Abstract :
Many studies find a negative effect of nonnative
English speaking instructors on students’
performance in universities where the
language of instruction is English. However,
the negative effect observed in the existing literature
is not found in the study by Fleisher,
Hashimoto and Weinberg (2002), which uses
the sample of instructors who received training
in the Ohio State University’s PhD programme.
In many economics departments in Australia,
mainly because their PhD programmes are not
large enough, it is unrealistic to have all the
tutors trained in the methods recommended
in Fleisher, Hashimoto and Weinberg (2002).
This gives rise to a potential negative impact
of non-native English speaking tutors on students’
performance.Nevertheless, by analysing
the panel data drawn from first-year quantitative
methods, microeconomics and macroeconomics
courses in an Australian university, we
find no statistically significant difference in the
effectiveness of small class teaching between
native and non-native English speaking tutors.
