Native Speakers Vs. Non Native Speakers

Whenever we talk about English language acquisition, the divide between native speakers and non-native speakers appears. The belief that native speakers are the ideal teachers of English, named “the native speaker fallacy” by Phillipson (as cited in Fathelbab, 2011, p. 64) is widely accepted. Even more, research has showed that students judge nativeness according to accent, appearance and ethnicity, stereotyping native speakers as “blonde, blue-eyed, American or English looking and sounding…with English first names” (Filho, as cited in Fathelbab, 2011, p. 65). Some teachers are considered as bad teachers just because they do not look like native speakers, even though they may have been born in or lived their entire lives in English speaking countries (Fathelbab, 2011). This situation creates inequalities in hiring practices and salaries between NESTs (native English speaking teachers) and NNESTs (non-native English speaking teachers). Even when the “80% of ESL/EFL teachers worldwide” (Canagarajah, as cited in Fathelbab, 2011, p. 64) are NNESTs, NESTs has always received a superior status, regardless their competence as teachers.

However we can agree with Phillipson that “teachers are made rather than born whether teachers are native or non native” (as cited in Fathelbab, 2011, p. 64). Both groups have strengths and weaknesses. The main strength of NESTs is their high proficiency and communicative competence, and the main strength of NNESTs is being a successful model for the EFL/ESL students (Medgyes, as cited in Fathelbab, 2011), and “the advantage of seeing a culture form a distance” (Byram, Gribkova & Starkey, 2002, p.18).

Therefore, as students, parents, or teachers it is important to keep in mind that nativeness is not a synonym of good teacher. The competence of a teacher involves much more than the country of birth. This needs to be understood by all the educational community to stop unfair inequalities.

References

Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching, a practical introduction for teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Fathelbab, H. (2011). NESTs (Native English Speaking Teachers) & NNESTs (Non-Native English Speaking Teachers): Competence or nativeness?. TESOL Journal, 64-67.