Teaching English Intensively by NESTs in the Saudi EFL Setting: Status and Implications

Intensive EFL programs become the current mainstream in the Saudi educational system in most undergraduate tracks. They are aimed at compensating students’ previous lack of exposure to English. These programs are chiefly staffed by NESTs. The policy makers believe that native-English instruction is an ideal teaching model that can offer authentic English in the EFL classrooms. There is, however, a dearth of the conducted research studies that examine such a trend. This paper endeavors to assess NESTs’ teaching performance based on a list of teaching competencies at Jeddah's intensive English program. The data are qualitatively collected via an observation checklist of seven NESTs. The main findings reveal that NESTs significantly perform high in almost 60% of these competencies. Also, there are no significant differences between the median ranks of NESTs in all the teaching competencies according to these variables: nationality, experience and qualification. This paper recommends that the ideal EFL instruction requires NESTs to be aquatinted with a wide range of technical, contextual and cultural competencies along with their nativeness.