy: That's interesting.Ross: I've heard of crazy policies from somewhere you used to work. Did they not have like, they even made a ratio of how much teachers were allowed to talk in some classes to how much students were allowed to talk, which to me is just absolutely nuts? It's crazy.[laughter]Ross: I heard teachers talking about like, "I wasn't allowed to correct a student error because my company won't let me talk more than whatever is 10 percent of the time in class." If you're doing a class that's focused on listening, then I think it's OK if the students aren't talking very much and the teachers' talking most of the time.It probably depends a bit on the level as well. If I was teaching very young learners, I'd probably end up talking a lot more than if I was teaching advanced level adults.Tracy: I think you mentioned a lot why teachers need to talk. Also, on the other hand, when you think about when teacher...Ross: ...need to shut up.[laughter]Tracy: Yeah, don't need to talk that much. For example, we also experience the silence. You see the students struggle in activities or learning process. I think teacher naturally want to facilitate and give a lot of support to the students and then move on to the next stage. That few minutes or few seconds are so precious just to let them to figure out and ask each other, have a discussion.Maybe use a first language and they can clarify the meaning. I think that's really, really important for the learners. Digest information by themselves rather than passively accept the concept from the teacher. Naturally, we are teacher, we want to help people, so we always want to give them more rather than...Ross: Rather than figure it out themselves.Tracy: Yeah. Don't steal that moment from your students. Another thing that I usually suggest to teachers is actually instead of statement, asking questions.Ross: Can you give us an example?Tracy: For example, if I say, "Hey, Ross and Tracy, you did a very good job. Well done. And you used these words correctly and you used these tenses very well, blah blah blah." You can just ask a question.Ross: You would take that and instead, you say, "Oh, guys, what do you think you did a good job of there, how did you manage to complete that activity?"Tracy: Yeah, something like that. You are giving the students more chance to reflect on what they did and how they did it rather than you summarize what you saw.AIMRoss: Let's talk about the aim. Why should teachers talk? What is the aim in teachers' talking in the class? [laughs]Tracy: I think there are some fundamental functions of teacher talk. Number one is giving instruction. The second one is probably clarification.Ross: Explaining?Tracy: Yeah, explaining. What else?Ross: Correcting errors. I think eliciting as well, we mentioned that earlier. Asking questions to get the students to reflect or to say things. Building relationships and building rapport with the students. Little things making jokes, trying to use people's names. All those things help to reduce student anxiety and all that kind of stuff.Especially with young learners, storytelling is a big one. I know Dave Wellers is a big fan of that. I think all those things together are giving students comprehensible input, which is going to help them learn the language.I think I've read Stephen Krashen talk about this, and say that one of the main things that students are paying for or getting out of a language class is someone that's speaking in a specific way that's tailored to them. You are paying for a professional that's really good at changing the way they speak for the students. All those things together should help the students pick up language.Tracy: I also think about how your language help you and the students personalize lesson or the content. For example, we watched a class together the other day. If you remember in the video, the teacher basically went through all the PowerPoints.Ross: Yeah, she was teaching how old are you but didn't actually ever take the time [laughs] to ask the students how old they were.Tracy: Yeah, I think that's a great opportunity to personalize the materials and also make the lesson more engaging relating to the kids. Like how old are you and how old is your mom, how old is your best friend? This kind of thing, and that's definitely necessary teacher talk.Also, a lot of people are actually using PowerPoint. It seems so much information included on the slide. I think that's also indirect teacher talk. Maybe teachers think, "OK, I put everything on the PowerPoint, and I don't say anything, that means I reduce teacher talk time," but actually it's not.Ross: We mentioned there then some good aims for why you might talk, good reasons why you might talk. What are some bad reasons why teachers talk?Tracy: Just repeating themselves?Ross: Yeah, or even repeating the students. Echoing.Tracy: Yeah. I think I have different ideas about echoing. I don't think it's that bad sometimes because especially with younger learners, you probably want to emphasize something, so you have to repeat. I don't think it's all bad. It seems echoing is such a taboo word in teaching, but I don't think it's that bad. Sometimes, you probably want to say something to reinforce some positive behavior.Ross: It does actually sometimes happen in real life. Actually, I can play an example of...this is Axl Rose from Guns n' Roses being interviewed. Check how often the interviewer echoes what Axl Rose says.