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Learning to speak like us: Identity, discourse and teaching English

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Learning to Speak Like
Us: Identity, Discourse
and Teaching English in
7
Vietnam
David Bright
Singapore International School, Hanoi, Vietnam

Phan Le Ha
Monash University, Australia

Abstract
This chapter, drawing on the data obtained from a qualitative case study
research, is concerned with the politics and ethics of English language
teaching and examines the identity of four Western native-speaking English
teachers working in Vietnam. It examines the ways in which these teachers
think about their work, their colleagues and their students in relation to
dominant discourses of English, English language teaching and Vietnamese
education. The findings of the study demonstrate that these teacher
participants continue to position themselves in ways that are problematic,
precluding relationships with foreign colleagues and students that are based
on respect and equality. However, taking a poststructuralist approach to
understanding teacher identity and critical approaches to English language
teaching, this chapter discusses possibilities of generating new discourses
and identity positions based on inclusivity, respect and equality.

1. Introduction

Teacher identity has been identified as an essential part of language teaching and
learning (Phan Le Ha, 2008; Varghese et al., 2005). In order to understand teaching
and learning it is necessary to understand teachers. Drawing on a qualitative case
study research, this chapter examines a number of ways in which discourses of
English and ELT constitute the identities of ‘White’ native-English-speaking teachers

116
 Learning to Speak Like Us 117

teaching in Vietnam, and seeks to problematize these identities and the discourses
which make them possible. However, at the same time it seeks to articulate a notion
of identity which both highlights the role that discourse plays in constituting identity,
but that also opens up a space for agency in resisting and reframing these discourses in
ways which create more equal relationships between people of all backgrounds.

Teaching English to speakers of other languages is a deeply complex and political

activity. For monolingual English speakers, English language teaching (ELT)
necessarily involves relationships with people from other linguistic backgrounds and
cultures. The ways that teachers approach these relationships - and the ways they
identify with their foreign students and colleagues - are influenced by the politics of
English and ELT. This political complexity matters. It plays an important role in the
ways in which teachers approach their work and it influences the ways classrooms are
enacted.

The political complexity of ELT, however, seems to be under acknowledged in the

training, classrooms, and employment of English teachers. ELT is often seen as a
positive activity. This benign view, commonplace in academic and popular discourse,
reflects an assumption “that ELT is somehow a ‘good’ thing, a positive force by its very
nature in the search for international peace and understanding” (Naysmith, 1986,
p. 3). This view is also reflected in ELT teacher training. Phillipson (1998, cited in
Pennycook, 1995, p. 39) argues that “professional training of ELT people concentrates
on linguistics, psychology and education in a restricted sense. It pays little attention to
international relations, development studies, theories of culture or intercultural
contact, or the politics or sociology of language or education.” This idea of ELT as a
benign, apolitical activity can also be seen in the way classrooms themselves are
conceived of. Auerbach (1995 p. 9) observes that classrooms are generally seen as
“self-contained, autonomous systems, insulated from external political concerns”,
with teaching conceived of as “a neutral transfer of skills, knowledge, or
competencies, to be left in the hands of trained professionals whose job it is to
implement the latest methods and techniques”.

In recent years this benign, neutral view of ELT has faced increasing scrutiny. Many
authors have begun to discuss ELT and the spread of English in more problematic,
critical terms (e.g. Holliday, 2005; Pennycook, 1998; Phillipson, 1992). These critical
perspectives suggest that the spread of English may be implicated with flows of
globalization, and that this spread may be creating and reproducing global inequalities
118 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

and creating a dependence on Western knowledge and technology (Pennycook,

1995).

