The English language teaching (ELT) industry has in the past several years become a major cross-cultural, trans-cultural, and worldwide enterprise. With the death of distance, the disappearance of many national boundaries, and the prioritisation of regional and trans-national economies, prospects for widespread lingua francas, English being one of the most prominent, have tremendously increased. Having spread under varying circumstances to diverse regions of the world predominantly through "the joint outcome of Britain's colonial expansion and the more recent activity of the US" (Graddol 1997: 9), English today enjoys international recognition and vitality. On this account, Crystal (1997: 139) observes that "there has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many people as English. There are therefore no precedents to help us see what happens to a language when it achieves genuine world status." What impact does this spread have on native speakers of English and others for whom English is a vital but not a native language or mother tongue, per se? This question, which has often been interpreted from social and attitudinal standpoints, has factored in the distinction between native and non-native speakers, which now seems to replace proficiency in the language and professional training in ELT. This distinction has also created a strong preference for the historical [1] (by virtue of origin) native speaker over any other professional - generally a historical non-native to the so-called native English countries. Although, in black-and-white the distinction in itself is valid, it has, in the case of English, ceased to be reliable given the great changes in the physical, technological, economic and migratory trajectories of the present era and, above all, the permanent status of English as official and national language in post-colonial regions. These regions also have native speakers of their own varieties of English, who, as the case may be, contribute equally to the global evolution and spread of the language as well. Moreover, English emerged and evolved in these contexts through an ecologically different itinerary from the so-called native regions. So, an advertisement like the following, used by the Global English School in Thailand (see Bamgbose 2001: 357), is less representative of the ELT industry today: "All of our English teachers are native-speakers, teaching natural English as it is spoken in real conversation." The general conception of the (historical) native speaker as the infallible or perfect teacher of his or her language, which this paper seeks to redress, certainly influenced the above statement. Such a conception clearly disregards other determinant factors in ELT such as professional training, educational qualification, experience, language proficiency, and sociocultural implications. These factors add a more relevant dimension to any meaningful ELT programme than just the status of a native speaker. A number of examples have been used to demonstrate this reliance on native-speaker origin without corresponding proficiency or professional ability in ELT.