English is a very difficult language. It has so many silent letters and different pronunciations for words. My British friends tell me that we Americans don't speak it correctly at all. With regional American variations, Americans often use different words for the same thing. This has to be confusing for the student of English as a second language. A colleague of mine here at the university native language is Korean. He is a brilliant scholar. But he confided in me that he had to take extra classes in English in order for our students to understand him when he was first hired by the university. He is one of the more popular professors in our department now. As a brilliant scholar, he recognized that you have to be understood in order to be an effective teacher.

Dear Adel,

I know of may people that master English in terms writing, but not in terms of speaking. This is often the case of those people who learned English without living for some time in a country whose mother tongues is English. I do not find it acceptable that English teachers cannot speak English well. A teacher that does not master what s/he teaches is no teacher at all.

As see it, it would be desirable, may be mandatory, that the above mentioned teachers lived for some time in a contry whose mother language is English such that they become proficient in speaking English.

KInd rgards,

Orlando

English is a very difficult language. It has so many silent letters and different pronunciations for words. My British friends tell me that we Americans don't speak it correctly at all. With regional American variations, Americans often use different words for the same thing. This has to be confusing for the student of English as a second language. A colleague of mine here at the university native language is Korean. He is a brilliant scholar. But he confided in me that he had to take extra classes in English in order for our students to understand him when he was first hired by the university. He is one of the more popular professors in our department now. As a brilliant scholar, he recognized that you have to be understood in order to be an effective teacher.

Dear Dr Bahameed

I first declare I am not an expert in English teaching. My idea is from my prior experience. The situation frequently occurs in my home country. There are two reasons. First, there is no environment to practice speaking, because we are not surrounded by people who always use English. Second, it is not a necessary skill in my home country. In my home country, the knowledge of math or physics is sometimes more important than English. In my opinion, there are two solutions: recruiting more native English-speaking teachers and sending more local English teachers to train abroad. However, it is not easy to find qualified teachers with mother-tongue or bilingual English. Besides, sending local English teachers abroad involves extra costs to either governments, universities or the teachers themselves.

Best regards

Chen

Considering British English as the only good English says a lot about those people who think that way. There are very few articulate thinkers who'd agree. Besides, that is not the question but whether non native speakers can teach English. The answer is obviously yes. Can an illiterate teach someone's mother tongue to the children? Indeed. Thus, the question is what is the teacher's expected proficiency to teach students of certain competence. A high competent non native speaker may be a good teacher for novice learners. On top of that, he might be aware of their needs and constraints way better than a native speaker. People who actually believe native speakers are the only teacher may want to learn another language and then give an answer to this forum's question.

Thank you Professor Gregg W. Etter, Dr. Orlando M Lourenço, and Mr. Hsin-Yuan Chen for your insightful answers. This is an important problematic issue and I think it is found in most non-English speaking countries. Therefore, I think we need more suggestions to solve this problem.

What is a sense to demonstrate one's skills whitout being capable to show fast method of language studying. I have a method, and if my student will speak thanx to it better than me, why not. I do not aim at perfectness of my knowing, but search for a method

Well, that is an interesting question. I think to be an English teacher should master well all language skills. A potential English teacher should be tested before teaching. It is right to accept illiterate to teach English but he or she can speak the target language correctly and precisely.

Gregg W. Etter

Dear Professor Etter

I am glad someone can understand English as a foreign language is difficult, especially due to its pronunciation. Compared to German (it is my second foreign language), the rule of intonation in English is very irregular. Although many resources teach the standard of pronunciation, there are many exceptions, so there can be considered no rules for articulation.

Best regards

Chen

Adel Bahameed,

The question and the way it is formulated seems be embedded in a very British colonial understanding of English learning, which is very problematic. The question should be more about how close to the standard, depending on which English, does the teacher speak. There is no such idea as "good English" or "speaking English well" since English defers based on the country, including those where the language is dominant or the national language (Great Britain, U.S., South Africa, Australia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Singapore, etc.). Moreover, many people who learn English in Asia connect the language to white people and some would prefer a Russian or German person with barely functioning English compared to a brown or yellow person with English as his or her mother tongue. You are asking a question that appears simple but is quite complex since there are many reasons for the lack of spoken English development, which can include culture, ideology, race, first language, etc. There are very few people who consistently speak English "well" and those people are seen as non-native speakers or pretentious.