Furthermore, the very practices of ELT – the ways in which being an English teacher
is possible – have been implicated with ideas of colonialism. Pennycook (1998)
suggests that colonial discourses of English (with the teaching and spread of English
being central to the project of colonialism) have left a cultural imprint on Western
culture that adheres, particularly to the way language teachers construct the work of
teaching English, the spread of the English language throughout the world, and the
relations they enact with their foreign students and colleagues by creating a
dichotomy between the Self and Other. This Self/Other dichotomy, drawing on
postcolonial theory, imagines the Self as unproblematic, civilized, modern, and
developed, while the Other is represented as the inverse of everything the Self thinks
of itself – inferior, backward, primitive, undeveloped, less cultured, and less
intellectually capable (Hall, 1992; Holliday, 2005; Pennycook, 1998). Edward Said
(1978) used this notion of Self and Other to examine the way that the Western
colonial powers constructed a problematic Other as an act of self-affirming
representation through difference. Said’s (1978) Orientalism suggests that far from
simply representing ‘the East’, “European culture was able to manage – and even
produce – the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically,
and imaginatively” (p. 3), at least in part as a way to define Europe (or the West) as its
contrasting image, with the result that “European culture gained in strength and
identity by setting itself off against the Orient” (p. 3). Pennycook (1998) argues that
these images of the inferior Other should not simply be seen as contemporary
justifications for colonialism, but that they were and remain cultural constructs that
both enabled and were generated by colonialism, preceding the colonial period and
remaining in effect beyond the end of colonial rule. Colonialism, according to
Pennycook (1998), was not simply a matter of capitalist economic imperialism, but an
actual state of mind which both produced and was produced by colonial culture, and
the context in which much of Western European culture and knowledge was created.
This culture and knowledge, bound to the discourses of English, continues to
constitute the identities of English language teachers.
 Learning to Speak Like Us 119

2. Identity and Teacher Identity

Notions of identity are diverse and contested. Within ELT there is an ever-growing
body of research exploring the notion of teacher identity in an attempt to understand
teaching and learning by understanding teachers (e.g. Baurain, 2007; Brown, 2005;
Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999; Duff & Uchida, 1997; K. E. Johnson, 2006; Johnston,
1999; Menard-Warwick, 2008; Morgan, 2004; Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Norton, 1997;
Pavlenko, 2003; Phan Le Ha, 2008; Samimy, 2008; Tsui, 2007; Varghese et al., 2005).
This interest has led to expanding, complex ways of understanding teachers and their
work, which recognize that who teachers are - their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes,
values, backgrounds and experiences - influence how they learn to teach, how they
conceptualize their work, and how they carry out their work in different contexts
(Johnson, 2006).

Western poststructuralist theory frames identity as non-essential, complex, dynamic

and contingent. Identity is seen to be fluid and continuously reconstructed through
discourse in specific historical and social sites. Poststructural theories reject classical
humanist notions of the essential, self-sustaining individual whose identity is innate,
unique, fixed, coherent and integral (Hall, 1996; Weedon, 1997). Rather, in
poststructural theory, identity is a product of society and culture; socially constructed,
constituted through language, and seen as a site of struggle, conflict and change (Duff
& Uchida, 1997; Norton, 1997).

It is through discourse, culturally and historically specific ways of representing a

subject, that the ways reality is perceived are structured, producing knowledge and
truth by authorising the circulation of certain statements and constraining the
circulation of others (Danaher, Schirato, & Webb, 2000; Mills, 2003). In this way,
discourses “set limits on what can be meant and how things or people can be
understood at given times and places” (Gee, 1999, p. 115). According to Hall (1992),
discourses produce meaningful knowledge about subjects, influencing social practices
and resulting in real social consequences. Thus, it is through language that meanings
are created, authorized and communicated, and it is meaning that “gives us our sense
of identity, of who we are and with whom we ‘belong’” (Hall, 1997, p. 3). Discourses
can be understood as recognized ways of being certain kinds of people, and it is these
socially produced meanings, constructed through language, that offer the individual
discursive positions through which we can consciously live our lives (Gee, 2000;
Weedon, 1997).
120 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

Importantly, poststructuralist theory avoids constructing a deterministic relationship

between language and identity. Morgan (2004) observes that poststructural theory
seeks to articulate an identity that is constructed ‘in between’ the notion of a passive,
Marxist ‘false consciousness’ and the modernist, fully autonomous, self-aware subject;
in poststructural theory “discourses constitute rather than determine a teacher’s
identity” (p. 173). By denying the stable core of the self (Hall, 1996), identity is not
only opened up to contingency and conflict, but also to resistance, negotiation and
agency; the ability to adopt, recognize and remember multiple discursively
constituted identities creates the potential for choice and resistance on the part of the
individual in the continuous negotiation of identity (Weedon, 1997). It is this ability
to access, critically understand and reflect upon the range of discourses that influence
the subject positions we inhabit that determines how we live our lives.

