Asian Englishes

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/reng20

ELT profession in the post native-speakerism era

Masaki Oda

To cite this article: Masaki Oda (2024) ELT profession in the post native-speakerism era, Asian
Englishes, 26:1, 268-279, DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2022.2132449
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2022.2132449

Published online: 20 Oct 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 474

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=reng20
ASIAN ENGLISHES
2024, VOL. 26, NO. 1, 268–279
https://doi.org/10.1080/13488678.2022.2132449

ESSAY

ELT profession in the post native-speakerism era

Masaki Oda
College of Humanities, Tamagawa University, Machida, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

For a long time, the English language teaching (ELT) profession in Received 17 March 2022
Asia has been regarded as a dichotomous composition of so-called Accepted 2 October 2022
‘native English speaker’ (NES) teachers and ‘non-native English
speaker’ (NNES) local teachers. This dichotomy serves as
a benchmark against discussing various problems in the discipline
ranging from learners’ proficiency to hiring practices of teachers. In
this article, I will present a diachronic account of how the ideas of
ELT have changed over the years, with special attention to the
status of NES–NNES dichotomy, and consequently how the changes
have contributed to the formation of the disciplinary discourse at
different times. I will then critically analyze how the notion of native
speakers has been represented in the literature in applied linguis­
tics to identify the key issues on native-speakerism in ELT and make
a proposal for optimizing the profession by calling for a departure
from the NES versus NNES dichotomy.

Introduction
For almost 40 years of my involvement in the English language teaching (ELT) profes­
sion, starting from a teacher trainee in the 1980s, there is one crucial term, native speaker,
which has appeared repeatedly in the profession. The term has been influential enough to
make me decide what I should do to become a good ELT practitioner as it sets the
‘standard’ of the profession. It has always been around throughout my career in ELT. In
my initial pre-service teacher training in Japan, we were made to believe that good
teachers should aim to improve their English proficiency, including that of so-called
four skills, grammar and vocabulary, as close as that of native speakers, but this was vague
and actually something that none of us, non-native speakers of Japanese, would be able to
attain. In the 1980s, I vividly remember that so many teacher trainees were working hard
in order to achieve this unrealistic goal without any doubt. Needless to say, these trainees
believed that so-called native speaker proficiency was the ultimate goal, and thus they
expected the same when they became classroom teachers a few years later.
The term ‘native-speakerism’ refers to ‘an ideology that upholds the idea that so-called
“native speakers” are the best models and teachers of English because they represent
a “Western culture” from which spring the ideals both of English and of the methodology
for teaching it’ (Holliday, 2005, p. 5). Its emergence was derived from resistance to the

CONTACT Masaki Oda oda@lit.tamagawa.ac.jp College of Humanities, Tamagawa University, Machida, Tokyo
194-8610, Japan
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 269

perceived supremacy that the native English speaker (NES) prevailed as social practice in
the ELT profession.
While the ELT profession has begun to recognize the value of localized varieties of
English with an emergence of the notion of World Englishes in the early 1980s (Kachru,
1992), and to realize that English used by NESs would not be the only model for the
learners, such an atmosphere of the profession was not strong enough to dispel the
discourse of ‘native speaker’ prevailing among the general public. The binary distinction
between NES and non-native English speaker (NNES) still remains. In so-called English
as a foreign language contexts where English is taught as a foreign language, such as
Japan, there is a prevailing assumption that NNES only refers to those who are native
speakers of the dominant language of the region. In the Japanese context, therefore, NES
has been perceived as if it had been an antonym of Japanese (speakers) and those
NNESs who are not Japanese have been out of scope of the assumption. In hiring
practices, this resulted in exclusion of many qualified non-local NNES teachers who
would be suitable to the positions.
As we enter the 2020s, the linguistic landscape surrounding us is far more complex.
However, some of us in the profession have finally become aware of the reality. The ELT
profession has redefined as what is considered ‘politically correct,’ and thus ELT profes­
sionals as well as the general public have begun to avoid glorifying native speakers’
legitimacy explicitly. At the same time, non-native speakers have been stigmatized
covertly in many situations. In big cities like Bangkok, Shanghai, or Tokyo, it is difficult
for us to spend a day without encountering languages other than your mother tongue. If
we focus on English, we encounter varieties of Englishes in our daily lives. We then have
to reconsider the model for the learners. Apparently, it has become impossible for us to
discuss the model for the learners in accordance with the NES–NNES dichotomy.
In this article, therefore, I review the discourses of ‘native-speakerism’ in ELT in the
past three decades to identify key issues and how ELT professionals in the 2020s have to
deal with them for the decades to come.

