Language Educators' Native-speakerism and How Cross-cultural Adaptation Affect Students

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
by (Name)
The Name of the Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
The Name of the School (University)
The City and State where it is located
The Date
Intercultural Communication
Part 1: Intercultural Encounter
As people from different cultures and backgrounds, countries, gender, age, sexual orientations, and economic backgrounds meet, they will have to cope with intercultural exchange’s negative and positive aspects (Ilie, 2019). In most cases, issues such as stereotyping, small culture formation, and native-speakerism emerge, in addition to the assumption of similarities instead of differences, ethnocentrism, and prejudice. In particular, individuals from the United States and China face important communication challenges, which are often caused by ethnocentrism, lack of mutual understanding, stereotypes, language barriers, prejudice, political and economic issues, and differences of nonverbal indices (Ilie, 2019). In everyday life, we engage with the ‘other’ in intercultural encounters, and interculturality involves this engagement and how we reflect on ourselves (Newcastle University, n.d). In this section, I will describe an example of my intercultural encounter in China, describing the background and description of my encounter with an American group of students who traveled to China for an exchange program. In particular, I will present the Chinese and American students’ discussion on climate change and human rights efforts in China and the United States. I have chosen this example because it represents individuals from two countries with dissimilar cultures, political ideologies, and communication styles, among other differences.
Over the last summer holidays, we organized to meet with students from the United States to discuss climate change and human rights efforts demonstrated by the two countries here in China. China has witnessed rising numbers of American students studying in the country. As the Institute of International Education (2022) notes, the number of American students in China has increased by more than 500 percent in the last ten years. During this discussion, speakers from both countries presented their views regarding climate change and human rights initiatives. I happened to be the one to represent my country, China, as most students felt they could not effectively speak English among Americans due to the ill-defining concept of native-speakerism. We had another student from the United States who led the American side’s discussion. What I noticed during the discussion were clear intercultural communication challenges, especially the notion that native speakers of the English language embody not only the language but also the Western or English teaching and practices or native-speakerism. The American representative in the group presented key points that outlined efforts by the Chinese government in arresting climate change and enhancing human rights, which the group did not expect from the American side.
The discussion continued for roughly two hours and concluded with both sides recognizing the important contributions of China in strengthening efforts in both climate change and human rights efforts. Contrary, students from the Chinese side had formed a stereotype that the American side would present negative discussions about China as often displayed in some Western media. These stereotypes were broken after the meeting, and I realized that mature discussions and exchanges between students from the United States and China should continue to be supported. Due to stereotype formation, intercultural communication competence (ICC) has taken center stage in China since the 1980s and has been a focus of the foreign language education (FLE) fields (Kulich and Wang, 2015). I chose this particular event since it displayed key issues in intercultural communication such as stereotyping, small culture formation, native-speakerism, and how the groups learned from each other.
Part 2: Critical Summary and Evaluation
Introduction to Literature Review
This section presents native-speakerism and cross-cultural adaptation as two broad themes or concepts from my intercultural encounter concerning academic literature. I will provide a critical summary and evaluation of ten academic sources in the literature review beginning with the broad concepts such as native speakers and cross-cultural adaptation and later refining these concepts concerning the assignment such as native-speakerism in language teaching, stereotyping in the international workplace, international students, and cross-cultural adaptation. In particular, the review identifies specific intercultural communication concepts, their relevance to ICC theory and practice, how they have been addressed in the literature, main topics emerging in literature and key issues, links that can be identified between the pieces of work selected, and how the literature differs, gaps in the literature, and interesting direction for further studies.
The concept of native-speakerism equates native speakers, particularly of the English language, with the Western culture from which the ideals of both the language and teaching methodology spring (Lowe and Pinner, 2016). There has been growing attention to identity, equality, privileged-marginalization, and experience within English language teaching (ELT), and critical scholarly works have examined the origin of native-speakerism, how and why it is manifested in modern societies, the victims of the concept, and possible remedies to this form of stereotyping (Rudolph, 2019). Native-speakerism is a pervasive ideology within ELT that is characterized by beliefs that teachers from countries where English is the first language represent the Western culture and have the ideals of both the language and teaching methodology. According to Lowe and Pinner (2016), such a bias is often based on poorly-defined, spurious, and ideologically constructed concepts of “native” and “non-native” speakers, and resulted in negative consequences for many English language teachers around the world who have been classified as “non-native” speaker teachers. This concept becomes problematic, particularly when most English language teachers globally comprise of the ill-defined category.