Poststructuralist theory, then, offers the advantage of a conception of identity that is

non-essential, multiple, dynamic and constituted through discourse, but that also has
the potential to be known, understood and (re)created by the individual. Discourses
both constrain and enable the ways in which things and people can be recognized as
meaningful in particular contexts. And yet, discourses themselves are historically and
culturally situated, have no discrete boundaries, and are continually created,
negotiated and changed (Gee, 2000).The discourses of English and ELT represent
historically and socially situated ways of being that both enable and limit the ways
that teachers identify – and are identified – as teachers. This process of identity
formation is continuously changing, sometimes contradictory, and always complex,
but can be understood in relation to these recognized ways of thinking about and
talking about English and teaching. As teachers negotiating the complex politics of
English language spread, this potential for understanding offers the hope of agency;
the possibility of critiquing the dominant discourses of English and ELT, and creating
counter-discourses and new identities which promote opportunity, equality and
challenge the hegemony of Western European knowledge, culture and practice.

3. Discourses of English Language Teaching

Holliday (2005) argues that an idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ runs deeply through the
discourses of Western ELT, with a doctrine of the generalized, undifferentiated Other
often recited as evidence for why nonnative English-speakers cannot do what is
expected of them. Evidence of this can be seen, for example, in the commonplace
construction of the essentialized learner. Grimshaw (2007) observes that a substantial
 Learning to Speak Like Us 121

body of research has developed around the notion of ‘the Chinese learner’, reducing
Chinese students to a consistent set of characteristics and assuming a deterministic
relationship between these supposed cultural characteristics and the practices of
individual students and educators. Chinese students are commonly defined as passive,
lacking autonomy, lacking critical thinking, reticent, preferring a reproductive
approach to learning and reliant on rote memorization (Grimshaw, 2007). Similarly
Kubota (1999) examines the way that Japanese culture is constructed in ELT, with
Western cultures described as individualistic, self-expressive, critical and analytic, and
knowledge extending, while Asian cultures are labelled collectivist, harmonious,
indirect, reliant on rote memorization and oriented toward conserving knowledge.
Problematically, as Holliday (2005) demonstrates, these same characterisations of
culture, although purportedly about a national cultural group, are seen in
constructions as diverse as Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, North African, Arab,
Iranian, and even under-achieving US students, leading him to conclude that such
representations are simply used indiscriminately to describe the “unsatisfactory other
of the day” (p. 20). Holliday (2005), following Said (1978) and Pennycook (1998,
2000), argues that such constructions are grounded in colonialist cultural chauvinism
and are used to construct, represent, explain, and even ‘speak for’ the foreign Other.

Related to the Othering of the “Asian learner” are Western-oriented perceptions of

“Asian education” as deficient in relation to advanced Western ways of educating.
Communicative Western language teaching methodologies are commonly viewed as
the ultimate development of Western research into second language acquisition, and
are positioned against what are otherwise described as ‘traditional’ methods – those
superseded approaches to teaching previously used in the West and often still in use
in developing countries (Pennycook, 2000; Phan Le Ha, 2004). In a similar way to
representations of the Other student, the education systems of the Other are
constructed in relation to Western methodological practice as backward, traditional,
imposing, didactic, with teachers adopting authoritarian roles of knowledge
transmitters in a system which promotes rote learning and a reproductive view of
knowledge at the expense of critical thinking and creativity (Ballard & Clanchy, 1997;
Phan Le Ha, 2004). In these images of the Other, “modernity is presumed to be a
characteristic exclusive to the West” (Holliday, 2005, p. 20), with ‘progressive’
Western education approaches linked to advances in scientific and pedagogical
knowledge, while other approaches are guided only by tradition (Pennycook, 2000).