Native speakers and ELT

As I have mentioned, NES has been a buzzword for the ELT profession. It has been used
as a benchmark for various aspects of the ELT profession including models for learners,
as well as teachers. The learners are expected to attain native speaker proficiency and
teachers were supposed to help them achieve the goal. Consequently, teachers are
expected to have ‘native speaker’ or at least ‘native-like’ proficiency in order to be
qualified to help the learners. However, the concept of native speaker prevailing among
academics as well as the general public is not more than a common-sense idea, as Davies
(2003) discusses:

[The concept of native speaker] is surely a common-sense idea, referring to people who have
a special control over a language, insider knowledge about ‘their’ language. They are the models
we appeal to for the ‘truth’ about the language, they know what the language is (‘Yes, you can say
that’) and what the language isn’t (‘No, that’s not English, Japanese, Swahili . . . ’). They are the
stakeholders of the language they control its maintenance and shape its direction. (p. 1)
270 M. ODA

This corresponds with the fact that not only ELT professionals, but also the general
public seem to accept the discourse without reviewing its relevance to their own
contact of learning English. Davies (2003) continues that the earlier stated common-
sense view is important and has its practical implication. However, he also suggests
that ‘the common-sense view alone is inadequate and needs the support and explana­
tion given by a through theoretical discussion’ (2003, p. 1).
In his book Linguistics Imperialism (Phillipson, 1992), Phillipson talks about the
academic foundation of ELT in Britain in the 1960s, with examples of how Britain
attempted to expand ELT. At that time, according to Phillipson, British universities
began to establish postgraduate programs in applied linguistics and/or ELT primarily to
provide theoretical foundation for teaching English as a foreign language. The teachers
trained to teach at these institutions then went overseas, particularly regions in Africa
and Asia where English was taught as a foreign language. While the move was to build
bridges between Centre (i.e. Britain) and Periphery (i.e., the regions to which these
teachers went), the reality, according to Phillipson, was ‘firmly anchored in Centre
perception and structures’ (1992, p. 181).
Phillipson continued that ‘[t]he laudable goal of Periphery countries becoming self-
sufficient is made dependent on the authority and example of the Centre, whose agents
are to occupy multiplier positions so that their impact is maximized’ (1992, p. 184).
Furthermore, Phillipson talks about the Commonwealth Conference on the Teaching of
English as a Second Language which was held in Makerere, Uganda in 1961, in which
priorities for ELT was decided. From the outcome of his document study, Phillipson
formulated five key tenets which were prevailed in the ELT profession. They are as
follows:

English is best taught monolingually.

The ideal teacher of English is a native speaker.
The earlier English is taught, the better the results.
The more English is taught, the better the results.
If other languages are used much, standards of English will drop. (Phillipson, 1992, p. 185)

Phillipson believes that all of them are false and examines each of them in his book. It has
already been about three decades since Phillipson’s (1992) was published. It seems,
however, that the five tenets are still intact. As discussed in Oda (2019), some universities
in Japan still consider ‘English-only’ environment and 'native English-speaking teachers'
(NEST) as their killer phrases to attract applicants (p. 259). The institutions believe that
English classes taught by NEST and conducted in English only can attract more appli­
cants, despite that there have not been any sufficient theoretical supports to back them
up. In addition, if we combined the first two tenets, it would be possible to conclude that
monolingual NEST would be more qualified to teach because they are ‘native speakers’
while multilingual non-NEST might not be seen as qualified for the same position as they
were not NEST. In other words, the Center and its agenda to control ELT is still
maintained or preserved in the ELT profession, and ‘native speaker’ plays a significant
role in the discourse.
Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) discusses the ways to analyze the forms of power using the
terms ‘A team’ and ‘B team’. It was originally proposed in the context of her discussion of
minority education. She attempted to ‘place minority education in a wider social and
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 271

