NATIVE vs NON- NATIVE TEACHERS

Inés Bras Amador
Metodología para la Enseñanza del Inglés
Prof.: Martínez Martínez

Teaching English as an International Language
Native vs. non-native speaker teachers
Llurda, Enric (2004) Non-native-speaker teachers and English as an International language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(3). 314-323.
English has undergone different changes in how it is perceived in the world:
In multilingualism countries, criticism defines the spread of English as an aggressive expansion.
In less politically charged domains, English is perceives just as a global language.
The English language is the more spoken language as a L2 according to several educators and language researchers. A recent study carries out by Major et al. (2002) which compares the results on Test of Spoken English by speakers of English, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. The study involves different tasks: a recorded passage by a Native American and three recorded passages of English in the other languages involves in the test. Major’s study concludes that the growing acknowledgement of the existence of the huge number of non- native.
Another factor that makes the English as a global language is the use of World English in the literature with English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). There are different opinions that support this idea:
Eoyang (1999): he argues that English was not a lingua franca because there are three different ways to be global- universality, widespread comprehensibility and comprenhensivity.
Brutt- Griffler (2002): she argues that the spread of English is due to several reasons English is the preferred language and the colonized people used the colonial’s language to be free.
In those times, new formulations of EIL into language teaching have emerged due to the need to draw on the previous knowledge of the language learner through exploiting their knowledge of their own language and culture.
To conclude there are more speakers of EIL than speakers of English as a native language taking into account that there are many different levels of proficiency may exist. However, the vast majority of the many millions of non- native speakers of English are not conscious of being speakers of EIL.