ABSTRACT
Although non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) comprise the vast majority of teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) worldwide (about 80 percent according to Canagarajah, 1999), many qualified NNESTs struggle to assert and negotiate an identity as legitimate English-as-asecond/foreign-language (ESL/EFL) instructors in the contexts where they teach (Canagarajah, 1999). This is due in large part to the pervasive “native speaker myth” (Phillipson, 1992) and an idealized notion of what constitutes a native speaker. Underlying these myths is the assumption that native speakers (NSs) are inherently better language teachers than non-native speakers (NNSs). Although this assumption has been challenged by applied linguists who have proposed alternatives to the NS/NNS dichotomy (V. Cook, 1999; Rampton, 1990), the NS myth and ideology continue to marginalize NNESTs and thus work to undermine their professionalism.