Holliday (2005) suggests that it is in the distinction between native and nonnative
speakers that the fullest expression of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide in ELT can be found.
122 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

This dichotomy, dividing the world into native and nonnative speakers, is seen by
Pennycook (2001) as a direct result of the glorification of English at the expense of
other languages, resulting in a belief that English speakers possess superior knowledge
and a better means of understanding the world. Phillipson (1992) argues that the
belief that the ideal language teacher is a native-speaking teacher has been one of the
basic, influential, and underlying tenets that has formulated and influenced the nature
and content of ELT practice, with real, insidious effects for nonnative-speaker
teachers and learners. As Jenkins (2003) observes:

The perpetuation of the native/non-native distinction causes negative

perceptions of and among ‘non-native’ speakers in general and teachers and
researchers in particular. It leads to their being refused places on ELT teacher
training courses, and to limited publication of their work in prestigious ELT
and applied linguistics journals. (p. 81)

Moussu and Llurda (2008) note that the native-nonnative dichotomy has been
thoroughly deconstructed, with the distinction between native and nonnative
speakers shown to be linguistically unacceptable, the ideal of the native teacher
proven to be a fallacy, and even the very notion of the ‘native speaker’ called into
question. Despite this, the native/nonnative dichotomy continues to have real-world
effects, with nonnative-speaking teachers facing discrimination, pay inequity issues,
skepticism from students and self-doubt about their status as both users and teachers
of English (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999; Moussu & Llurda, 2008). Holliday (2005)
argues that native English-speaking teachers have a vested interest in maintaining the
native – nonnative dichotomy, as English language teachers face problems of low
academic, financial and social status in their home countries, but in the non-Western
world find that their native-speaker status becomes meaningful, bringing recognition
based on professional knowledge and notions of cultural superiority.

These discourses represent just a sample of recognized and accepted ways of thinking
about English and ELT in the Western English-speaking world. They represent ways
of knowing and ways of being English language teachers that are based on historically
and culturally located knowledge produced by the English-speaking West; beliefs that
are commonly held across the world and are reproduced in the demand for English, in
course materials, in job advertisements, in academic and popular writing, in relations
between native and nonnative English speakers, and in language policies which justify
and promote the global spread of English (Pennycook, 1998). The impact of these
discourses is not only to position the English language in particular ways, but also to
 Learning to Speak Like Us 123

create positions for native-speaking teachers that are implicitly superior to those of
their nonnative-speaking colleagues and learners. Such positioning reinforces
hegemonic power relations and limits teachers’ ability to conceive of new
relationships based on respect and equality, creating a problematic identity based on
superiority and the unequal distribution of power.

4. The Study

The aim of this chapter is therefore to examine the extent to which Western teachers
in Vietnam call upon these discourses and images of the Self and Other in the
construction of their professional identities as teachers in Vietnam. Specifically, it
reports the findings of a qualitative case study research conducted with ‘White’
native-English-speaking teachers of English teaching in Vietnam. Data were collected
through in-depth interviews and email correspondence focusing on guided questions
over the period of one year. The data reported in this chapter were obtained from
three participants, whose pseudonyms are Alice, Mary, and Michael. The female
teachers came from Australia and the male one came from the United States. By the
time the data collection was conducted, these teachers were teaching English at
schools and language centres in Hanoi, Vietnam. They were all ‘qualified’ teachers of
English with either a teaching qualification or a four-week CELTA Certificate.

4.1 Consolidating and Reproducing Images of the Self

and Other

The ways that teachers imagine a country, its people, and the life and work of a
teacher are central to the decision to live and work in a foreign country, and key to
the ways they construct and carry out their work as teachers. What reported in this
chapter is not concerned with the ‘truth’ of Vietnam, but rather the images of
Vietnam, Vietnamese people, and the life of a Western teacher in Vietnam that are
socially constructed through discourse in specific cultural and historical settings. It is
these images that are of interest, as they both show consistency amongst participants,
and become problematic when viewed as cultural constructions emerging from the
mindsets of colonialism.
124 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

4.1.1 The Problematic Homogenous Asian Other vs the Unproblematic

West/Western Self

Images of the Other are frequently encountered in discourses on so-called Asian

education. Within this discourse Asian approaches to education are not only
essentialized but also represented as backward, traditional, and reliant on rote
learning and memorisation while students are similarly described as being passive,
unable to think critically and lacking creativity (cf. Ballard & Clanchy, 1997;
Grimshaw, 2007; Holliday, 2005; Phan Le Ha, 2004).

