other thoughts

Wanda asked me why english students of nonnative english-speaking teachers would complain about the fact that they are nonnative speakers of english, while most languages classes, for example here at purdue, are taught by nonnative speakers of those language (and thus native speakers of english, in this case, although i know someone who speaks serbian natively and who teaches spanish!). well the question is a good one, except that we have need to remember two things:

1. english has a special status in the world today. way more people want to learn english than say, french. english is the language of the future... blah blah blah. so in the end, they want to learn english better and are more serious about it than if they were learning french. in general.

2. it's ESL and not EFL. imagine you live in the US and want to learn japanese. you'll probably have native english-speaking japanese teachers at first, maybe a few japanese native speakers if you're lucky, and then if you're super serious about learning japanese you'll go to japan. to do so, you'll spend a LOT of money and you'll expect to have the REAL japanese experience, with real japanese speakers and all. if, once in japan, one of your teachers is a native speaker of spanish, you'll be pretty upset.

now, remind me why i want to prove that nonnative english-speaking teachers can be good esl teachers???!!! damn, i'd be pretty upset too if i were those students! i'm insane to want to prove that they shouldn't be upset! insane!