There are often discussions here about users who pretend to be native speakers of a language, but are in fact not. And often users complain that non-native should not do corrections. But what does it mean to be a native speaker? What is a mother tongue (some people seem to mix it up with mother's tongue, i.e. the language that the mother speaks)? I think sometimes it is difficult to define. If someone is brought up completely monolingual in a monolingual environment, then yes, you could say that the only language this person knows is in fact his/her mother tongue. But, just being brought up in a country, doesn't mean necessarily that you become fluent and proficient in the official language of this country and also just because your parents speak a certain language at home, it also doesn't mean that you become fluent and proficient in this heritage language. I have friends, where the husband is Czech, the wife is Swedish, the parents speak Swedish with each other (could also speak in English though) and live in Germany. Their kid is born in Germany. What is his native language? With his dad he speaks Czech, with his mom he speaks Swedish and at school German. He could claim that all three languages are his mother tongues, but I guess that he will be most proficient in German.
Also, being a native speaker doesn't necessarily mean that you are really proficient in your mother tongue. There are plenty of people who are illiterate in their mother tongue or don't reach a level as high as C2. But having reached C2 doesn't mean that you master a language like an educated native speaker. I definitely don't consider myself to having mastered English at a near-native level. I'm still far from that.
From a professional language teacher, who is a native speaker of the language, he teaches, I would expect to have a level going beyond C2. There are some English teachers here on italki, who scored a C2+ on the OOPT, for instance. So, I think it would be great, if italki offered more placement tests, at least for the very common languages like French, Spanish, German, Arabic and others, and if teachers and users took those tests. This way it would be easier for students (especially beginners) to see, which teachers, no matter if native or non-native, are proficient in the language they teach. This would help to not fall so easily for teachers who falsely claim native proficiency, when they only are at intermediate level at best.
So, what do you think about this topic?
I would like for those placement tests to be a reality soon because as you said they would help a lot!
I know one of the Arabic teachers here who teaches his students Arabic in Latin letters! I don't think
he cares to master the Arabic alphabet, yet his profile shows him as a native Arabic speaker! Too bad
those tests don't have a 3rd part for speaking because many of those claiming to be native speakers
of a certain language would fail!
A teacher who fails such test and it shows on his/ her profile they failed is a great indicator and a red
flag for students not to book them.
I consider native speakers to be people that started speaking the language as a child and grew up speaking that language in their country. Such as if you live in Germany, speak with your parents in German, and have to speak in German at school, I'd say your native language is German. If you live in the United States but have Hispanic parents and only speak to them in Spanish, but then go to school where you learn English, I'd say your native language is Spanish but you probably wouldn't have a great level of it considering you wouldn't know it academically or anything other than what your parents said to you unless you studied it.
It bothers me when people that are certified teachers still have an intermediate level of English, or maybe advanced, but don't know how to word things properly in English. Whenever I'm correcting something, I frequently see people whose profiles say they're a certified English teacher, correcting someone and saying that they should say it differently, but the way they corrected it doesn't sound natural at all or has extra or missing words.
If someone teaches a language, I'd expect them to be proficient in it and be able to know when things should or shouldn't be there. If someone isn't proficient in their native language, it'd help them a lot if they studied their native language before studying something else. Otherwise, it might distort their learning process with another language.
Sudeep, when a teacher has no work ethics, they could simply convince their students that
it's going to work for them. It's just convenient to such teachers not to use the Arabic alphabet
because they didn't master it, and when one of them once wrote two lines in Arabic publicly,
he made at least 7 spelling mistakes in basic Arabic words.
Of course as you said, letters like ح خ ط ظ ض ق don't have an equivalent sound in English!
Funny that you even gave the same example I gave to Miriam in a private message; which
is reading a simple sign in the street! Arabic learners should know that we don't write Arabic
in Latin Alphabet in anything that matters! Unless you are talking about text messages between
family and friends!
If I tell you how all this madness started, you are going to laugh! When people started texting,
let's say around 1995, they discovered that smss written in English alphabet would allow them
to write something around 160 characters in every sms! While using Arabic letters would give
them only 70 characters to use! So out of convenience, the young generation started texting in
Arabic using English letters so they could save a little, and they actually called that text language
(Arabezi)! This awful trend carried on and now we have a whole generation who doesn't know
how to write Arabic right!
I expect this from anyone, but not from a teacher! when you tell someone you are going to teach
them Arabic, they expect some work ethics and that you teach them right, because their Arabic
use will exceed sending text messages.
Just ask Miriam how long it took her to learn the Arabic alphabet, because I don't want to impose
and tell you about my own experience with my students.
Me too, Mariam! I never thought I would encounter a teacher who wouldn't do the right
thing to ensure that their student would learn the language as it should be learned. If
a student came to you and asked you to learn the easy way, as a teacher you shouldn't
allow it just to earn a few bucks! Students look up to their teachers and they do care
about their opinions, so when you give a sincere advice, most of them would listen.
By teaching a student a language without its alphabet, you are giving them the illusion
that they have learned a new language when in fact they wouldn't be able to manage when
time comes to use that language in the real world. I've sent you the fraud's discussion
where he doesn't even pronounce some basic Arabic words right because he himself
isn't a native Arabic speaker, yet claiming to be one!
I've been called "harsh" many times when I commented on Arabic entries written in
English letters that "this is not Arabic", but I would rather someone tell me the same if
I'm learning Chinese using English letters, than lying to me and telling me that I have
learned a new language.
@Sudeep
I can't really say, how long it took me to learn the Arabic alphabet. I gave my first try to learning Persian almost 20 years ago and at that time I used a textbook with Arabic letters only. So, when I started with Arabic last year, it wasn't hard to re-learn the Alphabet. I just used it from the start for every written exercise. But even though I can technically read it, it feels so overwhelming to look at a text written in Arabic and I feel like I have to decipher it letter by letter. I do think that it is hard to get used to reading from right to left. But I never use Arabizi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet).
