Péter Medgyes, CBE, is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics and Language Pedagogy. During his career he was a schoolteacher, teacher trainer, vice rector, vice president of IATEFL, deputy state secretary and ambassador of Hungary. He was a plenary speaker in 50 countries and author of numerous books and papers published both in Hungary and abroad. His main professional interests lie in teacher education, language policy and humour research.
E-mail: pmedgy@gmail.com
| Teresa | Péter, why do you insist that your first name be written with an accent on the first ‘e’? |
| Péter | I don’t insist. But in a publication correct spelling is important. You wouldn’t like your name to be written in the Hungarian way, like Teréz, would you? |
| Teresa | All right, but in the first edition of ‘The Non-native Teacher’, your name was Peter, without an accent. |
| Péter | Changed into Péter in the second edition five years later. Probably this has to do with becoming more aware that these nuances do matter after all. |
| Teresa | Are you proud of being a nonnative teacher of English? |
| Péter | Proud? Oh no! It’s just a given, like being a male and not a female. This isn’t something to be proud of. |
| Teresa | The first edition of your book went largely unnoticed. No offence meant… |
| Péter | Well, it won the ESU Duke of Edinburgh book prize. That’s quite something. |
| Teresa | True, but this didn’t really help the book to catch on. |
| Péter | Look, it takes time for a new idea to sink in. Plus both the first and the second editions went out of print too soon. |
| Teresa | Why? |
| Péter | For commercial reasons and because of changes in publishing companies. Methodology books don’t generate enough profit, you see. |
| Teresa | Then why did the publisher, Susan Holden, take the risk of bringing out a third edition? |
| Péter | (laughing) You should ask her… But I know the answer. Her philosophy is that there’s more to it than profit. |
| Teresa | What exactly? |
| Péter | Professional considerations. |
| Teresa | Sounds very idealistic. |
| Péter | I’d rather say ‘realistic’. She realised that the issue of the nonnative teacher has been a hot topic since the first edition came out in 1994. And increasingly so. At least a dozen books and hundreds, literally, hundreds of articles have been published on the subject. |
| Teresa | Why? |
| Péter | Come to think of it, Teresa, 95 percent of English teachers are nonnative speakers of English. Of course they’re interested in who they are and whether they are worth as much as their native English-speaking colleagues. |
| Teresa | And are they? |
| Péter | Well, that’s what our book is all about. And my answer is a big YES. I stress throughout that NESTs and non-NESTs are different but equal. You may well become the best teacher in the world regardless of where you were born. |
| Teresa | Is the third edition a facsimile edition of the old book? |
| Péter | The answer is yes and no. Yes, because the main text remained the same. |
| Teresa | A 100 per cent? |
| Péter | 95 per cent. We weeded out typos and a few outdated references. |
| Teresa | Why do you keep using the royal ‘we’? |
| Péter | Because Susan and I worked in close collaboration throughout the project. At every step we put our heads together and came out with what we considered was the best solution. |
| Teresa | What are the new elements of the book? |
| Péter | There were two issues we kept in mind. One was that we should take heed of the developments that have taken place in the past quarter century. This edition is an update in some sense. |
| Teresa | Have these new developments destroyed your theory? |
| Péter | (laughing) Destroyed? Heavens, no! But they have definitely made me think and rethink certain aspects of my assumptions. It’s always stimulating to read what other researchers have in mind. |
| Teresa | You said there were two new elements. What’s the other one? |
| Péter | The earlier editions were largely theoretical in their approach. In this one, however, we designed lots of tasks and activities which serve to turn theory into practice. We intended the book to be useable in teacher training courses as well as for continuing professional development. Often in the form of self-study |
| Teresa | How can the reader tell the old material from the new? |
| Péter | By the colour. The original text is printed in black whereas the new material is in blue. As you can see, blue appears in three places in each chapter. The Focus Points serve as triggers, the Margin Notes provide awareness raising tasks and ideas for discussion while Further Reading recommends current titles of relevant books and papers. |
| Teresa | Do you know how many margin notes you’ve created? |
| Péter | Well, I haven’t counted them. |
| Teresa | I have. 175. |
| Péter | Goodness me! That’s quite a lot! But I hope they’re fun too. |
| Teresa | And over 300 references in the bibliography… Can I be quite honest with you, Péter? |
| Péter | Go ahead. |
| Teresa | I’d have liked you to take sides on certain controversial areas. You continuously refer to survey results, but like to keep your own opinion mum. |
| Péter | Look, as a researcher I’ve got to stick to the data that I’ve collected. In addition, if I tried to force my personal views down the readers’ throats, I’d deprive them of the opportunity to reflect and then form opinions on their own. |
| Teresa | But you do have your own opinions too, don’t you? |
| Péter | Goes without saying. However, there’s one cardinal point where I don’t hum and haw. |
| Teresa | That non-NESTs are as good as NESTs. |
| Péter | Exactly. They stand an equal chance of becoming good teachers. And a final thing. Somewhat immodestly, let me quote myself from the introduction: ‘my full sympathy is with the non-NEST – what other attitude would you expect from an author who himself is a non-NEST?’ |
