The impact of having a native speaker assistant in two public schools in a 9ª, 10ª and 11ª efl classrooms in armenia

Abstract

Due to the importance that English has at schools, the government of Colombia has been implementing a project called “Plan Nacional de Bilingüismo” in which they have brought native English speakers to help Colombian teachers into the classrooms. For this reason, it was important to analyze the impact of their contribution within English Colombian 9º, 10º, and 11º EFL classrooms at two public schools in Armenia in order to describe not only but also the real relation among students, teachers and natives; but also how effective it has been to have natives into EFL classrooms at public schools; The type of study used within this research was qualitative. In addition, it was necessary to observe weaknesses and strengths of this immersion and how successful it has been in students’ English level during natives’ intervention using observations, focal groups and interviews (students’, teachers’ and natives interviews). The findings of this study showed that this government project needs more observation, and evaluation. In order to create a real relation between teachers, natives and students. Furthermore, the analysis of the results showed that students feel interested in classes with native, but it is necessary to have a real co-teaching relation between teachers and natives.