No review of research into NNS English teachers could begin without
reference to PCter Medgyes, himself a non-native speaker, who appears to be
the first to have brought the issues concerning NNS English teachers to the
open. His two articles in the ELT Journal titled 'The schizophrenic teacher'
(1983) and 'Native or non-native: who's worth more?' (1992), were also the
forerunners of his groundbreaking book The Non-native Teacher (first
published by Macmillan in 1994 and reissued by Hueber in 1999), in which
Medgyes mixed research with his own experience as a NNS English teacher
and first-hand observations of other NNS teachers, and boldly discussed
previously untouched topics that would be considered controversial even
today: 'natives and non-natives in opposite trenches,' 'the dark side of being
a non-native', 'and who's worth more: the native or the non-native'.
Medgyes also advanced four hypotheses based on his assumption that NS
and NNS English teachers are 'two different species' (p. 25). The
hypotheses were that the NS and NNS teachers differ in terms of (1)
language proficiency, and (2) teaching practice (behavior), that (3) most of
the differences in teaching practice can be attributed to the discrepancy in
language proficiency, and that (4) both types of teachers can be equally good
teachers on their own terms.