ABSTRACT
Ultimately, the future of the NNS movement depends on individual English teachers, whether in ESL or EFL contexts, irrespective of their presence in the Inner, Outer, or Expanding circles, or in affl uent or impoverished countries. In millions of classrooms around the world, English teachers and learners of English, perhaps numbering more than a billion, are engaged in teaching and learning English every day. However, little is known about these NNS teachers⎯their socioeconomic backgrounds, levels of education and training, day-to-day association with the English language, or if they teach English more as a means of livelihood than as a calling. Some personal narratives have appeared in magazines, academic journals, and in Teaching English to the World (Braine, 2005). Nevertheless, Medgyes’ (2000) statement that, “on the whole, the study of the non-native teacher remains a largely unexplored area in language education” (p. 445), still remains true. Hence, in this chapter and the next I will explore closely the lives of two NNS English teachers, one who was born in Malaysia, from the Outer Circle, and the second from China, in the Expanding Circle.