Alice acknowledged the problem of essentializing culture when talking about

Western cultures, “Australian culture, US culture, if there such a thing as ...
something that broad”, however at the same time she showed no hesitation in
conflating Vietnamese culture with “Asian cultures”. Similarly Michael, in discussing
his experiences Vietnam, made frequent mention of society, culture and education in
Thailand and Myanmar and, of course, Asia, as being consistent with his notions of
Vietnamese culture and education. Mary, adopting the kind of deterministic view of
culture that Holliday (2005) warns of, stated that:

Because I’ve taught for a long time in Vietnam, so I haven’t, like, changed
countries like a lot of other people do, so … I know exactly the learning
difficulties that Vietnamese students have, I know where they are gonna
have problems, I know when the speak what they are gonna say wrong.

Holliday (2005) argues that such simplistic, essentialized and deterministic notions of
culture are a short step from chauvinistic stereotyping and ‘culturalism’. These views
of culture are so powerful that they permit the teacher to ignore the agency of
students, allowing the teacher to predict and speak for students even before the
students have had an opportunity to speak for themselves by representing them
according to deterministic notions of culture which define and constrain behaviour.

The teachers’ descriptions of Vietnamese teaching and learning also revealed the kind
of general, essentialized images of the Other such as those found by Grimshaw (2007),
Holliday (2005) and Pennycook (1998).
 Learning to Speak Like Us 125

Mary:

Ah it’s a long way behind. It’s still a lot of rote learning. It’s still a lot of,
ah, people just write, children just writing things out and learning,
learning, learning, and if they don’t have that capacity to learn they fall
behind. There’s not a lot of interactive teaching. So I don’t think … it’s a
very old-fashioned system.

Michael:

... all Asian cultures, but we’re speaking about Vietnam, rely a lot on
memorization … if you can accumulate vocabulary or math formulas or
whatever … it’s, it’s a quantitative thing … um … teaching, in Vietnam,
it’s a quantitative thing, how much you can accumulate in your brain by
memorizing … um … whereas that doesn’t teach you, and this is a sort of
classic way of looking at things, but it doesn’t teach you … um … critical
thinking.

Alice:

[it’s] very much more the rote learning, the kids are in the lines, they’re
looking at the board … take out your workbook, do this page, take out
your workbook, do this page.

Within all these teachers’ accounts the same kinds of characterizations of Vietnamese
education are found: Asian, old-fashioned, behind, rote, memorization, lacking
critical thinking. These are the same problematic set of characteristics that Grimshaw
(2007) found attributed to the Chinese, and similar to that which Holliday (2005)
found variously attributed to the Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, North African,
Arab, Iranian and under-achieving US students. These discourses are commonly
assumed to represent the truth of Vietnamese education, yet it seems apparent that
these are simplistic and reductionist representations of a diverse and vastly complex
range of educational cultures, which, in focusing solely on an imagined national
culture largely ignore the impacts of local factors on educational settings, for example
students’ level of proficiency, funding, the availability of resources, educational values
or teacher education. These representations place Vietnamese education in perfect
opposition to the image of an advanced, modern and superior Western education that
can only be provided by Western teachers. What can be seen here is that such notions
126 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

represent a discourse of Asian education, created by the West, and founded on images
of the Self and Other, which has assumed the quality of truth within the discourses of
ELT.

4.1.2 The Superior English Language and Western Pedagogy to Enlighten

the Inferior Self

Mirroring the images of the English language as superior, necessary and beneficial,
was a belief in the superiority of Western pedagogy, and a belief that by introducing
this to Vietnam Western teachers can make a positive contribution to the educational
and economic development of the country. Underlying this view we again find a
Eurocentric notion conflating development with Westernization, and demanding that
‘less developed’ countries follow Western modes of politics, governance, education
and economy. Michael sees this clearly, particularly in terms of economic sufficiency:

I’m as liberal as they come looking at most political issues and cultural issues
… but … I think … unfortunately … the way that you begin to define your
ability as a country or as a people to … make your way in the world … is to
have the economic strength to do it … the only model … that allows your
country to, your country and by extension your people … to develop is a
model where you have economic sufficiency in your country … there’s no
other model in the world, the Islamic model in the Middle East doesn’t work
… ah … socialist model … um … doesn’t work, a communist model doesn’t
work …ah … this is the only model out there that countries have modelled
that basically allows a country to have a sense of self sufficiency … um … so
… it’s a Western model and it’s an economic model.

