In the language teaching industry, being a native speaker is widely considered an unofficial qualification. Many schools actually only look for native teachers and I heard many people blame their non-native teachers for their poor knowledge of a foreign language.
But is it really so?
What really makes a good teacher?
Is being a native speaker really enough?
Being a native Italian teacher and a non-native English teacher, I think I have a quite unbiased perspective on this topic and I can share my experience. For many years, probably due to this common belief, whenever I looked for a language teacher I always looked for a native speaker, without ever wondering if that was actually the best choice in any situation. Spoiler, it wasn’t.
When we consider other subjects, like music or maths, we don’t expect our teachers to be “native”. No one was born with a guitar in their hands right? And not many people would think that someone who started playing the piano at 3 is necessarily a better music teacher than someone who started to play at 18. So why do we demand language teachers to be born with the language we want to learn?
In my opinion, what makes a good language teacher is, first of all, a good knowledge of the language they’re teaching and, maybe even more importantly, a good attitude to explain things and a genuine pleasure in teaching. But that’s not enough. Learning a language is different from many other subjects, like history or biology, where you mainly have to study a book and try to remember its content. It’s more like music or a sport. You have to train to acquire a new skill and this requires a lot of practice and you can’t simply force your brain to learn, you need time to do that. For this reason a good language teacher has to be aware of the mental process to acquire a language and has to be able to feed their students with the right input.
When I studied Russian at university, my teachers only focused on grammar and just provided us with super complex literary contents without ever allowing us to take our first beginner steps. They wanted us to be able to translate Dostoevsky when we barely knew how to introduce ourselves. I didn’t learn Russian very well with this method, obviously. But was the problem that they weren’t native speakers? Actually the worst of them was a Russian native speaker. The problem, in my opinion, was that they all knew how to speak Russian really well, but they had no clue about how our brains absorb a language. Another misconception they had was that the teachers were responsible to feed us with knowledge, but I think it should be more like a guide.
After this traumatic experience at university, I decided to find a private online teacher. I found a very nice and professional Russian girl. The problem was that she only spoke a little English and German and wasn’t able to explain things to me in a way I could understand. So, this experience was also unsuccessful. When you’re studying a language that is very different from your own or from any other language you know, I think it’s really helpful to find a teacher that can effectively communicate with you in a language you understand. Maybe to translate some words, or to explain some complex grammar points. Otherwise it’s pretty likely that you’ll feel completely lost, and unless you have a very strong drive, you’ll probably give up. As I did.
Especially for beginners, I’ve come to think that being a native speaker doesn’t really play a big role. You need a guide that helps you enter a new world. Someone who knows how to communicate with you and to guide you in the best way. Of course, someone who knows the language really well, or, at least, way better than you do. As a teacher, I actually believe that you can teach anyone who knows only a little bit less than you, if you know how to do it.
As for the accent and pronunciation, of course a language teacher should have at least a good pronunciation (and so should a native teacher, actually) and a smooth accent. I don’t think that having a perfect native-like accent is mandatory. Why should I have a perfect British accent if I’m not British? In the same way I don’t have a Napolitean accent in Italian, when I’m from Milan. Languages don’t belong to native speakers, they belong to people that use them. Apart from that, even if I’m not a native teacher, I can always provide my students with native materials, I don’t have (and shouldn’t) be their only language source. They should get comfortable with as many different versions of English (or Italian, or any other language).
So, is being a native teacher completely useless then? Of course not. But I simply don’t see their unquestionable superiority. Nevertheless, in some cases, I can see why being a native speaker can be helpful. It depends a lot on the level, though. For instance, when I’m studying a language at a very advanced level, I tend to prefer a native teacher (or at least someone who has lived in a country where my target language is spoken for a considerable amount of time or who’s extremely proficient in the language), because it’s more likely (but not mandatory) that they’ll naturally know the most subtle dimensions of the language. As a beginner, on the other hand, I prefer a teacher who is not only an expert of the language I’m studying, but also proficient in my language, so that we don’t have any miscommunication. Actually, someone who has a different native language from the one I’m studying, but still has an excellent level in the taught language, can be highly motivating for me, because they’re a living proof that it’s possible to learn that language well, if you know how to do it.
Also as a teacher I prefer teaching advanced Italian learners and elementary/intermediate English learners. With the first ones, I can discuss language topics I barely think about in my daily life and discover new shades of my own language. With the second ones I can sympathize with their struggles, because I lived them myself and share their enthusiasm to learn something that used to be new for me as well.