[video]Jimmy: How old were you when you moved to Hollywood?Axl Rose: I think 19.Jimmy: 19 years old, and you came by yourself?Axl: Yeah, I hitchhiked out here.Jimmy: You hitchhiked, wow. You hitchhiked. How long was it before you guys started making money as a professional musician?Axl: A few years after we got Appetite going.LANGUAGERoss: Let's talk a bit about language. I think it's something that pretty much all new teachers, and certainly I had a very difficult time doing was grading my language, which just means simplifying what you say for the students.Before I went to university, I lived in one fairly small town my whole life. Before I went to university, I don't like I realized what words that I used were words that only me, my family used, words which only me and my friends used, words which are only from that town, words which were just...Scottish.Tracy: Aye. [laughs]Ross: Yes, that's one for yes. Maybe I knew that but for example, word like, messages, like, "Go to get your messages." Where I'm from, that means go and do your shopping, like your weekly shopping.Tracy: Really?Ross: Yeah, or right now you could say, so it's five past 8:00, you could say right now it's the back of 8:00. I remember saying something that to someone at university, "I'll meet you at the back of 8:00," and the person said, "What does that mean?" I was like, "Back of 8:00, like 5 past, 10 past 8:00." They have no idea.That process of learning to grade your language, it's very difficult to pick up quickly.Tracy: Yeah, that's a very, very good point. Actually, I'm doing training, usually we focus on language, and we try not to use difficult words but how do we define difficult words?Even you're teaching in the same foreign country, but different level students and different area they probably exposed to certain topics or things or access to Internet and what they, what they encounter every day is so different. It definitely takes time for people to realize what...Ross: What's easy and what's hard?Tracy: Yeah.KWALITYRoss: Let's talk about the quality. The thing I wanted to bring up here is the idea that students come to class, and you know the classic joke of the student says to the teacher, "Oh sorry, I'm late." Teacher says, "Why are you late?" The student said, "My dog dead today," and the teacher says, "Your dog died today. Now go and sit down." Is it not funny?Tracy: I've never heard that.Ross: It's like the teachers correcting the student instead of responding to them naturally. This idea that you want to respond to the students naturally in the class because that's how people are going to respond to them in the outside world. You don't always have to be in this teacher mode where you are giving instructions or correcting errors. You can respond to them like a real person.TEACHER TALK WRAP UPRoss: Hopefully, that helped as a bit of a model. Instead of saying that teacher talk is good or teacher talk is bad, I think when you come to think about teacher talk, you can look at it in those four different aspects. How long are you talking for, the time? Why you are talking, so what's the Aim? What Language are you using? Finally, is it good Quality or not, so T‑A‑L‑K.Anything else, Tracy, before we finish?Tracy: When we're a little baby and [laughs] we can only handle a small amount of food, but we have maybe more times every day. Maybe I don't know four or five meals per day and when we grow up and we have more food each time.Ross: Fewer meals altogether.Tracy: Yeah, so I'm thinking maybe it's similar to teacher talk. With different group of learners like young learners, you probably want to use teacher talk a little bit...Ross: At a time maybe but more for the adolescent.Tracy: Yeah, with adult learners, maybe each time that they can handle a longer period of time and then try to reduce the number of time that we are using big chunk of teacher talk.Ross: Great. Thanks for listening everyone.Tracy: Thank you, bye‑bye.Ross: Bye.

