As someone who started studying English at the age of 8, with 2/3 languages already in the mix, I immediately perceived it as my language because I had a more consistent relationship with it and could take it with me in other contexts no matter where I was.
My family moved a lot, therefore I grew up in a variety of contexts and finding one identity to conform to was not an easy task. I went to an international school in Malaysia and that is where my journey with English began. I later moved to the U.S. for just under a year, but to this day it seems as though those were the experiences that led to me knowing English and becoming an English teacher today. That could not be farther from the truth, and I realised that well into my adulthood.
Before my big realisation, I continued to validate my knowledge and skills as an English teacher saying things like “I’m from Armenia, BUT I teach English because I used to live in Malaysia”, “BUT I attended a school in the States”, “BUT I speak English daily to my brother-in-law who is Irish”, or “BUT my grandma used to be an English teacher”, and the list goes on.
It wasn’t until I went to a conference that I spotted my own flawed narrative which gave little to no power to the main character of my life: me!
Why was I not giving myself credit for learning and studying to become an English teacher? Why did I have to distance myself from my own origin to comply with some kind of “norm” that in order to know English, you had to have come in touch with an anglophone culture, or you must have had a distant relative who spoke English to you as a child! It was paradoxical that I was trying to justify having this skill in the way that I was, and it took me several attempts at presenting myself at conferences to catch my own bias towards myself.
Flashforward to the present day:
I am totally confident about being who I am as an English teacher.
I smile when someone asks me if I’m from England or from the States. I say I am neither, I am Armenian.
I no longer feel there is a need to add anything else other than “I’m an English teacher” to anyone I meet for the first time…
…this is obviously followed by the question “where are you from?” with the anticipation of placing me in an anglophone context, and to which I answer, “I’m from Armenia, English is not the official language there, or the second language people speak”.
Most of the times, my confidence in saying that conveys the right message to my interlocutor and they begin to connect the dots. I feel that since my mindset has shifted, I can do much more for the non-native speaker category and help others make the same realisation, that is to say: a skill is not intimately tied to one’s birthplace or experience growing up in an English speaking country.
How to introduce yourself as an English teacher
I’ve created this little worksheet for you that you can use to keep your impostor syndrome on track. Please use it and share any interesting finding in the comments.
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The Workshop “NNEST in 2023 – a Global Overview” took place yesterday, 21st of January 2023, but will still be accessible for Replay for those who would like to watch it.
I must warn you it is a little over 2 hours, but totally worth it!
The themes covered were:
➡ Hiring practices in Europe and South-East Asia
➡ The importance of the identity and nationality of teachers
➡ Proficiency tests for English Language Teachers
➡ The issue with “native speaker” ads
➡ How to market and brand yourself as a teacher or language school by changing the narrative
We had an expert panel who spoke on these major issues to a great extent.
↪ You can see for yourself by making a small contribution to support future events like this one right HERE.
ELT Ireland Bulletin, Issue n. 8 – 19th February 2022
Six years have passed since Silvana Richardson’s eye-opening plenary gave an insight into how non-native teachers were struggling to find equal opportunities as native English speakers. Even though many field professionals are highly aware of the discriminatory behaviours of school employers, not much has changed in the job advertisements looking to hire unqualified native speakers over qualified professionals. It is a long battle which can be won only by raising enough awareness towards the preconceived notion of what constitutes being an English teacher.
The reasons behind the preference of Native Speakers
There can be a variety of reasons for the preference of native speaker teachers, depending on the country one lives in. Private schools in Italy claim that a native-teacher is what students want. They are convinced that their customers are willing to pay for lessons that are conducted by teachers who solely come from the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, because of the authenticity of the learning experience. This leads to many recruiters requesting a copy of the candidate’s passport to make sure they are in fact citizens of one of the nations mentioned above. Another explanation schools use to attract clientele is that their teachers are mother tongue speakers. They like to perpetuate the idea of one accent being superior to another, insinuating that anyone who speaks with a different accent is therefore an “inadequate teacher” who does not provide the English model which is familiar to the entire world of English speakers.
Addressing the issue from a rational point of view
Nowadays, very few people in the world live in the exact same place as they were born. Whether it is for a job opportunity or studies, people move, travel and settle in any place their hearts desire. We can say that this is definitely one of the great perks of living in the 21st century. Subsequently, many children today come from a variety of backgrounds, there is a mixture of cultural contexts, accents and races that simply cannot and should not be ignored any longer. It is not unlikely to find more than one nationality in the same family, or children of immigrant parents who are attending a school in a language that is foreign to that of their own. What is different today, compared to the not so recent past, is that the personal situations of every individual are now enriched with unique experiences and stories. These distinguishing features that make up a person need to be taken into account regardless of where one was born, and it is extremely important that we keep that in mind at all times if we want to go past the traditional definitions of what constitutes being a native speaker or teacher in 2022.
