Why must I sound ‘native’ to teaching Engligh? -language discrimination in job recruitments 
Linshan Teng

Foreign language college Qingdao City University, China

Abstract：Nowadays, under the background of English has become the most widely spoken language all around the world, more and more people choose to take up English relevant occupations. People who are fluent in English or being identified as ‘native English speaker’ often gain more privileged than not proficient counterparts in job hiring context. This phenomenon is extremely   predominant in Engligh language teaching (ELT) field. For many school recruiters, if the candidates are ‘native-English-speaker’ or sounding ‘native-like level’ may outweigh their professional qualifications or personal abilities. However, categorizing people in such dichotomy is criticized by many scholars as ‘native speakerism’ which has negative impact on both native Engligh-speaking teachers and non-native English-speaking teachers. As Engligh has its unique dominant positions among all the other languages in ELT workplace, more attention needs to be paid, and more actions needs to be done to eliminate this discrimination. Therefore, in this paper, I try to explore the ELT in meso-level, and plan to address two questions: firstly, why the label of “native” or “non-native” could lead a potential employment discrimination in ELT? Secondly, since fewer scholars have noticed ELT from the meso-level, I will argue that the school administrators, as the active agency in ELT, their attitudes also play a pivotal role in hiring practices. Moreover, I will give my suggestions about what we can do to help recruiters create a more equal hiring environments in ELT.

Keywords: Native speakerism; English language teaching; administrators, hiring practices; native English-speaking teacher; non-native English-speaking teacher

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