Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers Revisited: Paradoxes in Multilingual Professionals’ Identity Development

Drawing on ethnographical evidence, this book examines the complexity of the controversial construct ＂Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher＂ (NNEST) and the newly proposed ＂translingual/translanguaging teacher＂ in re-scripting their identities.

Zheng examines the process of international graduate students’ learning to become composition teachers and English professionals in the United States. The book addresses the danger of either constructing fixed boundaries or dissolving them and helps readers to understand the duality of fixity and fluidity in identity development. Zheng advocates for open dialogue between different ideologies in approaching language diversity in schools with the same aim of social justice.

This volume will attract academic readers from a range of disciplines and in different contexts: trainers of international teaching assistants, composition/second language writing scholars, and present or future professionals in TESOL/second/foreign language teaching.

Xuan Zheng is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, China. Dr Zheng holds a PhD in English from University of Washington, USA. Her research interests include language education, identity and intercultural communication.