Voices of the Unheard

This paper describes a preliminary study to examine the notion that language learners generally prefer native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) to nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs). Building upon an earlier study (Engler & Iwasaki, 2008) that found this was true for students from another university but not for International Christian University (ICU) students. This paper further investigates ICU learners’ preferences and perceptions of NESTs/NNESTs, whether these preferences and perceptions change over time, and possible elements that can affect such changes. A total of 73 first-year students’ questionnaire responses were collected at both the beginning and end of the first-term. Also, to gain a deeper insight into the learners’ thoughts, six student interviews were conducted.