Participants

For the purpose of this study, the participants selected for this study are Native (NS) and Non-Native (NNS) English as Second Language (ESL) teachers that were involved with The Native Speaker and English Teaching Assistants (ETA) programmes in Malaysian primary and secondary government schools. The NS are those who worked as a mentor to the NNS teachers or teacher assistants to the NNS mentors in both levels. As for the NNS, they were mentees to the NS mentors or mentors to the NS teacher assistants in schools. The numbers selected are five NS mentors/teacher assistants and five NNS mentors/mentees.

3.4.1 Pilot Study

As mentioned in 3.1, a pilot study was conducted prior to the present study. The purpose of the pilot study was to make sure that the NS and NNS teachers do experience misunderstandings while working together in schools. In addition, the pilot study aims to determine the scope of the study, objectives and the participants.

3.4.1.1 Native Speaker (NS) Participants

Prior to the study, four NS teaching assistants were approached to participate in the pilot study. The participants who responded were coincidentally of American nationality.

Three participants in the pilot study were female and one male. All participants are aged 25 to 27 years old at the time of the pilot study. The four NS participants worked as teacher assistants in various places around Malaysia for a year or two. However, some of the participants had returned to their countries as their contract with their organization or company had ended. The data was collected through short narratives they have written on their experiences with misunderstandings while working in Malaysian schools. An informal interview with the male participant was conducted to obtain more information on the misunderstandings that occurred in schools. The remaining participants could not be interviewed as they have returned to their countries and also due to time constraints on the researcher’s behalf.

3.4.1.2 Non-Native Speakers (NNS) Participants

As for the NNS mentors/mentees, only three teachers responded and were available to be part of the pilot study. The participants involved in the pilot study are Malaysian teachers who are currently working as English language teachers in primary and secondary schools. All participants are female aged between 26 to 28 years old when the pilot study was conducted. The participants are of Malay ethnicity. All of them consider Malay as their mother tongue and English as their second language although they mentioned that they use English more dominantly than their first language. Additionally, the NNS participants are optionist of English language subjects. An optionist teacher refers to teachers who are trained to teach English while the term non-optionist refers to those who are trained for other subjects but have to teach English due to shortage of English language teachers in schools (Goh, 2011 as cited in Noor Hayati & Mohd Sallehuddin, 2014). The participants had stayed abroad in English native speaking countries for a duration of time. In the pilot study, the three NNS participants managed to complete the narratives. No interviews were conducted as a follow up to the pilot study.

3.4.2 Present Study

Based on the findings of the pilot study, the current study employs ten NS and NNS ESL teachers comprising five NS mentors/teaching assistants and five NNS mentors/mentees who are currently or had worked in the programs mentioned in Chapter

1. The following paragraphs describe selection of participants, methodology of data collection and analysis of the present study.

3.4.2.1 Native Speaker (NS) Participants

One of the participants was introduced to the researcher by an individual who is not involved in this study and knows the participant through a mutual friend. Later, the participant introduced the researcher to four other NS teaching assistants. The selection of participants was done using purposive sampling. Purposive sampling is the selection of participants according to the needs of the research (Chua, 2012; Dornyei, 2007).

All of the participants consist of American English native speakers who had worked as English Teaching Assistants (ETA) in secondary government schools and mentor to Malaysian teachers in primary school. As mentioned in the pilot study, all the participants were Americans. Therefore, the researcher decided to choose NS mentors/teaching assistants of American nationality for the purpose of this study. This was done as many of the NS comes from various countries with various cultural differences, especially those placed in the primary schools. In order to ensure consistency in the findings, the NS participants involved in this study are Americans.

The participants comprise two male respondents and three female respondents. All the five NS mentors/teaching assistants are still residing in Malaysia at the time this study

was conducted although some were in final preparations to go back to the United States of America.

In the first part of data collection, all participants were emailed with an instrument (Refer Appendix A) for narrative writing. The participants were required to describe incidents of misunderstandings that they have encountered. They were also asked to recall whether the misunderstandings were resolved or not and how they felt when it occurred.

After a week, interview sessions were arranged with the NS participants to elaborate more on the narratives that they have written.

3.4.2.2 Non-Native Speakers (NNS) Participants

Five NNS participants agreed to become respondents in this study. All five participants that were available to participate in this study are female Malay English language teachers who were and is currently involved with the programmes as NNS mentors or mentees to the NS teaching assistants/mentors in government primary and secondary schools in Malaysia. Initially, the researcher managed to obtain one Malay English language teacher to participate in this study. The teacher later introduced the researcher to other teachers that she knew were involved with NS teaching assistants/mentors in their schools. This type of participants sampling is also known as snowball sampling (Chua, 2012). Only five NNS participants were maintained in this study (as explained, they were the only ones left at the time this study commenced). This was done to ensure the number of NNS participants are equal to the NS participants.

In the first part of the data collection, the instrument for narrative writing (Refer Appendix B) was emailed to the participants via email. The NNS mentors/mentees also had to describe the incidents that they have perceived to be misunderstandings, how did they feel and how it was resolved. For the second part of the data collection, the interviews had to be collected during school holidays as the teachers live in different states.

The NNS participants are currently teaching in various states in Malaysia. In the pilot study, only Malay English language teachers participated in the study. Therefore, in the context of this study, only Malay teachers selected as NNS respondents. This is also done to ensure consistency in the findings.