We meet with Dave Weller to discuss the issues surrounding native and non-native English teachers such as attitudes of parents and teachers, the responsibilities of language schools and how to change opinions.Tracy: Hello, everyone.Ross Thorburn: Hi, folks.Tracy: Today, we've got our regular podcast guest...Both: Dave Weller.Ross: Hello, Dave.Dave Weller: Hello, everybody. I was trying not to say hurrah again.[laughter]Dave: Regular listeners will know what I mean.Ross: Dave's here this week to talk with us about a rather controversial issue...Tracy: Which is native English speaking‑teachers versus non‑native English‑speaking teachers.Ross: Today, we've got three questions. The first one is what's all the fuss about? Second...Tracy: What do the parents and the students think about it? The third one...Ross: What can managers and schools do about it?What’s the “Native” / “Non native Teacher” debate about?Ross: Guys, what's the debate about?Tracy: Based on my understanding, just schools, parents, teachers and students feel a different mode of English ‑‑ native or non‑native...They've got advantages and disadvantages. So it seems more people, native English‑speaking teachers and have a better model of English.Ross: As well as that, it seems like there's a bit of a tendency in the industry that native speakers who are teachers will tend to get paid more. Native speakers who are teachers will tend to be given more opportunities.Dave: Actually, I read about a study that looks at higher education institutions in the UK. They found over 70 percent of them made hiring decisions for staff based on whether they were native or non‑native speakers.Ross: That doesn't surprise me a lot. It's almost like our whole methodology and approach to teaching language, doing everything in the students' L2, is almost based around having native‑speaking teachers, right?Dave: Definitely. It goes really deep. Again, there's different levels of it. It's fine if it just stayed as an opinion, but once it turns into action, policy and systems, that's where discrimination kicks in. It becomes distinctly unfair and entrenched within our industry. Despite being what a lot of people think of as a very nice and liberal industry, it hides quite a lot of trade dark secrets.Ross: Interestingly, if you do any reading on this, you find that it becomes very difficult to define what a native speaker actually is. One thing that you can't deny is that the person grew up speaking English, but when you start to look at other criteria, they're very, very woolly.It tends to be things like they can be creative with language, they don't have a foreign accent, they're aware of the culture of the language. All these things, which clearly, it's possible...Dave: Of course. Non‑native speakers have that as well.Ross: Ultimately, you get to this point where, really, the only difference between the two is that one of them grew up speaking English, and one didn't. Which, if you're learning English from someone, is pretty irrelevant, isn't it, what language or what they did in their childhood. Who cares about that?Dave: Precisely. All you really care about is how good they are as a teacher, how well then can connect with you in the classroom, they can motivate you, and all the other things that go into making up a good teacher.This whole argument actually needs to be rephrased into clearer lines. Silvana Richardson mentioned in her IATEFL that we need a new word for non‑native speakers. For me, that word would just be English teachers.There's no point devolving that word into finer detail. You should actually go back up the chain. We're all English teachers. Just some of us have different skills and backgrounds than others.If we were to do that, it would solve a lot of these problems. When you talk about a teacher, you can, "OK, which language can they speak and at what level?" That way, you can say, "Well, in the old parlance, there's this native‑speaking teacher who can speak a little bit of the learner's L1, but not to their level."Then there's a native speaker who can't speak any. Then there's a non‑native speaker who is local to the area. Then there's a non‑native speaker that isn't local from the area."Ross: Part of it is linguistic determinism. The Sapir‑Whorf hypothesis, made famous by the recent movie ‑‑ "Arrival." This idea that because of the language that we use, that we have to describe the teachers as native and non‑native teachers or speakers, that's the thing that we end up focusing on.If we changed it, and say, we called them monolingual or bilingual teachers, then which of those would you have a preference for?Dave: I agree to a point, but this is why I might be against that. I can't say everything goes as you plan. Then in 20 years' time, you actually might get a reverse situation where there's prejudice against native speakers because of the bilingualism versus monolingualism.All I think you should do is revert back to the phrase teachers and then what skills does that teacher have.What do parents and the students think about “Native” / “Non- native Teachers”?Ross: Interesting in that the research I've done on this and the survey where I looked at parents, students, teachers, and sales and service staff, and asked every group, I had a bunch of different attributes in there.For example, attitudes, qualifications, personalities, relationship with students, being native speakers, what people look like, their nationality, and their ability to speak the student's L1.The number one thing was definitely not being a native speaker. That ranked about number three or number four in people's preference. The native or non‑native speaker is...people use that as a proxy.It's something that if you don't know anything about the industry, then you can relate