Lowe and Kiczkowiak (2016) have presented a duoethnographic study that has assessed the effects of native-speakerism on the lives of English language teachers. In their study, the authors have compared the lives of “native” and “non-native” speakers of English to build on and extend the current knowledge on the concept of native-speakerism. Through a dialogic interaction, Lowe and Kiczkowiak (2016) have investigated the complex ways in which the concept can influence the career trajectory and lives of individual language teachers. Results from their study indicate that the impacts of native-speakerism vary significantly from person to person based on their “native” or “non-native” speakers’ tags. Besides, geography, personal disposition, and teaching contexts also play a role in the ideology of native-speakerism (Lowe and Kiczkowiak, 2016). The concept embodies not only the language but also encourages the views that “native” speakers are better suited to each the English language compared to “non-native” speakers. As this ideology continues to draw increasing interest among both English as a second language (ESL) and English as a first language (EFL), scholars have attempted to study how prejudice, power, and privilege interact to facilitate the concept.
Prejudice and stereotyping of “non-native” speakers as conference plenary speakers have particularly been recognized as an impact of native-speakerism (Kiczkowiak & Lowe, 2021). According to Kiczkiwiak and Lowe (2021), while the concept of native-speakerism and its impacts on the lives and career trajectories of “native” and “non-native” English speakers in ELT has been documented, little remains to be known about the impact of this ideology on the selection of plenary conference speakers. The authors have analyzed plenary line-ups of seven different conferences in the EU and conducted interviews with the conference organizers to study the impact of the concept. Results indicate that only 25 percent of the 416 plenary speaker line-ups that were studied comprised “non-native” speakers. Besides, at some plenary conferences, more than 80 percent of all speakers were “native” speakers. The study also found that apart from a single organizer that ensured all plenary speakers had an equal chance to participate regardless of their “native” statuses, other organizers failed to place appropriate weight on the equal balance of both “native” and “non-native” speakers when inviting speakers (Kiczkowiak and Lowe, 2021). These findings indicate that native-speakerism significantly impacts the choice of plenary speakers at most ELT conferences, and there is a need for efforts to be invested in altering the balance.
While the above studies have examined the impacts of native-speakerism from the perspective of English language teachers, there are limited studies that have assessed the effects of the ideology from “non-native” English learners’ perspectives. Silalahi (2019) has identified that in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEAFL), this ideology has continued to gain increased interest among Indonesian English teachers as well as learners. In general, the ideology focuses on the belief that the best-suited teacher and model for the English language should be a native speaker of the language. Native speakers of English are generally believed to be more capable of representing the Western culture following the cultural and social contexts. According to Silalahi (2019), this concept explicitly indicates the widespread linguistic inequity and imperialism phenomenon in ELT. As a result, many English language teachers and learners realize the importance of TEAFL within the Western context, although others have still not ruled out the possibility of learning English in a non-western context. The study aims at encouraging the development of effective methods of English learning in Indonesia devoid of the ill-defined ideology of native-speakerism.
Besides native-speakerism that has been seen as an important concept affecting both students and teachers in learning institutions, cross-cultural adaptations among international students is a frequent aspect that has been considered by policymakers around the world and the academic community. Wang et al. (2018) observe that the number of international students attending universities and colleges in the United States has increased over the past decade. This trend has called for emphasizing the importance of cross-cultural adaptation of these students. In investigating the concept of cross-cultural adaptation among international college students in the United States, Wang et al. (2018) have used survey data obtained from a sample of 169 international students in the United States university to examine the temporal patterns of students’ sociocultural and psychological adaptations. Results from this study show that students display a two-phased U-curved process of psychological adaption, with culture shock being experienced during the international students’ first nine-24 months of U.S. residency. However, sociocultural adaptations among international students in the United States tend to increase steadily throughout their stay without significant retreat. Culture shock is a psychological domain of intercultural encounters that remains an important aspect in the lives of international students in the United States and across the world.
Apart from culture shock, young university international students in the United States struggle with body image alterations as part of intercultural adaptations. Da Silva et al. (2021) have highlighted the methodological procedures employed in the process of cross-cultural adaptions to allow researchers to make appropriate choices about instruments that can be used to assess body image among young university students. Body image refers to the mental representation of one’s own body, and it is often characterized by affective, cognitive, and behavioral domains although influenced by libidinal, social, and other factors. According to Da Silva et al. (2021), university students are often vulnerable to body image alterations and report high d...