Quote:
Originally Posted by evanny
i dig it 
of course different people will want different things but that doesn't mean a teacher should slack off in aspects that are not so demanded. that is why i don't like what Realism said. i think everyone benefits if a teacher can speak fluently, can understand and explain and not just talk. i mean, why only go for the one aspect when you can get all of them. |
Yeah for sure.
As a bonus, non-native teachers tend to be a hell of a lot cheaper!
Trained native speakers, though, I believe will still be better than trained non-native speakers as teachers.
You have a good point that they can relate to how that person learned the language, and the native speaker doesn't have that.
Actually a big part of why I took learning Japanese seriously was to improve my ability to teach them, not so I would speak Japanese during the lesson, but to understand where they are coming from and how their language differs so as to better understand the challenges.
After Edit;
Another point is that it's a lot more difficult to unlearn and relearn something correctly than to simply learn it correctly the first time.
When learning from a non-native speaker, there's always a good chance that you might learn something flat out wrong, as opposed to learning something that's "wrong" but doesn't actually disturb the ears of native speakers.
There are many non-native teachers who are excellent teachers, who don't make these mistakes and in fact speak English just as well as I do. But there are FAR more who don't but profess to.
As a student, especially a beginning student, it's nearly impossible to differentiate these from each other.
How can you know, as a beginning student, that the non-native teacher you select is in fact reliable?
A native speaker, once he starts teaching you, if you learn, he's good, if you don't, he's not, but there's no doubt that what he's saying is correct English regardless of his ability to teach it.
A non-native speaker, once he starts teaching you, if you learn, he's good, if you don't, he's not, but there's no guarantee that what he's teaching is correct English.
See what I mean?