Mary, Michael and Alice see their role in this process of development as one of
contributors, both in terms of the knowledge of language and culture they bring, and
their modern, Western approaches to teaching. Michael, again, noted the differences
between Asian and Western approaches to teaching, this time extending the
comparison to ways of thinking:

A Western way of thinking is … not focused as much on memorization, not

focused as much on rote, focused on critical thinking, focused on a qualitative
approach to education.
 Learning to Speak Like Us 127

Alice describes the ways these differences are manifested in the curriculum:

The Australian curriculum is renowned for its creativity, its lateral thinking,
its sense of responsibility and I guess independence that it promotes within
student to follow their own, sort of, learning strengths a bit more.

In these accounts, once again, the images of an unproblematic Self and a problematic
Other emerge. Western ways of teaching (and indeed thinking), and by extension the
Western people they produce, are flexible, creative, lateral, qualitative, critical and
independent, as opposed to the Asian reliance on memorization and rote, presumably
producing Asian people who are inflexible, lack creativity and are unable to think
independently.

However, despite this positive image of Western teaching methods, in practice

teachers continue to face problems. The appropriacy (or otherwise) of Western
teaching methodology in non-Western contexts has achieved a great deal of focus in
the academic discourse of ELT (cf. Bax, 2003; Ellis, 1996). As Mary observes, in her
classes some people have difficulty with the expectations of Western teachers and
their teaching methods, resulting in a struggle to succeed in the class. Interestingly,
however, this is attributed to a deficiency within the learner rather than a failure of
the teaching approach.

Mary notes:

The younger ones that we’re seeing coming through now are fantastic and
learn in the way that we teach really easily but the older people struggle with
it because it’s, um, I guess just the way they’ve always learnt, and they can’t
change their mindset enough so you can’t teach them to speak, because they
can’t hear or listen to what you’re trying to tell them.

4.1.3 The racial Self-Other Dichotomy in ELT Is Not Just a Colonial

Construct; It Persists in the 21st Century

These accounts of teaching in Vietnam, the ways in which the English and
Vietnamese languages are represented, and the contrasting images of Vietnamese and
Western ways of thinking and learning, suggest that the notion of a generalized,
problematic Other is commonplace in the discourses of ELT. Holliday (2005) argues
strongly that this kind of culturalist stereotyping is not only abundant but has a
128 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

specific modality within ELT, in part because one of the major sources of professional
group alignment for Western native-speaking English teachers is in relation to the
foreign Other. Holliday (2005) summarizes the situation:

We have a very complex picture of a professional group which, in order to

find a status which it cannot find at home, propels itself into the professional
domains of other education systems in other countries, while maintaining
distance from them; and sees itself as liberally humanist even when it
blatantly reduces foreign colleagues and students to a problematic
generalized Other. (p. 29)

Holliday (2005) argues that when Western English-speaking educators come into
contact with non-Western colleagues it is not as professional equals, even though
there may be no intention on the part of native-English speaking teachers to take up
superior positions. This inequality was certainly the experience of all the teachers
interviewed in Hanoi.

Michael and Mary experienced professional relationships based on inequality with

both local and non-local colleagues. Mary’s language centre did employ Vietnamese
teachers, and was one of the few foreign-owned language centres in Hanoi to do so.
However, these teachers were limited to teaching lower-level classes, after which the
students would ‘progress’ to classes with a foreign native-speaking teacher. Michael’s
company, meanwhile, did not employ Vietnamese teachers, but did employ around 25
– 30 Filipino teachers to teach math and science, in English, at Vietnamese primary
and secondary schools. These teachers were employed in a similar role as Michael, but
were paid less than a third of the salary of a Western teacher. Michael felt that this
was justified in a business sense:

