The Native Speaker Legend

Much has been recently said and written about the divide between teachers of English (or of any other language) native vs non-native and, clearly, this is a discriminatory divide that has become illegal in job adverts, at least within the EU. And yet, we all know that jobs are more easily given to native users (NEST’s) as opposed to NNEST‘s no matter how competent or well trained they may be. This post came about as a reaction to a recent job advert by one of the two binational centres in Athens and gives me a great opportunity to share a recent blog post shared by one of the team members maintaining a great website on raising bilingual children, Daphne Vlachojannis, parent of three bilingual children (herself a bilingual Greek-American human rights lawyer who will be following our upcoming CELTA). 

5 Reasons Why We Should Root for Non-Native Language Teachers

Categories: Article, Blog Post, Guest Post

4 replies

  1. Thank you very much for reposting, Marisa! This is indeed a big issue and I have experienced discrimination many times myself. However, I hope that things are slowly changing and we will see some shifts in the near future!

  2. Yes, I have been a victim of native speakerism despite having 2 Masters degrees, a CELTA, and many years of experience.
    I felt cheated for a long time because when pursuing a CELTA no one warns you about the world’s admiration for native speakers or the questioning glances you receive as a non native.

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