As the previous replies show this is a very complex question- There are many material , cultural and historical factors contributing to the situation that Adel reports.

I add one further factor that seems rarely considered, below- the rapid global expansion of English provision across state education systems.

Surely another reason why most BA students arrive at university with good written skills but poor oral skills is because their school education and national assessment systems continue to emphasise development of learners' written language, (despite curriculum documents whose goals include oral skills).

Why is there this classroom emphasis on written language in many school systems? Surely it reflects many English teachers' preferences . Why do they have such preferences? I suggest they are partly an outcome of the rapid worldwide spread of English across national education systems in the last 25 years or so.

30 years ago in most countries English was a subject taught by a fairly small number of qualified and confident English teachers, to a fairly small proportion of learners at some state secondary schools. Today, in most national education systems, English is a (compulsory) subject for every learner from primary level.

Huge numbers of new English teachers have been needed to support this expansion. Support for these new teachers has very often been limited and / or inappropriate. Many English teachers inevitably remain unconfident about their own language proficiency and/or capacity to follow recommended oral skills teaching approaches. In their situation I am sure I would stick to the less 'risky' option, and emphasise the study of written language.

Dear

You set forth an issue that has turned into a critical issue in the countries English is learned as ESL or EFL in recent years. What is clear is that ELT programs are not effective enough to train teachers proficient in speaking and oral proficiency. My experience says that the most important reason is the context and society in which the teachers live. EFL teachers are not surronded and bombarded by English words and sentences in their daily life.

I'd like to take the advantage of the opportunity to suggest that some researchers cooperate to conduct a research to investigate this controversial issues in EFL/ESL countries. I would be the first to join this research team.

Regards

Lack of practice! They need to communicate more effectively using different methods that complement each other, such as listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Language skills can be improved by practicing them regularily.

The question become competence. Would you tolerate a math or biology teacher that did not have a full grasp of the subject?

Although linguistics is not my area of expertise, I consider this topic very interesting and the replies well justified.

Certainly, as with all areas of study, language is complicated. So is "not good in language" (such as English). Things change after all. Including the language.

There are a number of reasons that English is difficult, and how difficult it is to master depends on a wealth of reasons, from how different the L1 is topologically from English to the learning environment of the student (there are a number of papers that argue which factors are most influential). However, I am more interested by the second question: Is that acceptable?

I think to answer this question is far more difficult, because we need to know acceptable for what? As mentioned by many of my other colleagues above/below, if the student is aiming to become a researcher, professor, or worker in an English speaking environment, surely oral proficiency must also be raised for them to be understood. However, if the student never plans to use English in the future and simply becomes a farmer in their home country, who is to say that this is unacceptable? It seems to me though, that you want to know if it is acceptable that EFL teachers themselves are not good at speaking English. Once again, I think this very much depends on the circumstances. In some countries, such as Japan, students still study towards written tests and tend to only use English for writing. If the students' future goals are only to write, then it might be more acceptable. This of course, also depends on the grade level that they are teaching. For teaching absolute beginners (e.g. elementary or junior high school students), this again, might not be much of a problem. The teacher might be very well versed in pedagogy and have other skills (e.g. English writing and grammar) that could still help them be a good and effective teacher.

However, I would agree that in order to teach students how to speak English, one should probably be proficient in spoken English as well. It is difficult to teach what one does not know. On the other side of the coin, simply being proficient does not necessarily make a good teacher either. A lot goes into being a teacher aside from simply having the skill that the students are seeking. I think most of us have learned from someone very proficient who is simply very bad at teaching or explaining how they got to be proficient.

I hope this gives some new perspective

English used in our education system is used for understanding purpose so teachers use it reluctantly, because many of us prefer medium of instruction in our mother tounge or home language for student's benefit. And the same thing goes on-these students becomes teacher and do same thing. And these are made standards of our education system & its necessary thing that using the mother tongue in early education leads to a better understanding of learner, however we use it as a subject for gaining good marks in exams only..

Logically, I cannot accept sending my son to an English teacher who cannot speak English properly.

From t he replies above, one could come to a conclusion that this issue in so important and, as Seyyed Morteza said, it is worth researching.