NESTs' Pedagogial Approaches in an English Camp: Epistemic Privilege as a Powerful Tool

This study explored pedagogical approaches (e.g. scaffolding strategies) and practices of native English speaking teachers (hereafter, NESTs) in a public English camp in order to ascertain the possibility of utilizing in students’ epistemic priviledges for languages, and contents knowledge when engaging with NESTs. A total of 45 students from different elemtary schools and three NESTs participated in the study. The main methods of collecting data included video-taped class observation by two researchers and field notes taken by the two researchers. From the data analysis, the study found three main categories: 1) NESTs' scaffolding that attempted to develop fluency; 2) lack of pedagogical content knowledge of NESTs; and 3) NESTs' lack of knowledge on holistic curriculum development. Results indicated while the NESTs seemed to have positive impacts in terms of modeling natural, communicative language for students' potential learning, they seemed not to be effective in implementing diverse and meaningful teaching strategies or in developing a good language curriculum that required extensive professional understanding of intertwining linguistic goals with communicative interactions.