English is one of the fastest growing languages ​​in the world. What's interesting is that this growing number is made up of non-native speakers. Simply put, a non-native English speaker is one whose first language is not English. It is therefore not surprising that there are more non-native speakers than native English speakers looking for work in the TESOL field. However, when looking at job postings for ESL teaching positions, the majority (about 80%) of these positions require the candidate to be a native English speaker (“Dave's ESL Café” - various job postings). Why is so much emphasis placed on "native speaker?" Cognitive linguists have placed the native speaker construct in an idealized position and have assumed that a native speaker is the only reliable source of linguistic data (in a linguistically homogeneous population). The goal of acquiring a second language, according to leading linguists such as Chomsky, is to speak like a native speaker (Mahboob 76). This means that you should speak without an accent, make grammatical errors, etc. The only feasible way to do this is to learn the language during the critical period. Most NNESTs (non-native English teachers) learn English after this period (most of the ones I know learn English and are adult-trained teachers), thus creating a linguistic bias against them. So, by this very definition, this group of linguists does not believe that NNESTs "know" English and therefore are not qualified to teach it. This created a sort of cascading effect and spread throughout the TESOL community (creating the current prejudices against NNEST). This raises some questions: What does it mean to speak like a "native speaker?" And if you don't speak like a "native speaker", it means that... half of the paper......ge, that is, speaking without an accent. NNESTs may not appear to be native speakers, but they have spent many years studying and training to succeed as ESL teachers. NNESTs are valuable resources in the ESL classroom. They can empathize with their students, as they have had to go through the same learning process as them. They serve as role models for their ESL students: they show students that if the teacher can learn the language, they can too. Works Cited Fathelbab, H. (2011). NEST (English native language teachers) and NNEST (Non-native language teachers): competence or nativity?. AUC TESOL Journal Maum, R. (2002). Non-native English teachers in the English teaching profession. Center for Applied Linguistics Digest. Mahboob, A. (unknown). Beyond native speaker in TESOL. University of Sydney, Australia.