Ah … my business brain is fully plugged in on that one … the Philippines is a

country with an exploding population … ah … because they have an
exploding population they don’t have enough jobs … ah … the vast majority
of Filipinos need to go overseas in all types of jobs … and … that’s a fault of
how that country’s managed, it’s a tragedy … but … my school and lots of
other schools in Vietnam, international schools, are paying what the market
will bear … the market is … you know … five to eight hundred dollars
maybe … for a Filipino teacher … I don’t have a single problem with that.
 Learning to Speak Like Us 129

As Michael had reasoned that the Filipino teachers were valued less by the market,
one author of this chapter asked him how these teachers were perceived by students
and their parents:

They’re second class citizens … important second class citizens, not

unimportant … but second class citizens … they also know that because
they’re in many schools, including the one I work for … because the majority
of teachers are Filipinos … they know that their parents cannot afford to get,
and I don’t know enough about the Hanoi schools yet, they don’t have
enough … um … money, whatever that would be on a monthly basis … to
send them to a school where there would be all … white teachers.

Mary also observed the unequal relationships between Western and non-Western
colleagues, but unlike Michael she did perceive these relationships as being
problematic, leading to feelings of marginalization and frustration for Vietnamese
teachers:

Mary: The teachers and the people we worked with got paid less than we
do …
David: So the teachers weren’t happy about you being there?
Mary: No … they weren’t happy about us getting paid way more just
because we were white …
David: And what do you think about that?
Mary: I think it’s horrible … like, obviously I’m not going to say no to the
money because I … everything in Hanoi is more expensive as a
foreigner, and rent, and everything but … these people are very well
qualified and they’ve been teaching for a long time and … not all of
them, some of them are just as crap as other teachers but … a lot of
them are really good at English, really good teachers, really care, and
they get paid nothing so … of course that’s going to create problems
as well, isn’t it?

Michael and Mary both noted that race or ethnicity was used as a determiner of the
value of a teacher. Despite being employed, according to Michael, because of the
Philippines’ “American education system” and “Western ways of doing”, the Filipino
teachers remained marginalized “second class citizens” due to their non-white
ethnicity. Mary also saw race or ethnicity as playing a role in the status of native and
nonnative teachers:
130 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

When I worked at ____ School we had a case where I employed an

Indonesian guy who’d grown up in Australia, he’d been in Australia since he
was one, and he was very Australian, except he looked Asian, he worked
there for three days and then the parents complained so he got fired, which is
terrible, and amazing … spoke like you and me … but just, visually, he
looked Asian and they wouldn’t accept it …

As noted in the previous section, the distinction between native and nonnative
speakers has been thoroughly deconstructed (cf. Moussu & Llurda, 2008). Yet the
above accounts show that some teachers continue to face discrimination and
marginalization as ELT professionals. What these accounts suggest, however, is that
this discrimination is not based on language, but rather on race or ethnicity. The
Filipino teachers that Michael describes, as with the Indonesian teacher that Mary
employed, face difficulty not due to their language skills or status as native speakers,
but rather due to their non-white ethnicity.

As also shown above, images of the Self and Other appear to run deeply through the
discourses of ELT, showing consistency and resilience. The discourses of ELT,
promoting the global spread of English as beneficial and inevitable, trumpeting the
effectiveness of Western teaching theory and methodology, and the belief that the
native speaker is the preferred language teacher both promote and rely on notions of
an unproblematic Self and an inferior and problematic Other. These accounts provide
evidence of the real-world impacts of the native/nonnative divide on teachers.
Nonnative teachers, and those who do not appear to be native-speakers, face
discrimination and pay inequity, while native-speaking teachers have to negotiate
fraught relationships with their foreign colleagues based on inequality and superior
positioning.

