In this article we share our experiences of using poems in teacher-training courses where the students are predominantly second-language learners. We describe how we tried to help learners engage with a creative text through its language and meaning. We share our experiences of helping to facilitate the open expression of opinions and feelings in L2 teachers (both inservice and preservice) on creative texts, specifically the poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. The use of this poem and others like it in teacher education courses in three of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions has produced consistently impressive outcomes in terms of teachers' responses to poetry in general. We aim to illustrate a teaching strategy that emphasizes the reader as expert and to show how this process leads EFL/ESL teachers as well as English-language learners (ELLs) to experience more lived, esthetic responses as part of their coursework.
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In Asia, the dominance of English as a foreign or second language has greatly contributed to the prevalence of Standard English and Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs). Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have been officially recruiting NESTs to introduce authentic Standard English to their citizens. However, as globalisation continues throughout the world, the genres featuring native speaker norms have been challenged for failure to equip English learners with English as an International Language (EIL) or World Englishes (WEs) competence to communicate with other non-native English speakers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds in international settings. The present study is based on this conceptual problem and investigates how Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) perceive native speaker norms and respond to varieties of English developed outside the Inner Circle, and how they are prepared to operate in the EIL/WEs contexts in their training programs. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications to Asian EFL/ESL teacher education.
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