OP 6 : The way native and local teachers team up

These days, more and more native English speaking teachers are being recruited into the public school system. In what ways do you think native and local teachers can team up to provide effective and motivating English instruction in public school settings?

There has been great effort to bring more native speakers into the public school system and there are one or two native English teachers at one secondary school. When we think of their strengths such as offering real English to students and reducing large costs at private institutions, the benefits of hiring native speakers are enormous. To increase its advantage, however, native and local teachers should team up collaboratively. I suggest they should try to communicate each other and work together analyzing strengths and weakness of each teacher.

First of all, both Korean English teachers and native English speakers should spend much time communicating each other. As they are from different cultural background, there can be many disagreements about teaching philosophy and objectives. To make benefits of team teaching to the fullest, frank and clear communication to understand and respect other’s opinions is essential. This procedure is what they must take at every stage from planning to lesson and student evaluation. For example, each teacher has a different degree of tolerance for student misbehavior in class. To avoid the situation where students get confused by inconsistent reactions by teachers, teachers should have enough time to determine a set of rules for what is acceptable and unacceptable. By interacting with each other, they can also build genuine friendship. In result, this will help them feel comfortable and creative when they work within the team.

Next, native speaker and local Korean teacher should analyze their individual strengths and weakness to determine how these abilities can be used for effective teaching. For example, as native English teachers are capable of offering authentic English, they can demonstrate dialogue and illustrate what life of living in English speaking county is like. Moreover Korean English teachers who have better understanding of student’s cultural awareness can easily explain some concepts which learners feel difficulties to understand. While one teacher plays a leader role in class, another should support actively involving in team-teaching as they circulate among students giving feedbacks and answering some questions students raise. With the aids from both teachers, students can improve their English a lot and get individualized attention more.

Team teaching can be an extremely beneficial if they put great efforts to collaborate each other. Both teachers need to keep honest and deep communication and respect for each other. By working together not just one teacher standing on dominant position , they should get involved in teamteaching intensively to bring success to English learning.

Analyzing one's strong and weak points is the most necessary part in collaborative teaching between local and native teachers. Actually, you have almost same opinion on this topic, as I also thought of good relationship between teachers and assigning work depending on each teacher's strength.

Sorry, I made a double reply accidentally.

When I worked in a language school, a native teacher and I gave a switch class. We shared the time 30 to 20 minutes for native English teacher and Korean English teacher. We adopted a same text book. As usual, English teacher took a conversation part while I supposedly listening or grammar section. It seemed to be an ideal lesson for the students in the beginning. We found that the class got more distraced with two teachers for one class. Moreover, students were becoming more easygoing with shorter time of each lesson. I could realized it must have been fully planned and dicussed with native English teacher and local teacher in advance. Without well prepared lesson plan, it just would be a good-lookinggood class with no fruit.