5. Implications

This chapter has discussed the identity of three Western native-speaking English
teachers working in Vietnam. Identity has been framed as a process, constructed
through discourse, constantly negotiated and renegotiated in relation to recognized
ways of thinking and being. In attempting to understand the discursively constructed
identity of Western teachers in Vietnam, we have examined discourses of ELT
relevant to the positioning of native-speaking teachers and their educational practices
 Learning to Speak Like Us 131

in relation to their nonnative counterparts. These discourses have been

problematized, reflecting a critical approach to ELT which seeks to both acknowledge
issues of political, social and cultural power and politics, and to recognize the
potential of ELT to produce and reproduce inequality. In doing so, the dominant ways
of identifying as a Western English teacher have also been critiqued and reframed as
problematic ways of being that may contribute to the production of inequality.
Images of the Self and Other were prominent in the lives of the teachers, and in the
ways they constructed their life as a native-speaking English teacher working in a
non-Western country. The teachers were consistently positioned as superior in
relation to their foreign counterparts, students and colleagues. This perceived
superiority was constructed in a variety of ways, from their status as ‘owners’ of the
English language, from the status of English as a de facto lingua franca, and from their
knowledge and ownership of Western culture and pedagogy. This apparent
superiority was also derived from the teachers’ constructions of their foreign
counterparts as inferior Others, seen in the inferior representations of their language,
teaching and learning styles, values and customs.

The modest conclusion that can be drawn from this small study is that native-
speaking English teachers may continue to be positioned in unequal and superior
ways in relation to their foreign colleagues and students. This superior positioning
was reflected in the way they imagined language, education, and culture. This
position of superiority, the assumption that the spread of English is natural and
beneficial, and the conflation of development and modernization with
Westernization, results in an assumption that Vietnamese people need to readjust
their values, identities and cultures to become more like us, resulting in a discourse of
ELT which reflects a desire to correct a problematic Other. Yet this disregard for local
values, contexts and cultures cannot be justified. The superior positioning of the West
in discourses of ELT creates recognizable and available identity positions for teachers,
ways of knowing about and being a Western teacher, which are based on a
problematic notion of the Self and Other resulting in unequal and inequitable
relationships between Western teachers and their non-Western students and
colleagues.

Perhaps this can be corrected by teacher training, perhaps not. None of these teachers
appeared to have come to Vietnam with the intention of positioning themselves as
superior, and all seemed committed to teaching as a way of making a positive
contribution to Vietnamese society. It is not the intention of this study to locate these
issues within individual teachers but rather to demonstrate that they are a product of
132 Part II: Language, Culture and Identity

the dominant Western mode of thinking about English and its spread throughout the
world. Furthermore, this process of classifying and positioning people who are not
like us seems to be almost the default mode of human behaviour. Difference is
constructed as deficit, the Self is constructed as superior, and development and
modernization are conflated with Westernization, at least for Western teachers.

In writing this conclusion, we are aware that we are not leaving the reader with any
more concrete possibilities of change than what we are about to offer, especially in
allowing for the creation and dissemination of counter-discourses which problematize
these dominant ways of thinking. While we argue that it is too easy to become an ELT
teacher through avenues such as CELTA and that these courses offer little or no
opportunity to reflect on the implications of how teachers relate to students and other
colleagues, we acknowledge there is hope for change in how we do TESOL teacher
education. Poststructural and postcolonial perspectives on identity offer the promise
of change. Identities are fluid, negotiable and can be created and recreated. While this
study suggests that ELT identity continues to be dominated by discourses of the Self
and Other, critical approaches to ELT introduced in TESOL courses have proved to
make impacts for change. The very different experiences David Bright, one author of
this chapter, went through with his teacher training via a few-week CELTA course
and then a proper TESOL course could be used to exemplify our point. His CELTA
training was dominated by the discourses of native-speakerism that has contributed to
producing unproblematic superior expert native teachers of English for all contexts,
while his postgraduate TESOL course offered him the opportunity to go through
constant reflections of his native speaker teacher identity as he was exposed to critical
theories challenging the dominant discourses of the Self and Other embedded in the
ELT industry and profession. We believe in the possibility of change if more and more
teacher training courses allow space to engage ELT professionals in reflection and
dialogue in order to acknowledge the political implications of their work, understand
the ways that they are positioned by the dominant discourses of English, and work
towards the creation of new identities that are based on equality, inclusiveness,
respect and an understanding of the complexity of all those we encounter. Western
English language teachers need to find new ways of thinking about both themselves
and their students and colleagues which do not conflate difference with deficiency, do
not position the Self as unproblematic and superior to the Other, and do not assume
that everyone else needs to become more like ‘us’.
 Learning to Speak Like Us 133

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