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The first question you may face when you apply for an ESL teaching job in Asian countries nowadays is “Are you a native speaker?” This is the most important information about you in countries such as China, Korea, Japan, etc… Why is that? Because people and employers in such countries believe that native speakers are much more better as teachers than non-native speakers, they believe so because native speakers were born in English-speaking family and were English-speaking their entire lives. But; is that true?? Is it true that native speakers are able to teach English better than non-native speakers just because they are speaking English?? Well, in my personal opinion and according to what I have seen so far, I have to say that is totally incorrect; speaking a language doesn’t mean you can teach it. Let’s take an example; if you want to be a rich man and you are looking for an advice. Are you going to ask a rich person as prince William who was born as rich, or you will ask someone like Jack Ma who was poor and worked very hard to earn his money and become a rich man? Of course you will ask Jack Ma, right? Because he knows how to be rich, he tried by himself and he succeed, so he can give you the right advice. So if you want to learn a language you should learn it from someone who learnt it before, someone as non-native speaker because this non-native is able to give you the key to the language more than the native speaker who just knows that language. Although I can’t deny that you need some help from a native speaker sometimes, especially when your level is upper-intermediate or above, at this stage of learning, native speakers are really more useful for you. Besides, we should keep another thing in our mind when we talk about teachers, teachers should be qualified not just speaking and knowing the language, they should know the way to teach this language. A teacher must obtain professional qualifications from a university majored in English to be an English teacher, as well as, the teacher supposes to keep up with the latest courses, training, ideas and theories about teaching so the teacher can be well qualified. According to the previous; we need qualified teachers either they are native speakers (to teach high level students) or non-native speakers (to teach the beginner students), but in all the cases, teachers need to be qualified. On the other hand, Teaching is a highly complex activity. Therefore teachers are required to have essential values and attitudes, beliefs, commitments, etc… So in a short word, what is required of a teacher can be grouped under three headings; Knowledge; whether the teacher is a native or non-native speaker; he/she should have enough knowledge about the English subject as grammar, idioms, phonics, etc… Craft skills; such as lesson planning, classroom management, using teaching technologies, assessing learning, monitoring the learners, etc… Dispositions; such as being enthusiastic, having manners and attitudes, interaction with learners, etc… As a conclusion, I can say that it doesn’t really matter whether the teacher is a native speaker or not, all it matters is how the teacher is. The native speaker isn’t always a better teacher than the non-native speaker, sometimes the non-native is much better, although people can’t really understand this concept yet, but we hope one day the teachers could be judged according to their teaching methods and qualifications not according to their nationalities.
