Abstract
Collaborative teaching between one native English speaking (NES) teacher and one non-native English speaking (NNS) teacher has been found to be more effective than traditional ways of lecturing in improving students' language competence, yet its superiority in cultivating students’ intercultural competence has rarely been considered, let alone confirmed. To address this gap, this study tracks a 12 weeks’ course co-taught by an NES teacher and a local Chinese teacher (NNS) at a university in China. Based on the initiation-response-follow-up (IRF) analytical framework and after triangulating three data resources (class recordings, class observations, interview with students), it found that overall co-teaching generated extended IRF sequences with diverse speech functions. In particular, the NES and NNS adopted distinctive yet complementary roles in IRF sequences, with the NES eliciting and contributing culture evidence and the NNS developing and explaining students’ argument in culture comparison. This study suggests that intercultural co-teaching can help students progress from passive, culture-textbook-based learning to authentic, communication-process-oriented learning.
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Funding
This work was supported by Humanity and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (Grant Number: 17YJC740074) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Grant Number 20720181002).
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Su, W. Two Heads Better than One? Exploring the Co-teaching of Intercultural Competence by NES and NNS Teachers. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 31, 297–306 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00561-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00561-1