by Lori Baker

If you’re a college graduate born in the United States, does that automatically make you a better English language teacher than someone born overseas? For those well-versed in the art and science of curriculum development and instruction, the answer is an emphatic no. But in other circles that’s a common misconception that Aya Matsuda seeks to dispel.

The assistant professor in Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education was recently appointed to the steering committee for the Nonnative English Speakers in TESOL Interest Section, a group that seeks to create a nondiscriminatory professional environment for all TESOL members, regardless of native language and place of birth. With a network of approximately 60,000 educators worldwide, TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.) is a global association for English language teaching professionals headquartered in Alexandria, Va.

Matsuda witnessed firsthand the need to create a nondiscriminatory environment for English language teachers while growing up in Tokyo, Japan, where she lived until age 17.

“In Japan there were a lot of private English schools that hired people just because they were native English speakers,” she says. “They were college graduates, but didn’t necessarily have training in language teaching. Just as long as they had some sort of college degree, that was fine. But assuming a native English speaker is a good teacher is problematic.”

Meanwhile, “We have nonnative English speakers who internalized the notion that we aren’t as good educators as native speakers,” Matsuda adds.

In her new role with TESOL, she’s well-positioned to help dispel that notion and level the professional playing field. In addition to creating a nondiscriminatory professional environment for all TESOL members, her steering committee’s goals are to:

• Encourage research and publications on the role of nonnative speaker teachers in ESL and EFL contexts. “I feel we need to investigate more our actual practices—what happens in the classroom, student-teacher interaction and proficiency issues, versus focusing mainly on perceptions and attitudes,” she says.
• Promote the role of nonnative speaker members in TESOL and affiliate leadership positions. “Nonnative speakers are still underrepresented in leadership positions in this organization,” Matsuda says. “Part of the reason is we often feel insecure about ourselves professionally and wouldn’t think of ourselves as leaders. But luckily we do have some really successful leaders who can show the way for younger people.”
• Encourage the formal and informal gatherings of nonnative speakers at TESOL and affiliate conferences. “By connecting people in the same situation and providing strong role models, it will help us to shift perspectives,” she says.

Matsuda has emerged as one of those successful leaders and dedicated mentors. “It’s fun to be a mentor to someone else in the same way as I was mentored,” she says. She’ll never forget one of her mentors, “Kyoko-sensei,” her eighth-grade English teacher, who inspired her to follow in her professional footsteps. “Observing the way she used English showed me that you do not have to be a native speaker or even sound like one to competently use the language.”

With an influential mentor who shaped her interests and career path for a lifetime, she later became an assistant professor of Language and Literacy in the Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, where she teaches courses in Bilingual Education and Teaching English as a Second Language. She also teaches in the PhD program in Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include the use of English as an international language, linguistic and pedagogical implications of the global spread of English, integration of a World Englishes perspective into U.S. education and identity negotiation of bilingual writers. Her research on these topics has been published in various books and journals, including English Today, JALT Journal, TESOL Quarterly and World Englishes.

“I decided to run for the TESOL position because of both my professional and personal background,” Matsuda says. “In my own process, I started out as insecure nonnative English speaking teacher and later became a language teaching specialist who happens to speak English as a second language.”