The effects of co-teaching between native and non-native teachers on students’ English writing proficiency in an EFL context

Previous research has amply examined the effects of co-teaching between native-English-speaker (NES) teachers and non-native-English-speaking (NNES) teachers on students’ learning of English as a foreign language (EFL). However, the research on the impacts of co-teaching on a particular English course is rarely reported. Even rarer is a documentation of co-teaching by NES teachers and NNES teachers in an English writing course. To address this gap, this study explored how NES and NNES teachers collaborated to improve students’ English writing proficiency in a Chinese context. One hundred and twenty-eight sophomore students in a university participated in this study. They were equally divided into four classes, with two co-taught by a NES teacher and a NNES teacher and the other two taught individually by one teacher. By comparing the scores of pre-test and post-test for experimental classes and control classes, the study found that the students in the experimental classes made more gains in English writing proficiency than those in the control classes. The findings from an open-ended questionnaire showed that three major benefits in co-teaching contributed to the success of this experiment: mixed teaching behaviors, complementary assessment criteria and ideal cultural atmosphere.