political framework, highlighting some of the more macro-societal ideological, political

and economic reasons for linguistic genocide’ (p. 382). However, it can also serve as
a useful framework to analyze the present topic. Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) continues that
she is ‘especially interested in the role that language plays in the reproduction of inequal­
ity and in intellectual and emotional colonization – and decolonization – of the mind
more generally’ (pp. 382–383). She divides A team and B team based on the possession of
power and material resources. Basically, A team is the dominant group who has more
power and material resources while B team has less. If we applied this framework to ELT,
NESs from Centre belong to A team and NNESs from Periphery belong to B team. In
addition, there are other aspects, such as race or ethnicity which could affect the relation­
ship of power between the teams. However, I will limit my discussion on the NES–NNES
dichotomy in relation to the A team–B team framework (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000).
NESs belong to A team and have power and control over NNESs in B team in ELT.
This includes the relationship between teachers, ideally NESs, and learners who are
NNESs and thus belong to B team, and that between NES teachers and NNES teachers.
As a result, English used by NESs has long been considered the model for the learners,
and whether a teacher is a NES or not has been more important than his/her experience
and/or academic qualification.
The question is why this A team/B team relationship between NESs and NNESs in the
profession has been in existence for such a long time. In his discussion on discourse
control and the modes of discursive reproduction, Van Dijk (2008) states that members
of the dominant group, or A team in Skutnabb-Kangas’ term, control or ‘have access to
an increasingly wide and varies range of discourse roles, genres, occasions and styles’
(p. 31). Conversely, those in dominated group or B team cannot control the discourse of
ELT and their access to material resources is limited. Chilton (2004), in his discussion of
a framework of analyzing political discourse, talks about notions of legitimization and
representation as strategies. As a mode of misrepresentation, he defines ‘secrecy’ which is
‘the strategy of preventing people receiving information’ (2004, p. 46). He continues that
it is 'the inverse censorship, which is preventing people giving information' (2004, p. 46).
The learners in Periphery who are NNESs have very little option, if any, available to them.
The misrepresentation of what NESs can and cannot do is due to the fact that something
prevents the learners receiving sufficient information in order for them to make decisions
about their language learning,

Resistance or harmony
With an emergence of World Englishes in 1980, the ELT profession has begun to
recognize localized varieties of English and accept that they could be options for the
model the learners are expected to follow (see Kachru, 1992 among others). In addition,
scholars began to question the ownership of English. In other words, the profession has
begun to recognize the fact that English is used worldwide and more by so-called non-
native speakers (see Graddol, 2002, 2006). Widdowson (1994) in his article on the
ownership of English argues:

[T]he native-speaker teacher is in a better position to know what is appropriate in contexts

of language use, and so to define possible target objectives. Granted. But it is the nonnative-
272 M. ODA

speaker teacher who is in a better position to know what is appropriate in the contexts of
language learning which need to be set up to achieve such objectives. And that, generally
speaking, is not granted. Instead, what we find is that native-speaker expertise is assumed to
extend to the teaching of the language. They not only have a patent on proper English, but
on proper ways of teaching it as well. (pp. 387–388)