The post-colonial varieties of English are conventionally called “non-native” varieties, therefore, a heated dispute emerged in the Journal of Pragmatics with some linguists arguing that it was implicitly racist to use such terminology, as English was in actual fact the native language of many speakers of those varieties (Singh et al. 1995; Singh 1998). Whether or not one agrees with such divergence among linguistic definitions, we can all agree that during a recruitment process, most qualified “non-native” teachers pay a high price for such whimsical and pre-historic definitions used to categorise language teachers. While it is unlikely that we will hear about Indian English or Singapore English being taught at an international school level, we must understand that varieties of English are not to be demonised. If we consider the vast array of English accents and what model of Received Pronunciation we should foster (traditionally the British English accent is regarded as the standard RP), we might find it impossible to determine what “neutral” or global English sounds like. The truth is: most of the world is not made up of native speakers – as much as it might pain British English traditionalists to admit – and local varieties can do much more for English language learners.
Joan Pujolar and Bernadette O’Rourke, in their position paper entitled The debates on “new speakers” and “non-native” speakers as symptoms of late modern anxieties over linguistic ownership, speak of how the discomfort with the concept of “native speaker” in the area of English language teaching had been growing for some time. According to Crystal (2003), non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers by three to one, which makes all the difference, because most publishing corporations market their teaching materials towards non-native teachers and speakers accordingly.
To sum up: We all know that the majority of English teacher professionals are not native-speakers; We are aware that most of the published materials in ELT are directed towards non-natives teachers and learners; We have developed an understanding that a main standard model English simply does not exist because of the different varieties of English even in those countries known to have English as their “Native Language”.
The questions I would like to pose are: How can we move forward from here? Will there be a change for Non Native Teachers across the globe? Can we overcome this hurdle together?
How to promote equal job opportunities for a better tomorrow
Non-native learners and teachers are a potential source of resistance, because they have the chance to object to this lapsed hegemony as aware and active participants, and as people who have witnessed and experienced the negative perception that recruiters and unaware students have against non-native teachers. We now have the right tools to bridge the gap of understanding, social media being one amongst many, and do something about how non-native teachers will be regarded in the future.
One of the most traditional and powerful ways to spread information is through word of mouth. It is something that everyone can do. Therefore, simply speaking about the problem can go a long way and raise awareness on the issue. This is what any individual can do starting right now. Example Situation: Any time someone wants a reference to a language teacher and asks you where the teacher is from (expecting to hear New York or London), be sure to make the effort in explaining the difference between where one is from and what qualification one holds.
Schools should promote the inclusion of globally recognised qualifications as a requirement to enter public and private institutions for teaching English as a foreign language. From a personal point of view, I have had little to no attention despite holding a DELTA Cambridge in Parma, Italy. My name and nationality have been the biggest difficulty I have had to overcome every single time I have had to apply for a job.
We need to realise that we are not alone, and that these instances of malpractice against non-native teachers have already been addressed legally by official communications on the matter.
In fact, according to the Official Journal of the European Communities, article 21:“Any discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.”
Hence, we should all be more alert towards advertisements and job offers coming from institutions and people who claim that having a qualification to teach is preferable but not necessary. These claims discredit professional teachers who have invested in their education and careers to help learners advance in their own chosen paths.
The more we, as a community, insist on seeing the same respect and opportunities given to non-native teachers as to native and mother tongue speakers or teachers, the sooner our future as English language teachers will begin to seem brighter.
References
Crystal, D., (2003) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
O’Rourke, B. and Pujolar, J. (2021) The debates on “new speakers” and “non-native” speakers as symptoms of late modern anxieties over linguistic ownership. In Slavkov, N. (ed.) The Changing Face of the “Native Speaker”: Perspectives from Multilingualism and Globalization. Series: Trends in Applied Linguistics [TAL], 31. De Gruyter. ISBN 9781501512353 (In Press), 1 – 21
Singh, R. et al., (1995) On “new/non-native” Englishes: A quartet. Journal of Pragmatics, 24 (3), pp.283– 294.
Websites:
Charted of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000/C 364/01)
My journey teaching English as a non-native English speaking teacher.
When my parents named me they wrote my name in Armenian, as they are Armenians at birth themselves and so am I.
The Armenian language is very complex and ancient. It has 39 letters and it is really hard to learn. I personally never learned how to write Armenian, but that’s another story.
My name was spelled “մէրի” (mēri)… and it is pronounced like the English “Mary” name. However, since our documents had to be translated into a more international and known language, my name was suddenly spelled M-E-R-I.
