. It should be noted that the notion of ‘non-native speaker’ is considered to be problematic because it suggests a dichotomy between native speakers and non-native speakers. Rampton (1990) proposes using the term ‘language expertise’ to describe language proficiency rather than ‘native’ or ‘non-native’ since ‘language expertise’ is not necessarily inborn but can be achieved to reach different levels of expertise. Pasternak and Bailey (2004) suggest that the dichotomy between native and non-native speakers is overly simplistic. Such a dichotomy is not linguistically based because many English speakers in postcolonial communities such as Singapore, India and some African countries acquire English (as a first language) simultaneously with one or more other local languages. In such contexts, it is very difficult to determine which a person’s first language (L1) is and which a person’s second language