Are native speakers better at teaching foreign languages than non-native speakers?

 Are native speakers better at teaching foreign languages than non-native speakers?

by Yvonne Ho  ABD, MA

I remember attending a UCLA Linguistics conference and many non-native speakers of English were very frustrated at the prejudice language schools have against them.  Learners of a foreign language seem to think that native speakers of a language who may have no experience teaching a foreign language are better at teaching a foreign language than an experienced career non-native speaker.

When I first came to Los Angeles after having just completed my Masters in French Literature and after having just come back from France,  I interviewed to teach French at a private school.  The first thing they ask you is "Are you a native speaker of French?"  And I said no. Immediately without further ado, they rejected me and told me 'We only hire native speakers of French".  Like my non-native UCLA ESL colleagues, I felt frustrated by this bias towards native speakers.

I think there is room for both non-native speakers and native speakers in foreign language teaching.

Non-native speaker advantages

The non-native speaker knows the struggle that the student is going through learning the foreign language after having learned the language herself.  I believe that a non-native speaker's empathy helps beginning language learners more than a native speaker who may talk too fast for beginning students.  In addition, the non-native speaker can then teach the basic grammar rules of that foreign language while giving grammar rule explanations in the student's native language. For example, if I am teaching French,  I can then explain the French rules of grammar in English to my American students.  I can also teach my American students how to pronounce difficult sounds in French that do not exist in English. With my linguistics background, I can teach my students the French phonetic system to teach students how to pronounce the French r, for example, which does not exist in English. (at least not the way the French say it!)

Native Speaker advantages

Once a student knows the basic rules of grammar or have studied the foreign language extensively in their own country with the non-native speaker, then as the FL student advances in her level of FL learning, she can then advance to a Native Speaker teacher.  For example, Chinese students get an excellent grounding in English grammar when they learn English in China from non native speakers, then once these same students come to America, then enters the native speaker teacher, me.  The native speaker can then help perfect pronunciation and fluency for the FL learner.  I love teaching English as a Second Language and I get ESL students from all over the world who come to the United States to immerse themselves in an English speaking environment so they can quickly go form high intermediate English to the Advanced level.

Conclusion

I recommend that low beginning to low intermediate students start out with non-native speakers while high intermediate to advanced level students learn from native speakers.  If language schools could hire both non-native speakers for the lower levels and the native speakers for the higher levels, this would encourage more Americans to learn a second language to become FL teachers.  The sticky wicket is how do we overcome the belief and the bias that native language speakers make for better foreign language teachers than non-native speakers.

For more on this topic, read this article:

http://ielanguages.com/blog/native-speaker-teacher-use-of-first-language/