The way my name was spelled soon brought on to many misconceptions as to who I really was. Spelling errors which could have been easily avoided, bureaucratic problems and mistrust, a bunch of lost opportunities in ELT and, well…funny stories too.
I will not get into now.
Instead, I will tell you how I got my first students.
Flash forward to when I came to live in Parma, Italy.
I began working in Italy as an English teacher, I quickly realised it was a better idea to write “Mary” on public ads to get a callback and say I was a mother tongue speaker instead of saying I was an English teacher with this or that qualification. It always worked. It was easier to start a conversation by saying that rather than have no conversation at all. Soon enough I had my first private students and a year’s contract.
I concluded I would first teach a lesson to later speak about who I actually was. Once I had earned my students’ trust, I could come clean and explain my position, as I am doing right now here in writing. I still feel like a fraud when I spell my name M-A-R-Y in public ads, btw.
My son running around in Piazza Duomo, Parma (Italy) – May 2021
I needed to make a living and I was being penalised for a spelling mistake, and even more so for being Armenian (the unknown country that would scare pupils away).
On paper, I had no business teaching English in Italy, and unless I somehow had a chance to speak to a recruiter directly in English they would never hire me based on my CV alone. This still continues today.
My conclusions:
People are afraid of the unknown. The old fight or flight response has seen generations after generations make the same mistakes in judgement, that is categorising people based on their origin, name, colour, accent, etc.
Somehow it is easier to make sense of the world by sticking labels onto things so as to keep everything well organised, in specific slots. If you give “it” a name, “it” will seem more friendly and less unknown.
I do think this reasoning might have made more sense in the past when one was born and raised in a given town or city, had spent their entire life in their hometown, and never as much as laid foot in another territory. Maybe their general traits could be more easily identified or guessed based on their environment. Yet, I also realise we could argue that we would not be able to define and categorise a person in that circumstance much like any other human being. We can be complex that way.
So what is the dream I have?
I dream for English teachers not to be categorised into Native vs. Non Native speaking teachers. It is not a competition as much as it is a desire to have equal opportunities in the job market.
I wish I never have to explain WHY I can speak English as someone who was born in a Non English Speaking Country ( or whose name is spelled Meri) to anyone who is pondering whether to hire me as their English teacher – in my experience, no one expects Armenians to know English well, and frankly, not many know what “Armenia” is. What people do know is that Armenia is not the UK, and definitely not the US, and that is just enough to blow any deal as of today.
The long and winding road of TEFL/ TESL. The_Non_Native_Speaker.
I will say it again, this time more clearly: New English students don’t really know anything about teacher qualifications, what native speakerism is, the struggles that non native speakers face, or how good their teachers are.
The message for the longest time has been, native speaker teachers are good (meaning non native teachers are bad).
Hence, we find ourselves having to justify WHY we are English teachers at all, being born in so and so place, not speaking like Her Majesty.
The narrative has become counterproductive for students because they find themselves in a room with a native speaker and not a native or non-native TEACHER.
The problems that arise with that are many, because speakers who are not teachers:
Can’t speak in a clear, comprehensible way so that ANY level learner can understand them (grading language and local accent come to mind)
They speak too fast because they just speak – meanwhile when a teacher speaks he or she is actually listening to him/herself through the students’ mind and adapting lexical choices just enough for them to understand, yet be challenged at the same time (comprehensible input +1)
The use of unfamiliar and inadequate expressions simply comes from not knowing which elements are relevant to be taught and which are not as important.
“…native-speakerism needs to be addressed at the level of the prejudices embedded in everyday practice, and dominant professional discourses must be put aside if the meanings and realities of students and colleagues from outside the English-speaking West are to be understood.”
Holliday, 2005. The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
There is a lot you can teach, but will it be useful to that particular student or group?
Experienced teachers almost always know what the next hurdle is, and they know how to guide you to overcome that specific hurdle eithout overwhelming you with unnecessary information in that moment.
The reason students find themselves in this condition – with NON-teachers teaching and unemployed teachers rolling their eyes – is because the truth has been concealed from them.
Potential language learners have been brainwashed by ads telling them a NATIVE TEACHER is all they need, but a native SPEAKER is all they get.
They have been told they can SOUND native if they have a NATIVE TEACHER.
They have been told that if their teacher was born in a non English speaking country, then he or she cannot be a teacher.
I don’t know about you, but I’m only glad doctors don’t face the same discrimination.
We – qualified teachers, native or not – are professionals and should be treated as such. Please share this blog post to raise awareness of discriminatory practices being fed to the public.
The Non Native Speaker 