I actually agree with Dogs, but I think - to an extent - it can help native teachers enormously if they have learned a foriegn language themselves, simply because they can identify and anticipate the possible mistakes that may or may not arise, and they will be able to empathise more with the student's needs and difficulties.
The problem with non-native English teachers is that they are
non-native. I know many non-native speakers of English who are fluent, but they will very rarely be at the level of a native speaker, simply because - having a different mother tongue - they simply won't know everything about the language that they have learned. They may mispronounce certain words, their spelling may be off, they may not recognise archaic words or academic/scientific terms . . .
Personally I'd rather learn a language from a native speaker, (providing they have training, as Dogs said) just because they are less likely to make mistakes and I'd be able to learn the language spoken as it is meant to be spoken.
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these teachers can use audio-visual aids to get the correct pronunciation
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JCJ, pronunciation can be very difficult to learn frm audio-visual aids. If a student struggles with how to pronounce a word, then unless the teacher themselves can pronounce it then they will struggle. It's like with how the French roll their "r"'s, or how the Japanese can't pronounce their 'l' sounds . . . if you are relying solely on audio-visual aids I don't think it's possible for a non-native teacher to teach it properly, solely as they don't know
how to pronounce it and an audio-visual aid can't explain that kind of thing. If the aid
could then why would you need a
teacher?