to that very, very easily, but if you're a parent and you don't know anything about language learning, you're not going to know what qualifications the teachers should have.It's very difficult to see what the teachers' attitudes are or their personalities, if any, or of those things. It is quite simple to check. Is this person a native speaker or not?Dave: I find it fascinating. To go back to non‑native speakerism for a second, I was reading some of Adrian Holliday's work. He said that it started out as almost a marketing ploy from various aid agencies back in the '60s to propagate the idea that native speakers were the best model.In which case, that obviously links up to the idea that Silvana Richardson said in her plenary that we can change the perception in the industry. All it takes is a little time.With research that backs this up ‑‑ research coming out that actually says that it's not just OK, but beneficial to use L1 in the classroom ‑‑ you put those things together, then this is the way forward to actually eradicate bias in our industry.Ross: Let me play you that quote from Silvana now.Silvana Richardson: Employers always have choices. Collusion with inequality and prejudice is a choice. Discrimination is a choice. As Rajagopalan says, "In our neoliberal world, who will dare challenge what the market dictates?"The answer to this is, just because the market is demanding certain things, it does not mean that the market itself cannot be made to perceive things differently.Ross: Do you think that's true? Is that realistic though, that the market can be made to perceive...Dave: Of course, it is. Yeah, definitely. If you look on an individual on a mass scale, how many times have we changed our minds over the course of our professional development over the last 10, 15 years?Precisely, it's the same thing with the industry. Industries change, ideas change, views change. It happens usually, I would argue, from the ground up rather than direct from above, especially in an industry such as ours which is quite fragmented and has no overarching body to dictate the standards.Tracy: I still think there is a huge market, because you just look at the education companies doing online or offline. The business...they create the scenario, and having native English teachers is the better choice.Ross: In that case, do you think it's an easier or difficult or a long or short task to change the way that Chinese parents and students see local teachers?Tracy: It's going to be a long way. I have to say all the non‑native teachers need to work really hard, because if you constantly made the mistakes, and you constantly misspell the word, and you constantly use the utterances or expressions that people don't normally use, and use those language to teach your students, there is a problem.Ross: It's so unfair, because I see a lot of really bad native‑speaking teachers [laughs] who don't get picked up on making teaching mistakes or methodological mistakes.Dave: Or even language mistakes of teaching language which is highly improbable, possible but doesn't often get used. They end up teaching...It's, maybe, not going technically wrong, but you'll hear people teaching language that never gets used.Ross: They're from one particular part of the Deep South in America and they use a phrase that only them and their family and the people in that village use and are like, "I've never heard it before."I don't see them getting picked up on those mistakes. They tend to get a free pass because they're a native speaker. That's really unfair.Tracy: A lot of teachers or parents always say, "Oh, I want my student or my child to speak Standard English," or "All the students should learn Standard English."Dave: There's no such thing anymore, is there?Ross: I don't think so. Is that a cultural concept that exists in China? There is a standard Chinese, but there's no Standard English.Dave: Let's play devil's advocate just for a second. I can clearly understand what they mean though. Even though we're looking at it from a technician's point of view, we're looking at it from a point of view of professionals in the industry. What parents mean...it's almost like the shadows on Plato's cave, to take it deep for a second.The concept of a horse, despite all horses can look slightly different...Again, they're using that term as a proxy of an English that will be understood around the world. No matter where they go, it'll be effortless to be able to communicate with other English‑speaking teachers and not be hindered in any way through pronunciation or grammar or phrase. That's shorthand for what they're trying to say.Ross: Indeed, but is it not also the case that a very, very small percentage of learners will learn English or an accent or something to the point where they're at that level of, "Oh, I want to sound English" or "I want to sound American," but, really, for most of the students I've taught, even after years, they sound Chinese, because...Dave: Maybe your students, Ross.