What is a Native Speaker?
Is there a systematic way of defining or characterizing what a native speaker is? Or is
this a question that is so circular that it needs no attention? In recent developments in the
field of language teaching, this question seems to be of particular importance and
necessity to resolve the issue of what a native speaker is, and whether he or she is the
goal that learners should strive to achieve. However, this puzzle seems to be elusive
since it is unclear as to what a native speaker is and knows based solely on being a native
speaker of a language (Davies, 1991; Myhill, 2003; Paikeday, 1985). In this section of
this paper, I will attempt to make some sense of this elusive enigma based on recent investigations and studies by different scholars in the fields of Second Language