Native or Non-native-speaking Teaching for L2 Pronunciation Teaching?—An Investigation on Their Teaching Effect and Students’ Preferences

This study investigated L2 leaners’ preferences between native-speaking teachers (NST) and non-native-speaking teachers (NNST) as their English pronunciation teacher, and examined the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility in L2-English pronunciation after being taught by a NST and a NNST. The participants were 30 undergraduates who were doing non-English majors at a university in China. They went through 4-month English pronunciation classes. In the first 2 months, they were taught by a NST. From the 3rd to the 4th month, they were taught by a NNST. Their accentedness and comprehensibility of spoken English were tested at the beginning of the programme (pre-test), at the end of the 2nd month (middle test), and at the end of the 4th month (post-test). Information on their evaluation of the NST and NNST as a pronunciation teacher was collected with questionnaires at the end of the experiment. According to the results, (1) compared with that in pre-test, the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility both improved slightly in middle test; (2) compared with that in middle test, the participants received significant improvement both in comprehensibility and accentedness; (3) the majority of the participants prefer a NST to a NNST to be their English pronunciation teacher.