[laughter]Dave: Sorry, that's such a flippant answer. No, I completely agree with your point. In fact, I'd even add to that and say, it's not about increasing their level. It's about teaching the skills to grade their language if they do encounter another non‑native speaker who has trouble understanding their accent, maybe because they're from a quite different culture. Again, you're arguing against a perception and a belief.What can managers and schools do about “Native” / Non-native Teacher” discriminationRoss: Can we talk for a minute about language schools and, maybe, what language schools can do about that? I've got another Silvana quote for you. Do you mind if I play this briefly?Dave: Please do.Silvana: This is part of the California/Nevada's position paper opposing discrimination against non‑native English speaking teachers. It says, "Teaching job announcements that indicate a preference or requirement for a native speaker of English trivialize the professional development teachers have received and teaching experience they have already acquired.Such announcements are also discriminatory and ultimately harm all teachers ‑‑ native or not ‑‑ by devaluing teacher education, professionalism, and experience.Ross: To what extent do you guys agree or disagree with that?Dave: 100 percent. Again, I really speak with authority from my background, which is as a native speaker. Again, it does trivialize my experience and the amount of work I've put in over the last 15 years of professional development, studying...Ross: Getting qualifications and things...Dave: Precisely. The extra work I've put in ‑‑ thousands of hours ‑‑ and then to be reduced to being called, "He's a native speaker. He'll do."Ross: It still happens so often. Tracy, you had something like that a few weeks ago over organizing a teacher training thing here. Again, you've obviously got your diploma, you're studying your MA, you've been a tutor and a course director on accredited courses.The people running the course said, "Oh, can you make sure there's a native speaker or foreigner for at least half the course?"Dave: Who's just finished a 40‑hour online course, perhaps.Ross: Or maybe not even that. Isn't it fascinating that that still persists?Tracy: They even didn't care about what qualifications or experience they have. Also interesting, the person from the organization even asked me, "Can you tell me more about this trainer?"I said, "OK. Maybe I can ask this person to send the CV, send the training, teaching experience." She said, "We really don't care about it. Just tell me his age, which country he's from, and also if he's white or black."Ross: What about on the flip side for a minute then, Dave? As someone who used to be a director of studies before in a school where you had to make hiring decisions, where's this balance? Were you ever in some tough situations there?Dave: [laughs] Yes.Ross: How did that work out then?Dave: The thing is, as a manager ‑‑ anyone who's been a manager, I'm sure, can relate to this ‑‑ you have to pick and choose your battles. That was the one that I'll actually go to bat for.If you had several candidates and various degrees of discrimination in different things as one that Tracy mentioned earlier about someone's skin color, also about non‑native speaking teachers, you just go and not actually ask if these persons' qualified, they're capable, they've gone through the interview process, and that they would be a good fit for this team, they'd be a good fit for this country, and they'd be a great fit for our school.Then you'd put your foot down. You'd have an argument, almost, with the culture of the school. If you won ‑‑ sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't ‑‑ often, unfortunately, it depended on how badly the school needed teachers, and how many classes waiting you had, how many students waiting to start class.Unfortunately, it was usually the deciding factor. Once the teacher arrived, whereas the students after a few lessons, would be delighted with the experienced teacher, the parents would turn and become delighted and insist on having that teacher as a future teacher for their children.What’s does the future hold for “Non-native English teachers”?Dave: It's always sad that we actually have to do this, or that it's something that we do have to get passionate about. Do spread the word on.I'm very optimistic about it. I like to think there are enough people out there that people will go back, spread the word, and take small actions. There will be this groundswell of people that do this.Ross: All right, Dave, thanks very much for coming on. It was a pleasure talking to you again.Dave: It's a pleasure to be here, as always. Thank you.[background music]Tracy: Thanks, Dave. Bye, everybody.Ross: Bye.Tracy: For more podcasts, videos, and blogs, visit our website...Both: Www.tefltraininginstitute.com.Ross: If you've got a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss, leave us a comment...Tracy: If you want to keep up to date with our latest content, add us on WeChat @tefltraininginstitute.Ross: If you enjoyed our podcast, please rate us on iTunes.