{"id":3665,"date":"2026-06-30T11:43:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T09:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justmeneesha.com\/?p=3665"},"modified":"2026-06-30T11:43:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T09:43:05","slug":"the-myth-of-the-native-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justmeneesha.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/the-myth-of-the-native-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"The myth of the \u201cnative speaker\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Meneesha
Picture: Christina (Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A few years ago, a sharp, hardworking learner \u2013 terrified of his own accent \u2013 asked me to help him sound \u201cmore British\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019d watched videos. He\u2019d practised his vowels. He was convinced that until he sounded like a newsreader from the BBC, his English wasn\u2019t good enough<\/a>. There were many like him. And there\u2019ll be many more in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a child of a diaspora my relationship with English is already complicated. Add to that the fact that I grew up speaking it as a first language in a country where I was always considered inferior, it could be a minefield. So, I empathised with my learner\u2019s anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After years of soul-searching and interrogation, I\u2019ve learnt to own my relationship with English. I\u2019ve learnt to see my first language as a communication tool I can use as I see fit. So, my response to learners who think they aren\u2019t good enough is that they\u2019re training for the wrong test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of my learners will never live in London \u2013 or any other part of the world where English is spoken as a first language. They\u2019ll sell software to a logistics company in Hamburg. They\u2019ll join a Teams call with a project manager in S\u00e3o Paulo and a supplier in Hanoi. They\u2019ll write emails to people who learned English in Lagos, in Manila, in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cnative speaker\u201d may not even be in the room. So, we shouldn\u2019t be teaching as if they are. It\u2019s time to retire the myth of \u201ccorrect\u201d English and replace it with something more useful: English as a tool for being understood, by anyone, anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wrong target<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For decades, teaching a language ran on a simple, unspoken assumption: there is one correct English \u2013 usually some flavour of British or American \u201cStandard\u201d English. And every other variety is a deviation from it. Accents were treated as flaws to sand down. A \u201cth\u201d that came out as a \u201cd,\u201d a rolled R, a flattened vowel \u2013 these were marked wrong, even when nobody actually misunderstood the sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the inconvenient statistic that we ignore \u2013 and which should reshape how we teach \u2013 is that the vast majority of English conversations happening anywhere in the world right now don\u2019t include a \u201cnative speaker\u201d  at all. A Korean buyer and a Dutch supplier negotiate a shipping contract in English. A Saudi doctor consults with a Filipino nurse in English. None of them are reaching for an Oxford accent. They\u2019re reaching for clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the difference between correctness and intelligibility \u2013 and it\u2019s the most important shift I\u2019ve made in my own teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n