Teaching Students from Other Cultures: An Exploration of Language Teachers’ Experiences with Ethnic Minority Students

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a qualitative study investigating a group of novice ESL teachers’ teaching experiences with ethnic minority students in secondary schools in Hong Kong. It finds that, while teachers argue that society has not been tolerant enough of ethnic minorities, they nonetheless believe that ethnic minorities should comply with societal expectations in order to gain respect and more opportunities. In passing judgement on ethnic minority students’ learning style and life attitudes, and in urging that they be changed, the teachers have, perhaps unconsciously, perpetuated and reified underlying societal stereotypes. It is found that the accented English spoken by ethnic minority students has been devalued and delegitimized, which may disempower them in educational settings and prevent them from expressing and defending their ideas. Implications for education pre-service and novice ESL teachers working with ethnically diverse students are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Disempowerment
• ESL teachers
• ethnic minority students
• professional identity
• second language teaching

Notes

^1. Secondary schools in Hong Kong are categorized as either Band 1, Band 2, or Band 3 according to the academic achievement of their students, with Band 1 being the highest.

^2. This echoes some empirical research findings that L1 is “the most important ally a foreign language can have” (Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009, p. 24), and that L1 is an effective mediating tool for L2 development (Kirkpatrick, 2007).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Government [GRF with the reference number of 443213]