Teachers’ Storied Accounts on ‘World Englishes’

Abstract

As English continues to be the world language, the development of more contextualized and culture-based ‘Englishes’ has been observed. In the context of education, language teachers need to understand the current changes in teaching English based on their students’ different contexts.   This study explored the junior high school teachers’ regard toward ‘World Englishes’ (WE). It employed a qualitative design with a narrative inquiry approach. Teachers in the junior high school in region 7 in the Philippines were purposively chosen to compose the respondents of the study. These storied accounts on their self-assessed awareness and regard of the nature and importance of understanding WE were determined by using interview questions. The teachers’ narratives provided the nuances of their experiences in language teaching and the subjective meaning attached to these experiences.  The following themes were generated from the teachers’ narratives: Knowledge of WE is essential; Teachers are desirous to learn more about WE, and Language teachers need to be WE-oriented. Most of these teachers acknowledged that they have limited knowledge of WE. Their narratives reflect their desires to learn what WE is and how the concept can be incorporated in the classroom to enrich and maximize students’ learning. It is concluded that as countries engrave their own identity into the English language, a WE-informed curriculum that develops the students’ language competencies in a culture-sensitive context is possible only with WE-oriented teachers.