Another significant advantage you have over native speaking teachers is that because you’ve taken English courses to learn English, you have a better grasp of the challenges students have learning English, again in all areas – grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling, as well as listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. For native speakers, their acquisition of these language skills came naturally, easily, and again, subconsciously. You were able to think about the rules, practice and produce the language with an understanding of the rule system; but native speaking children of a language don’t consider when to use the present perfect, or even why for that matter. As a TESOL teacher, you have a better perspective of the language as it will be taught to the students than native speakers have.
A third advantage you have as a TESOL teacher is that if your students share your first language, then you are in a unique position, because you understand the critical differences between English and the first language that will cause problems and confusion for those learning English, and can predict these difficulties in advance.
For example, if you are a Korean speaker, and you teach English to Korean students, you will know that your students will have difficulty with some sounds of English pronunciation – like /p/ and /f/, for example. And if you can predict where your students will have challenges learning English, you can better prepare to help them overcome those difficulties. Every non-native English speaker will have certain difficulties with English, based on what is called first language interference. Sharing the same first language means you experienced the same language interference your students will. Knowing that gives you an edge over native speaking teachers.
A final advantage you have over native English speaking teachers is appreciation: having faced the challenges of taking an English language course, and faced the frustration of English grammar learning, and practicing English conversation in a teacher controlled environment, you are in a position to fully understand and empathize with your students – you’ve already been there! You can offer your students the kind of encouragement and motivation that only comes through having experienced the same challenges yourself. Students might look at a native speaking English teacher and think, “You don’t understand what I’m going through.” As a TESOL teacher, you know exactly what they are facing as they learn English. They will be able to relate to you more easily.
There are certainly challenges a TESOL teacher faces when teaching English; native-speaking English teachers may know their language deep in their soul, but as a non-native English teacher, you know how to learn the language, and that is definitely something your students will appreciate about you in English courses.
Michael Bunyak
English Teacher at Canadian Education College, Singapore
