Challenging the Native Speakerism

The native speakerism has developed into a prominent social phoenomena in the world of English language education known as Native speaker vs. Non-native speaker dichotomy. It is a manifetation of the ideology which favors native speakers as superior language teachers based on their native language status. A discriminative hiring practice against even highly trained non-native English speaking teachers is a typical example of the dichotomy. This book, examines this global social phoenomena in the context of Japanese English education and challenges the myth that native speakers are intrinsically superior to thier nonnative counterparts as English language teachers. The author applies, linguistic, social as well as pedagogical perspectives to examine the issue and argues that the existence of the dichotomy is not only disservice to English language learners but also the development of fair professionalism in the nation. The issue presented in this book holds utmost relevance to language teaching professionals and to administrators of language teaching institutions or anyone else who is involved in learning and teaching of the English language.