In academia, Non-native English Speaker Caucus, which later became an interest

section, was established within Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Inc. (TESOL), the largest ELT professional organization in the world at that time.
George Braine, who was one of its founders, describes this as a part of the non-native
speaker movement and points out that the movement helped teachers who are
NNESs as it encouraged NNES gatherings at conferences as well as research and
publications, and promoted NNES leadership in academic organizations (Braine,
2010, p. 5). The movement made a significant contribution to the profession as
NNES teachers became more visible. Increasing the network among NNESs in the
profession has provided them with more information which was important for making
decisions. Perhaps, it was a period when it became increasingly difficult for someone to
explicitly state that the ideal teacher of English was NES or a teacher was not qualified
because she/he was an NNES. At the same time, the non-native speaker movement was
seen as a resistance to NESs in the profession and thus it was a competition between
NES teachers and NNES teachers in ELT to decide which group belongs to A team and
which to B team as discussed earlier (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). In other words, the
movement has reinforced the division of NES–NNES further. Some scholars in this
period tried to show a harmonious solution for the conflict between NES and NNES by
saying that each has its advantages. Medgyes (1994) discusses advantages and disad­
vantages of both NEST and non-NEST and argues that they can work collaboratively,
based on three surveys he had conducted (p. 27). He states, at that point, ‘the glory
attached to the NEST has faded and the number of EFL [English as a foreign language]
experts who contend that the “ideal teacher” is no longer a category reserved for NESTs
in on the increase’ (1994, p. 76). In other words, the general atmosphere in the ELT
profession at that time was that recognizing the value of non-NEST was acceptable.
Medgyes (1994) also states that ‘the more proficient in the learners’ mother tongue, the
more efficient in the classroom’ (p. 78), which can be interpreted as ‘Monolingual
NESTs are not ideal English teachers’. As his response to the question of whether NEST
are better teachers or not, Medgyes (1994) states: '

Both groups of teachers serve equally useful purposes in their own ways. In an ideal school,
there should be a good balance of NESTs and non-NESTs. Who complement each other in
their strengths and weaknesses' (p. 78).

He then suggests some forms of collaboration both in and out of classrooms, including
team teaching. In principle, different roles are assigned to each group: NEST are expected
to take advantage of their experience as users of English as their native language, and thus
they can tell the learners what is acceptable and what is not, while non-NEST are to take
advantage of their experience as learners of English who are proficient in the mother
tongue of the students they are teaching.
The situation surrounding non-NEST was considerably better than it was before.
Non-native localized varieties were recognized as a possible model for learners, and the
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 273

role of non-NEST was acknowledged. What was considered common knowledge, that is,
‘what public do know about public affairs’ (Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992, p. 3; italics in
original), on ELT has been changed accordingly. Then those in the ELT profession as well
as the general public have begun to make decisions and take actions based on their
common knowledge. However, very few, if any, scholars in that period questioned the
relevance of the NES–NNES dichotomy as a framework for discussion. Moreover, the
general public has to rely on limited information resources available primarily through
mass media that have already been filtered by other stakeholders of ELT.

ELT, policy, and reality

What has been consistent among the most ELT professionals over the decades is that
they are working hard to improve the learners’ proficiency of English. Focusing on the
advantages of NESs as teachers was one of the strategies to achieve the common goal,
although those of us in the ELT profession now understand that it is not necessarily the
best one. What the profession needs, therefore, is to carefully reflect on the use of
English from the learners’ perspective, and carefully plan what to do to help them in
the given contexts. Widdowson’s (1994) following statement in his article on the
ownership of English is a good starting point:
Real proficiency is when you are able to take possession of the language, turn it to your
advantage, and make it real for you (p. 384).

In Japan, we often hear critiques on ELT from the general public, as illustrated in
Oda (2017, pp. 101–104) in which he presents examples of various statements
produced by non-ELT professionals appearing on various websites as well as SNS.
A good example is student recruitment advertisements of institutions. These institu­
tions produce advertisements in order to attract students, and thus keywords in the
advertisements are selected accordingly. Even though the profession recognizes that
being a NES does not automatically qualify as a good teacher, we still see those
advertisements in which NES teachers are represented as if they were the only ones
who would lead the learners to success. These statements are not necessarily
supported by scientific principles; however, they certainly affect the formation of
the discourse of ELT, ‘systematically-organised sets of statements which give expres­
sion to the meanings and values of an institution’ (Kress, 1985, pp. 6–7). Oda (2017)
concludes that the Japanese general public are constantly exposed to the discourses
of ELT, particularly through mass media without having sufficient background
information. As a result, they are likely to accept them and reform their beliefs
about ELT without any doubt. With limited information, learners often feel that the
English they learn, particularly at schools, does not correspond with reality. In other
words, they believe that it is difficult to turn what they learn in English classes into
their advantage, if they continued to rely on ELT at schools. At the same time, the
general public must still rely on information disseminated through mass media,
which creates a vicious circle. To make the matter worse, the vicious circle grows
bigger and bigger without being noticed by anyone.
Japanese policy makers often reuse public discourse formulated based on limited
information effectively as ‘voices of the public’ in order to legitimate their plan. van
274 M. ODA

