Elementary school teachers living in the politics of phonetic instruction

A critical narrative analysis of the English education in elementary schools

Abstract

To clarify how teachers live with the reality of the politics of phonetic instruction and how they cope with and shift in repsonse the politics of phonetic teaching in elementary school English education, where the “native speaker orientation as an institution” has emerged, this study interviews two elementary school teachers and qualitatively analyzes their narratives about phonetic teaching. Langdridge’s Critical Narrative Analysis (CNA) was the method used. The results of the analyses showed that the teachers were concerned about their own English proficiency, but had positive feelings about their English classes. They were both supportive and skeptical of the idea of “native speaker orientation as an institution.” While there were differences in the situations in which the children were exposed to English (“they should be exposed to native English” and “they should be exposed to non-native English”), a common practice was found of letting the children speak English (“we do not require fluency in the English they speak”).