This article reports on a small-scale exploratory study that examined how native-speaking English teachers (NETs) working in the Primary Native-speaking English Teacher (PNET) Scheme construct their professional identity(ies) and explored the barriers to their professionalism that exist within their role and context. Data were collected using…

In view of the considerable and growing number of non-native EFL/ESL teachers across the globe, which has been reported to surpass that of native English teachers (NETs), much controversy has been aroused globally, especially in the Asian context, over issues concerning the language proficiency of these Non-Native English Teachers (NNETs). Further…

This article draws on qualitative classroom observation and interview data from a case study of one native-English speaker teacher (NEST) teaching in a Hong Kong kindergarten. Features of the NEST's teaching are identified, namely their professional limitations, their part-time involvement in teaching, and their limited collaboration with the…

An increasingly important curricular aim of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is to develop learners' intercultural competence for communication with people from different cultures through English. English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture with English learning have been…

Background: There is currently ongoing debate in Hong Kong between the teachers' union and the Government on the reduction of large class size (typically more than 40 students) in secondary schools and whether smaller class sizes might facilitate improvements in teaching and learning. In fact, many Hong Kong secondary schools have already started…

This article reports on the results of a questionnaire and interview survey on Cantonese ESL learners' preference for bilingualised dictionaries or monolingual dictionaries. The questionnaire survey was implemented with about 160 university English majors in Hong Kong and three focus group interviews were conducted with 14 of these participants.…

Research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s pointed to a widening gap on Hong Kong university campuses between institutional language policy, which stipulated the use of English, and classroom practice, which often involved the use of Cantonese to explain and discuss English written materials. This article presents the findings of a multidimensional…

Although non-native speakers (NNS) English teachers have taught alongside native speaker (NS) teachers for centuries, studies on the effectiveness of NNS teachers, their self-perceptions, or the attitudes of students towards these teachers, have only been conducted recently. Most of these studies have been conducted in the USA in ESL contexts.…

This paper discusses an innovative programme of collaborative EFL teaching in Hong Kong primary schools, involving team-teaching shared between imported native-speaking English teachers and their local counterparts. First it analyses the way in which the scheme has evolved from previous experiences. The paper then draws on an open-ended…