Hello,

Being a native speaker of a language seems to be a must if you wish to apply for jobs at certain language schools. Sometimes you're even expected to be a national of a specific country in order to qualify: indeed, it isn't at all uncommon to find job advertisements where a language school director is looking for a Brit who is a native-speaker of English to teach English, for example. What do you think about this? Is it all right to discriminate people basing on which language group they were born into? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to search for teachers with a firm understanding of the language than for a native speaker? Even though most native teachers of their language as a foreign language are qualified, I dare say this is not always the case. You sometimes find people who have a poor grasp of grammar and no TEFL-qualifications teaching English at EFL-schools in non-English speaking countries. It's also interesting to note that for instance university professors in the United Kingdom are appointed basing on their experience and formal qualifications rather than linguistic background. You cannot, for example, become a Professor of English at the University of Oxford simply because you speak English natively. A non-native speaker could, however, be appointed should he or she be appropriately qualified (as could a native speaker).

Please let me know what you think of all this. I'm interested in comments from all of you: from students of English, English teachers, recruiters...