Leeuwen (2007), in his discussion on legitimation, divides it into four categories;

Authorization, Moral Evaluation, Rationalization, and Mythopoesis (p. 92). The constant
reinforcement of the discourse with repeated legitimation processes discussed earlier
corresponds with Rationalization, that is, ‘legitimation by reference to the goals and uses
of institutionalized social action, and to the knowledge society has constructed to endow
them with cognitive validity’ (2007, p. 92). The problem is that no one can explain how
and why the social action has been institutionalized in the first place. This corresponds
with Dyrberg (1997), a Danish political scientist, who describes the problem involved in
such a process as follows:
When agents can influence each other and be influenced without knowing it, it becomes
problematic to view influence in casual terms. This is so because the intention behind the
effect cannot be identified with that which is required for establishing a casual relation.
(p. 39)

The landscape surrounding English in Japan and the world has changed over the decades,
and academics began to become aware of it. Take the emergence of the notion of World
Englishes nearly three decades ago as an example. In the early 1990s, we began to see
various applied linguists introducing the notions of World Englishes (e.g. Honna, 1991)
in the ELT community in Japan, calling for our awareness of the diversity in English and
thus the NES model would not necessarily be ‘the’ model for the learners of English in
Japan (Honna & Takeshita, 1998). However, the so-called native speaker model which
has long been regarded as the ideal model is still alive well in the ELT profession as I have
discussed earlier.
Unfortunately, it is apparent that the voices of these academics have not been
strong enough to make the entire ELT profession in Japan, and subsequently the
Japanese general public aware of the necessity of the departure from the belief that
the NES model is the only model the learners should follow. In other words, the gap
between the prevailing discourses of ELT in Japan and the reality of the role of
English has become wider and wider, and thus the prevailing discourse became
more dominant. If this large gap remained, it would be difficult for the ELT
professionals to help the learners to attain real proficiency. On the other hand, as
a responsibility of the ELT professionals, we have to make our best effort to narrow
the gap between what the general public as well as our profession believe and the
reality. We must keep in our minds that the social atmosphere surrounding ELT,
including the status of English, has changed and continues to change. Therefore, it
would be important for us to catch up with it.

ELT profession in the multilingual society

In the previous sections, I have discussed native-speakerism in the discourses of ELT over
the past decades. I have paid special attention to the fact that native-speakerism is still
alive well in the discourses of ELT which would strongly influence the decisions the
learners have to make on their learning of English. I have argued that the information the
learners have access to is often limited and thus their decisions are controlled by the
dominant discourses even though they may or may not be aware that this is happening
until very late. I have also said that the gap between the dominant discourses and the role
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 275

of English in the world has become wider and wider. As Baker and Ishikawa (2021) point
out, there is a solid prevailing assumption among stakeholders of ELT that ‘NESs speak
the “best” English or “genuine” and “perfect” English, not interfered with by cultures
outside their communities. Here language and culture, or presumed “superior” culture,
are naïvely linked with each other’ (pp. 121–122).
We still see educational institutions in Japan looking specifically for NES teachers for
their English language programs. If the ELT professionals in Japan carefully reflected on
the situations where the learners use English, including when, on what occasions, and to
whom, the goal of ELT in Japan including what is considered as models should be
changed. However, we constantly encounter multilingual or translingual situations to
various degrees in our daily lives. Realistically, therefore, we need to look at the context of
ELT not from a monolingual but from a multilingual perspective as a point of departure.
I have talked about the emergence of World Englishes in the 1980s which contributed
to the recognition of various localized varieties of English. As a result, we became aware
of the fact that the learners should be given more options of linguistic models available to
them. In Japan, and perhaps many other Asian countries, however, the NES model is still
the dominant model for the learners as discussed earlier. In the 2020s, English is still
widely used, not only between native-speakers and non-native speakers but also between
non-native speakers. As a result, attaining so-called native speaker English as ‘the’ model
for learning English has become irrelevant. If we imagined possible situations in which
learners in Japan would use English outside their classrooms, they would have more
opportunities to interact with NNESs than NESs. When a Mandarin speaker interacted
with a Japanese speaker, and neither of them spoke the other’s language, English would
be chosen as a lingua franca.
The notion of English as a lingua franca (ELF) is defined as ‘any use of English among
speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of
choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7). As with the case of World
Englishes discussed earlier, the developments of the ELF paradigm has also supported the
departure from native-speakerism in ELT in Japan.
The fundamental difference between the World Englishes paradigm (see Kachru 1992)
and the ELF paradigm is that the former was constructed on a native versus non-native
dichotomy, while the latter does not presuppose the dichotomy as a framework.
Seidlhofer (2011) recognizes that the ‘World Englishes paradigm’ ‘offers a framework
of thinking about the role, and especially the history, of English in the world that many
can relate to’ (p. 3).
The World Englishes paradigm does not necessarily suggest that different geographi­
cal varieties of English should be taught as models, but emphasizes the importance of
exposure, awareness, and acceptance to different varieties. Since its emergence, however,
it has become difficult to describe the varieties of English relying solely on the ‘World
Englishes paradigm’ anymore.
Languages including English change not only based on geographical factors but also
on other social factors (class, social status, gender, etc.); however, the World Englishes
paradigm only covers national and geographical variations. In ELT, we often use these
categories, such as American, Australian, Singaporean, or African English, to distinguish
among them, and assume that some varieties, particularly those used by native speakers
in the Inner Circle (see Kachru, 1992), are superior and thus ideal as a model for the
276 M. ODA

learners. In other words, some of them implicitly belong to what Skutnabb-Kangas

(2000) calls ‘A team’ and others belong to ‘B team' as discussed earlier; however, no
one can explain where the boundaries are.
We have seen an increase in international mobility in the past decades; while the
global pandemic has prevented us from travelling around since 2020, people commu­
nicate actively through video conferences, SNS, and e-mails. In fact, it is difficult for
many adults in Asia (and perhaps many other parts of the world) to avoid encountering
foreign languages in our daily life. As Canagarajah (2013) says, we are ‘dealing with
language resources that are mobile, fluid, and hybrid’ (p. 15). In other words, we should
consider that our society is multilingual by default and we use our native language and
foreign languages in one string of interaction. In this view, it is difficult for us to apply the
NES–NNES dichotomy to discuss the sociolinguistics issues of English and its implica­
tion to education.
Furthermore, Tupas (2014) also points out that the sociolinguistics of plurality in
English language use has ‘found an intellectual space to investigate, describe and affirm
the statuses of the Englishes of the world’ (p. 161). However, he continues that:
while much rigorous linguistic and sociolinguistic work for the past 20–30 years has
indeed legitimized the plurality of English or Englishes (or varieties of English, depend­
ing on one’s frame of understanding), the question has shifted to their use in the formal
context of education. (Tupas, 2014, p. 161; parentheses in original)
It is apparent from what Tupas (2014) says here that the ELT professionals need to
reflect on how English is used in our life and make their best effort to find out the ‘real’
needs of their students, particularly in the formal context of education. As discussed
earlier, we see for many institutions in Japan and perhaps other parts of the world (see
Mirhosseini, 2014, for the cases of Iran) that native-speakerism is evident in recruitment
advertisements of these institutions. It includes statements that teachers are native
speakers and/or they teach ‘native’ English, which often refers to the geographical
varieties used in the Inner circle regions including the USA, the UK, English-speaking
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Even though academics have come to realize that being native speakers does not
necessarily qualify teachers as good nor the Inner Circle varieties as models, the dis­
courses of ELT are formed in an all-or-nothing manner. Therefore, it is important for the
academics to move forward in order to reform ELT by legitimating the plurality of
English(es), while the NES–NNES dichotomy cannot sufficiently legitimate the quality of
ELT programs to students any more particularly in the formal context of education.
Therefore, it is important for the ELT professionals to get themselves ready to present
the stakeholders a clear direction for ELT programs for the Post Native-Speakerism Era.
It may require several steps which may be analogous to the three steps in the model of
English as an international language teacher education that Bayyurt and Sifakis (2017)
propose. The three steps include: Exposure, Critical awareness, and Action plan (p. 8).
The steps also apply to my proposal.
As I said earlier, ELT professionals need to realize that we are constantly exposed to
different languages including several different varieties of English(es) in our society. In
any profession, constant reflections are a prerequisite for maintaining one’s competence.
Teachers always have to keep themselves updated with the latest developments in the
ELT including the status of English, applied linguistics, pedagogy, and social conditions
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 277

surrounding them. If they carefully follow recent studies in applied linguistics, for
example, very few people, if any, would be able to say that native speakers are better
teachers.
My first step, therefore, is to find ways for English language teachers (and perhaps the
ELT profession as a whole) to constantly reflect on what is going on. English language
teachers often make decisions on their teaching mainly based on how they had learnt
English as learners, and how they had been trained as teachers before they started their
teaching career, unless they have constantly updated their knowledge. In other words, it
is analogous to a situation in which one uses a computer without updating its operating
system, which often causes malfunctions. Therefore, such updates are essential. As a part
of this process, it is important for the ELT professionals to reconfirm that in our daily life,
multilingualism is something we can always find. It important for the profession to
communicate effectively with its stakeholders and promote their awareness of
multilingualism.
The next step, then, is to consider how the learners can take advantage of multi­
lingualism. Rather than defining ‘the’ model of English the learners are expected to learn,
which has often been one of the varieties of English used by native speakers, we should
regard English, the learners’ first language(s), and all other languages they know as
linguistic resources, that is ‘observable concrete forms or patterns, in contrast with
abstractly defined “objects” of languages at ideological level’ (Baker & Ishikawa, 2021,
p. 142; italics in original). Baker and Ishikawa (2021) continue that linguistic resources
‘becomes increasingly mobile due to globalization and potentially have different indexical
and referential functions across different communicative contexts’ (p. 142; italics in
original). This suggests that defining a variety as the norm is no longer practical and
realistic for foreign language teaching including ELT today. The profession also needs to
communicate with its stakeholders and suggest the importance of the effective utiliza­
tions of language resources including the learners’ first language(s) in using English in
different communicative contexts. Consequently, the goal of English language lessons in
formal education would change.
Once the profession has gone through the first two steps, the third step is to design
English language programs. English language lessons should be set up as opportunities
for the learners to learn and practice how to take advantage of multilingual resources and
repertoires when they communicate in English. Needless to say, it would be difficult to
execute action plans if we stuck with dichotomies including NES–NNES. I would like to
stress that the ELT professionals must be fully ready to legitimately implementing this
step: they should begin implementing this step by making the stakeholders fully aware of
the issues raised in the first two steps, and the fact the notion of native speakers have
become less and less important in ELT.

Conclusion
In this article, the author has reflected on the discourses of ‘native speakers’ in ELT in the
past three decades to identify key issues and how ELT professionals in the 2020s have to
deal with them for the decades to come. A recent paper by Cheng et al. (2021) strongly
argues that the term ‘native speaker’ is ‘both unhelpful to rigorous theory and construc­
tion and harmful to marginalized populations by reproducing normative assumptions
278 M. ODA

about behavior, experience and identity’ (p. 1) and proposes that language researchers
avoid the term altogether. While their paper primarily addresses the issue to researchers,
it corresponds with my arguments presented throughout this article as language research
always influences language teaching pedagogy. Throughout the article, I have tried to
reflect on native-speakerism by reflecting on several paradigms proposed in the past and
see how we can deal with the prevailing inequality between NES and NNES in ELT, which
affect both the teachers and the learners. From the reflection, it was found that the NES–
NNES dichotomy which has been serving as the framework of discussion on the issues of
native-speakerism is limiting the options from which the ELT professionals can choose,
and consequently preventing them from finding the best possible strategy to help the
learners, particularly those in ELF contexts. In order for the ELT professionals to help the
learners develop their ‘real’ proficiency of English, therefore, it is a time when we need to
depart from the traditional framework based on the NES–NNES dichotomy in order to
move further.
One of the possible steps we can take is to raise the learners’ or perhaps all of the
stakeholders’ awareness of English as a multilingua franca as proposed by Baker and
Ishikawa (2021). When we consider the reality of communication among English ‘users’
worldwide, they are often multilinguals and thus we need to take advantage of it.
Baker and Ishikawa (2021) state that EMF ‘highlights the tension between real-world
fluid, flexible linguistics resources and ideologically named enumerable languages, such
as English or Japanese’ (p. 251). They continue that ‘linguistics resources among multi­
lingual users are multilingual, and it is thus inevitable that linguistic accommodation is
multilingual accommodation’ (2021, p. 251). If the entire ELT profession was aware of
this reality, it is obvious that it would not be practical to design English courses along
with the NES–NNES dichotomy. Therefore, it is possible for us to say that we should find
the best approach to ELT in the Post Native-Speakerism Era to make our English
language programs reflect the reality that our world is multilingual by default.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the editor of this issue as well as two reviewers for their critical and
insightful suggestions which have allowed the author to reflect on and refresh their knowledge on
the issues optimized for the 2020s.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This study has been funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceGrant-in Aid for
Scientific (KAKENHI) Research [(C) 18K00792].

ORCID
Masaki Oda http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4552-0416
 ASIAN ENGLISHES 279

References
Baker, W., & Ishikawa, T. (2021). Transcultural communication through global englishes. London:
Routledge.
Bayyurt, Y., & Sifakis, N. (2017). Foundations of an EIL-aware teacher education. In A. Matsuda
(Ed.), Preparing teachers to teach english as an international language (pp. 3–18)). Bristol:
Multilingual Matters.
Braine, G. (2010). Nonnative speaker english teachers. New York: Routledge.
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice. London: Routledge.
Cheng, L. S. P., Burgess, D., Vernooij, N., Solís-Barroso, C., McDermott, A., & Namboodiripad, S.
(2021). The problematic concept of native speaker in psycholinguistics: Replacing vague and
harmful terminology with inclusive and accurate measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 715843.
Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Davies, A. (2003). The native speaker: Myth and reality. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Dyrberg, T. B. (1997). The circular structure of power. London: Verso.
Graddol, D. (2002). The future of english? London: British Council.
Graddol, D. (2006). English next. London: British Council.
Holliday, A. (2005). The struggle to teach english as an international language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Honna, N. (ed). (1991). Asia no Eigo [Englishes in Asia]. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan.
Honna, N., & Takeshita, Y. (1998). On Japan’s propensity for native speaker english: A change in
sight. Asian Englishes, 1(1), 111–134.
Kachru, B. B. (1992). The other tongue (2 ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kress, G. (1985). Linguistic processes in sociocultural practice. Melbourne: Deakin University Press.
Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native teacher. London: McMillan.
Mirhosseini, S. A. (2014). Resisting magic waves: Ideologies of “English language teaching” in
Iranian newspaper advertisements. Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(6),
1–16.
Neuman, W. R., Just, M. R., & Crigler, A. N. (1992). Common knowledge: News and the construc­
tion of political meaning. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Oda, M. (2017). Native-Speakerism and the roles of mass media in ELT. In J. D. M. Agudo (Ed.),
Native and non-native teachers in english language classrooms (pp. 99–115). Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter.
Oda, M. (2019). Learning english because of the olympics?: A critical inquiry. In M. Konakahara &
K. Tsuchiya (Eds.), English as a Lingua Franca in Japan: Towards multilingual practices (pp.
301–311). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding english as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic Genocide in education or worldwide diversity and human
rights? Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tupas, R. (2014). The unequal production of knowledge in the sociolinguistics of englishes. In
R. Marlina & R. A. Giri (Eds.), The pedagogy of english as an international language (pp.
159–173). Cham: Springer.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Legitimation in discourse. Linguistics and Communication, 1(1),
125–145.
Widdowson, H. G. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28/2(2), 377–389.