A practicalities and experiences of being non-native english teachers in korea by sardor akramov. A student of

Teacher preference 
As discussed an increase in awareness of World English does not 
influence preference for NES or NNES teachers (Choi, 2007; Jin, 2005). 
Although teacher preferences essentially remained the same in pre and 
pos, the responses paint a complex picture that is often not considered 
in the discussion of World English . For example, Kirkpatrick states 
advantages and disadvantages for exonormative and endonormative 
models of English with regard to native and non-native teachers and as 
summarized in Table 7.1. 
Table 7.1: Advantages and disadvantages of NS and NNS teachers 
(Kirkpatrick, 2007, pp. 184-193). 
Teacher Advantages

---

Native Speaker • First hand knowledge of culture and language can 
prepare students who want to visit inner circle countries 
Teacher Disadvantages
• High demand leading to hiring of inadequately trained NETS 
• Makes students feel that English is unattainable if the goal is 
achieving NS norms. 
Non-Native Speaker Disadvantages 
• Have first hand experience in learning the language they are 
teaching. 
• Familiar with educational, social, and cultural norms of their students 
and education system 
Non-Native Speaker advantages 
• Self-confidence and value are undermined in an exonormative
model. 
Although Kirkpatrick’s points are true, they are incomplete and may 
serve to further a dichotomy between native and non-native teachers. 
As outlined in Section, a majority of respondents indicated that their 
preference for NS or NNS teacher depended on the circumstances. 
Some stated that NNS teachers were preferable for test preparation 
courses such as TOEIC or grammar, while NS teachers were preferable 
for conversation, speaking, and listening. Others contend that they 
have had positive and negative experiences with both NS and NNS 
teachers, and thus were more concerned with the teacher’s ability than 
anything else. The second largest group of respondents selected NS 
teachers as their preferred choice. Some of their responses reflect the 
advantages shown in Table 7.1. Other responses reflect participants’
beliefs of inner circle countries as being the sole authority of English. A 
small percentage of respondents opted for NNS teachers for the 
reasons shown in Table 7.1. Therefore, widely held views by academics 
regarding the advantages and disadvantages of exonormative and 

---

endonormative models may not fully reflect the views of the 
communities of which they study.
Foreign English teachers and local languages
For the purposes of this research, a ‘foreign English teacher’ is someone 
who fits the Korean government's definition (Korea Immigration 
Service); somebody who has acquired an E2 foreign language 
instructor's visa (Na, 2006) and been hired to teach English to Korean 
students at public or private institutions, which necessarily means that 
they come from a narrow group of 'inner-circle' (Kachru, 1996) English 
countries; the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, 
Australia, New Zealand or South Africa (HiKorea.go.kr). Both within 
Korea and in other countries in East and South-East Asia, foreign
English teachers from inner-circle countries, particularly those who are 
White, enjoy considerable privilege in hiring (Ruecker & Ives, 2015) 
over members of other groups, including native English speakers of 
Asian descent (Lan, 2011). White native teachers also benefit from 
possessing cultural and linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1993) to the extent 
that they arguably do not need to learn the predominant languages of 
the countries in which they have come to reside (McIntosh, 1990; 
Gordon, 2012), and may even benefit from not being able to 
understand the local language in situations where the pressure felt by 
local interlocutors to speak English acts to the advantage of the native 
English speaker (Lan, 2011).In Korea specifically, the stated purpose of 
the employment of foreign teachers is to improve the English level of 
their students and colleagues and to improve their school's English 
program (Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, 2013), an activity 
that does not obviously demand competence in Korean. Indeed, foreign 
English teachers may even experience direct external pressure against 
their Korean language use; on the foreign English teachers’ discussion 
website, waygook.org (2011), some teachers claim to have received 
explicit instructions from their colleagues and employers that they 
should not use Korean in class with students. In this context, it is 
reasonable that a foreign teacher may lack investment (Norton, 1995) 

---

in learning, and may conceive of more economically profitable uses for 
their time (Dustmann, 2000). Nevertheless, some teachers choose to 
invest themselves in learning to a high level, and the fact of their doing 
so despite an ostensible lack of benefits and the apparent 
inappropriateness of using Korean for a person in the position of a 
foreign English teacher raises the questions that are at the center of 
this research: 
• In Korean society, what benefits might a foreign English teacher 
acquire by learning Korean? 
• In what sense, if any, might learning Korean have been an act of 
resistance against external forces seeking to control and position the 
learner? 
The problem of South Korean English education.
Learning a second language, especially English, takes numerous years 
of training to become a fluent and native speaker. Moreover, the 
Korean Ministry of Education may expect that their students would 
significantly improve their English abilities through public education. As 
previously stated, students in Korea are required to take English 
courses through the public schools. In addition, many Korean parents 
support their children to send them to private English institutions as 
well. in most of [the Koreans] surveyed, the luckier students,