Are English teachers in your públic schools native speakers?

37 comments

1. Rarely, sometimes they are. Had a charming old British lady for english at Abitur – Highschool.

2. Definitely not native speakers, and even if they are, it’s very rare (maybe more common in some private/bilingual schools). In one elementary school (I changed schools when I was 10) my English teacher was from Ukraine. Before you all jump with theories, it was 15 years ago, way before migrant crisis was beginning.

3. Rarely, it is more common for the German teachers to be native speakers. English teachers are mostly Danes through-and-through, though, due to the high English proficiency in Denmark, I don’t think it matters greatly. I can see a point in attempting to have more German German teachers, to help Danes better pick up German.

4. Most of them are Germans. Though at least in my school it was quite common that we had native speakers as “langauge assistants”. Often people around 20 who stayed a year in Germany after their school graduation. We had them from Ireland, Britain, US, Canada also from Spain and Russia for the respective languages.

5. No, I’ve only had a native speaker as a teacher in college.

6. I’m sure they exist, but most are German. All of mine where too. But one of my Spanish teachers was actually Spanish.

7. They can be, but it is quite rare. All my English teachers were native Dutch speakers and the only teacher at my school who natively spoke English taught French.

8. Nope. ‘Official’ teacher needs to have MA level education and some certifications – most ‘natives’ coming here to teach english lacks any education and they are pretty much mediocre in this profession. They are good to practice casual speaking with adults, but definitely not good enough to work with children.

9. In all of my years learning English in school, I only had one native English speaker. An American in years 6-9

10. I’ve only had one, from England, but others were French with very thick French accents in general. Not the best way to learn when it comes to the spoken part.

11. you would have to have ton of native english speakers working as teachers in your country to do that 😀

12. All the English Language teachers I’ve ever had were from the UK. I had a Maths teacher who was from South Africa, as well as a Science teacher from the Netherlands but that was it. My French Language teacher was British, had over 45-years experience, and retired after I passed my French GCSE course funnily enough. She visited France and Germany regularly so was pretty good with French and German accents, and always put on an accent and encouraged us to do so as well, when she taught. So although it’s blatantly obvious I’m putting on accent when speaking French now, it comes across better when attempting to speak French out in France.

13. It happens, but those are the exceptions. My last year we had a guy from the UK, and because he didn’t speak Dutch, he only taught exam classes.
    We had another teacher who was a ‘native’ (or so she claimed), her English was worse than most Dutch teachers.

    There are also ‘dual language’ school, and I believe that there are usually more native speakers there, because 50-100% of the classes will be in English.

14. I never had one myself and I think it’s pretty rare. Being a native speaker doesn’t make you qualified to teach your language in Norwegian schools.

15. No, they have all been Swedes, except for one teacher who came from Belgium.

16. Definitely not, there is a giant teacher shortage here and I’m 100% sure that native speakers wouldn’t come here to teach.

17. No, the vast majority are from Italy. Some high schools sometimes hire native speakers (British, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders…) but as part time teachers for one lesson each week

18. Sometimes, most i had are from Canada though

    (i think)

19. Naturally this question doesn’t apply to us, so I’ll base it on other languages taught at schools. Some schools may have native speakers teaching languages, in my own school we didn’t, but did have a Hungarian teaching French, and also Italian if I recall (to make things interesting).

20. No, and as someone who possesses the education/training of an English teacher myself, I also don’t think that would be a good thing.

21. In Spain they have a program where native English speakers from the UK and north America go to public schools as teachers assistants. But the actual English teachers are most often from Spain

22. I never got teached by a native English speaker but i had a German teacher that grew up in Germany.

23. Just imagine: good english and Geordie accent too. Or Donegal. That would come handy.

24. I studied for a year at an English speaking Gymnasium in my city. Many teachers were from English-speaking countries, like South Africa and the USA. The English speaker was an American from Northwestern USA with Finnish ancestry.

25. Even in most private (under contract) schools they are not native….

    And in most primary schools the regular teacher teaches every subjects, included english. Even if they can’t speak English them self.

26. The vast majority are not natives. I only remember seeing one as a “guest” teacher and she was there for like a week or so, but that’s about it. This stands for pretty much every foreign language taught in school.

    At university level, for other languages such as asian languages for example, yes you will see natives.

27. Depends. I had two South African teachers, then two Portuguese ones. I think they’re generally Portuguese though.

28. Hahahahahahaha, nope. Finding a foreign language teacher in a Polish school who’s a native speaker of this language is like finding a unicorn, so good luck.

29. No, but it is very common to have a foreign “conversation” teacher, who does one or two hours per week. Fun fact in my school the French teacher was South American

30. No and that’s not even a bad thing because native English speakers don’t really know where the difficulties in learning English are. You can see it here, the English speakers often struggle themselves with the simplest things in their (using there/they’re) language and think loan words from other languages are complicated

31. my current english teacher is irish, but in middle school and primary school they were italian

32. No, but in my school there is like 1 or 2 teachers from Canada who teach those courses to take the certifications, like B1 or B2, C1 etc.

33. I’m studying to be an English teacher. It’s not my native language, but I’ve been speaking English my whole life because my mother thought it would be smart if her kids knew other languages than just Norwegian. In my English class, 3 out of 75 had a connection to an English speaking country. And I’ve never had native speakers as English teachers until I started at university.

34. Our Italian teacher was from Romania but not native, English teacher was Swedish, Spanish was Swedish, French teacher was Swedish, German teacher was Swedish, Portuguese teacher was from Spain but not native and our Russian teacher was a Swedish army guy that always said that he never even had spoken to a real Russian native speaker in his entire life.

    Also Swedish, Danish and Dutch university students all where better on English den both British and American students on tests.

35. I will never forget this: My English teacher in the nineties (Netherlands) had a really exaggerated posh English accent. Think Prince Charles. He was very proud of his ‘Queen’s English’.

    On a school trip to London he was mocked repeatedly by native English speakers for sounding so posh…

36. For the most part, no. And when someone like me turns up at a parent-teacher conference, they get a giant “oh, shit!” look on their face. I try to go easy on them, though. After all, I’m not *terribly* worried about my kid speaking the English good.

37. You’d think so, wouldn’t you?

    As it happens, one of the English teachers in my school was a South African who’s first language was Afrikaans.

    .

    For international languages, one of the German teachers was Austrian, and one of the French teachers was English/French bilingual. The rest of the language teachers were all learners.