Teacher's Pronunciation on Learners' Interest

This descriptive case study probes into the effects of a local Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten teacher''s pronunciation on her students'' classroom interactions in English language learning. It also describes and examines the teacher''s own perceptions of pronunciation competency as a language professional. In Asia many non-native L2 teachers suffer from the native-speaker fallacy due to our historical and colonial backgrounds. A huge inferior complex element is still deeply entrenched in our cultures. This study aims to explore how we can change this imbalanced and misperceived self-worth among language teachers and tap into the rich resources from our L1 & L2 learning experiences into our current teaching experiences. To draw a compare and contrast model two kindergarten teachers (Native English Speaker (NS) & Non Native Speaker (NNS)) with 36 young learners (K3) were interviewed and observed. Though the initial results show the non-native pronunciation of the teacher negatively affected or confused students'' interactions in English language learning this study has raised an awareness to address the generally non-RP standards of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong.