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Native and non-native: what can they offer?
Lessons from team-teaching in Japan

Akira

Tajino and Yasuko Tajino

This article discusses the contribution that joint instruction by a nativespeaking teacher and a non-native-speaking teacher can make to classroom language learning. By reviewing the last decade’s team-teaching practice in Japanese secondary school EFL classrooms, it exploreshow two teachers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds can work together to provide students with more opportunities to improve their communicative competence. The article suggests that team-teaching may be most effective when it is ‘team-learning’, in which all the participants, teachers as well as students, are encouraged to learn from one another by exchanging ideas or culturalvalues. By clarifying the notion of ‘teamteaching’ and the nature of the ‘team’ itself, it is also able to propose ways in which the team could be reformulated to promote authentic communication in the classroom and so improve students’ linguistic and interactional competencies.

lntroduction

In his article ‘Native or non-native: who’s worth more?‘, Péter Medgyes (1992) addressed an interestingand challenging issue. He argued that non-native-speaking EFL teachers (non-NESTS) should have the same chance of becoming successful teachers as native-speaking EFL teachers (NESTS), in spite of their relative handicap in terms of language competence. He suggests that non-NESTS could serve as imitable models of successful language learners, provide learners with more information about language andlearning strategies, anticipate more easily the difficulties learners would encounter, and perhaps be better able to assist them through sharing their mother tongue. According to Medgyes, an ideal EFL environment should maintain a good balance between NESTS and non-NESTS, where they complement each other in their strengths and weaknesses. He comments: Given a favourable mix, various forms ofcollaboration are possible both in and outside the classroom-using each other as language consultants, for example, or teaching in tandem. (ibid.: 349) Team-teaching as practised for over a decade in Japan is perhaps one such potentially ideal ELT environment. Although it has recently received attention in the area of general education, it seems that there is still a lack of literature onteam-teaching in the field of foreign language education. In this article, through a review of the last decade’s teamELT Journal Volume .54/l January 2000 © Oxford University Press 2000 3

articles

welcome

teaching practice in Japan, we aim to explore what a native-speaking teacher and a non-native-speaking teacher can offer by working together.
Issues in teamteaching in Japan

In the past tenyears, team-teaching has emerged as one of the most important issues in English language education in Japan. As in many countries where English is taught as a foreign language, traditional English teaching in Japan can be described as both teacher-centred and test-driven. The English language classroom of a typical Japanese secondary school language classroom, will have over 30 students who aretaught in the Japanese language by a Japanese teacher. It was into such EFL classrooms that team-teaching was introduced. This joint instruction by a Japanese teacher of English (JTE) and a native-speaker assistant English teacher (AET)’ began at a time when secondary curricula were beginning to focus on oral communication. The AETs, most of whom are young college graduates with little or no teachingexperience, come to Japan on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme that was launched in 1987. Team-teaching seems to have been welcomed, and the number of participants on the JET Programme has been growing. In 1998, for instance, a total of approximately 5,700 young foreign graduates participated in the programme. Team-teaching is generally defined as ‘a concerted endeavour made jointly...