Korean Nonnative English Speaking Teachers’ Identity Construction in the NS-NNS Dichotomy

This article explores Korean nonnative English speaking teachers'(NNESTs) struggling with their nonnativeness in the TESOL profession. Four Korean NNESTs in a university language program participated in this study. Interviews and personal conversations are the main data collection methods. The participants had a high enough level of English proficiency to teach. However, they viewed themselves as second-rate teachers because of their lack of native-like pronunciation and target language cultural knowledge. They were also discriminated against in the TESOL profession because of their nonnative status. Therefore, they needed to reconstruct their images. This image reconstruction process started from their resistance to the inferiority to native English speaking teachers (NESTs). Their strategies to remove negative self-images were: (1) TESOL training in English speaking countries and (2) experience in the target language culture. Ultimately, three out of four participants could reconstruct positive images on the basis of their academic and cultural experience in the target language countries, while one participant could not do so because he lacked such experience.