Job Discussion Forums

[Lynn]

I worked at a fairly large ESL school here in the states where 60% of the English teachers were not native English speakers. They were from Poland, Russian, Hungary, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Philipines, Turkey, Puero Rico, and Georgia. All of them had moved here after fininishing college in their home countries, so, yes they did have accents.

Some students complained, but for the most part it wasn't a big problem. Whenever I had a grammar question, I usually turned to Carlos. Carlos was from the Dominican Republic, had a Spanish accent, but was an expert in grammar. I think he is one of the best teachers at the school.

As a native speaker, would you like to learn a foreign language from a non-native? If you were interested in learning Spanish would you pay an American who had lived in Spain for 4 years,spoke fluently and majored in Spanish History and Culture to teach you? How about Chinese or Japanese? Again, from an American(or Candian or your native country person) who lived in that country and could speak the language fluently.

[dduck]

When I started learning Spanish I was taught by a Native Speaker; she didn't know how to teach and it almost put me off learning Spanish completely. Afterwards, I was taught by a English woman who knew how to teach, and teach intensively! I enjoyed her classes a great deal. Besides, I've met the odd foreign teacher who's had a spectacular grasp of the English language. I almost felt ashamed!

I suspose I wouldn't judge a teacher by their nationality, instead I'd consider how much / quickly I'm learning and enjoying the class.

Iain

[Steiner]

Gotta echo dduck. I tried learning Mandarin from a teacher here at our school. She's Chinese and an English teacher, so it would seem to follow that she'd be able to teach me her native tongue even better than she teaches her students English, right? It was a fiasco. She wouldn't speak Mandarin to me. I'd ask a question in Mandarin and she'd respond in English.

If there was an expat here that spoke Mandarin I would've traded off in a heartbeat. If the teacher is fluent and a good teacher, I don't care what his first language is.

[Irish]

I agree with the gentlemen. Having had good and bad language teachers of both types, I didn't find the "native versus non-native" issue to be important. The good teachers knew their material well, were enthusiastic about teaching, and knew how to help their students. The bad teachers didn't. Simple as that.

Given a choice between a non-native speaker with a solid grasp of the language and the ability to teach it versus a native speaker who doesn't have a clue about how to conduct a lesson, I'll go with the non-native speaker every time.

[MELEE]

I have a degree in Spanish from a US university. Half of the Spanish teachers I've had in my life were fellow Americans, the other half from various Spanish-speaking countries. As a student, I didn't really notice the difference. All of them had the proper knowledge and experience to teach me (not to mention the proper credenciales)

Walk into any mass produced English language school around the world and take a peek at what is going on in the classrooms and you should be able to see that being a native speaker does not a teacher make.

Any language teacher, no mattew what their accent should make an effort to expose the students to a variety of accents in the language as the students need to be able to take their language with them where ever they may go.

The big red flag I've seen in both natives and non natives is the belief that their English was good enough to have no need for a reference book.

---MEL

[denise]

I agree with everyone else. Teaching skills are more important to me than mother tongue. Most of the foreign language teachers that I've had have been native speakers, and I've had mixed results. Some of them clearly knew how to teach, and some of them clearly didn't.

Many of the students in my TESOL MA program were not native English speakers. If I were a student of English, I'd be in excellent hands with any of them--they've got solid groundings in pedagogy, theory, and practice. Their accents would not bother me at all.

Some language schools/native speakers, on the other hand, wrongly assume that having English as an L1 is enough of a qualification to teach. I would be very nervous studying in such a situation.

d

[dyak]

[James Stunell]

Ah! I've been waiting for someone to start this thread. It has long been my view that one of the most misguided publicity boasts a language school can make is "mother-tongue teachers only". Having spent years interviewing natives straight off of TEFL courses who believe that "tennis" is a verb, as well as working with Danish, Dutch, Germans, South Americans etc. who were some of the most marvellous teachers I've come across, I believe it's high time this sort of nonsense stopped. And I think we also have to make a distinction between English and other languages. It's a question of ownership. If you are learning Italian, for example, you are not learning a language of world communication. You are learning in order to communicate with Italians, a handful of Swiss or to work in one of the industries at which Italians excel. The "right accent or pronunciation" might well be an issue. But if you are learning English, you are learning a langauge which is no longer culture bound. People don't learn English to communicate solely with Brits or Americans but to communicate globally. The question "British English or American English?" is now an anachronism. There are literally thousands of other Englishes developing, so what is the "right pronunciation"? Surely the important thing is intelligibility and to hell with what's writen on your passport. It's high time our staff rooms reflected the role of English in 2003.

[yaramaz]

I am in an interesting situation in that I am studying Turkish with a Turkish native speaker in Turkey who is normally an English teacher. During my first year here, I taught myself a lot of basic Turkish- vocabulary, a bit of basic grammar, etc. I got thisfrom TV, from books, from listening. However, I felt quite useless when it came to communicating informally-- I could greet my boss and ask for a kilo of apples and other handy things, but I didnt have the core structure to begin creating my own fluent sentences. Hence, I arranged to take lessons with this well respected Turkish English teacher. So far it has been frustrating because I think he's approaching my study of turkish from an 'FL' petrspective rather than 'SL'. Anyone who has taught English in an English speaking country and a non English speaking country will know there is a vast difference in approach and method and goals. He is teaching me Turkish the way that English is taught here- by memorization drills and repitition. I dont want to repeat ten times that Mustafa plays the piano! This is how my students speak English- they can recite irrelevant phrasesand conjugate verbs on paper to high heaven but they cant even say My Name is... I want a list of important, relevant verbs, a list of key words, an example of as many suffixes as possible and how they modify the verbs (in turkish, for example, gitmek means 'to go' and so git is 'go' and can be conjugated using a number of suffixes- ie gidiyorum is the first person present continuous) I want to be given the tools to construct and understand the language on my own-- after all, it is all around me. I can deal with the rest of the learning... I dont want to spend my evenings repeating adnauseum about Ali's inability to swim...

[Roger]

A very necessary thread! And one in which I expected to be disappointed - and was rewarded by eight opinions that in essence say what I have said on many an occasion here too - learners don't need mother-tongue speakers per se, they need competent and experienced teachers!
Learning a language is not just learning to mimick foreign sounds. It also is acquiring a way of thinking different from your own language. To learn this, students need to do more comprehension exercises, grammar drills and muc else.

[Cleopatra]

I think that at higher levels - let's say upper int and above - students do benefit from native speaker teachers. Below those levels, the only thing that counts is that the teacher be talented. Let's face it, we all know plenty of NS teachers who are hopeless!
I think the main benefit of having NS teachers is that it does 'force' students to speak English. Even if the non native speaker insists on English only, it's still a bit artificial if both students and teacher share the same language. Perhaps the other big plus of native speaker teachers is that it does give students confidence. Like "She understood me - and she's a native speaker - so I must be good!" Illusory or not, such confidence does give students a better chance of learning - I suppose.

However, in many parts of the world, having NS teachers is a huge selling point, so I think our jobs are safe for the time being!

[naturegirl321]

Yes, grammar-wise, non-native speakers seem to know more. And they speak correctly, without a lot of slang

[struelle]

[nomadder]

Struelle said exactly what I was going to say. When thinking about past experiences I remember my American Spanish teacher could easily anticipate the mistakes we English speakers would make and he taught at a good pace while my French French teacher would seem irritated at our accents and expect us to learn faster. My German German teacher moved the lessons along too quickly as well. My Japanese(non English speaking) teacher was often on a totally different plane from me and I'd have to look up half the words in a dictionary after the class.

And for my next language................

[dduck]