English is an international language and is now increasingly used as an important means
of international and intercultural communication around the world. In view of its current
role and status, English cannot be exclusively associated with native English‐speaking
countries such as the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. Meantime, non‐
native speakers of English around the world outnumber the native speakers by far
(Crystal, 1997), and according to Kachru and Nelson (1996), ‘accepting even cautious
estimates, there must be at least three nonnative users of English for every old‐country
native user’ (p. 79). A similar phenomenon is also apparent in the English Language
Teaching (ELT) profession, with the vast majority of teachers of English as a second and
foreign language in the world being non‐native teachers.