Native and non-Native Speaker Teacher: an ‘in tandem’ model in teaching English as a Foreign Language

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Italy’s language institutes and centres, while being a non-native speaker, has long raised questions over the nature of a teacher’s language competence. A form of discrimination against non-native English speaker teachers (NNEST) subsists, predominantly with regard to their linguistic-communicative proficiency, seen as a paradigmatic feature of teaching a second language. This study, precisely in an attempt to overcome such a contention, proposes a more constructive stance on the issue by reporting the experience of an English teaching practice to adult learners undertaken by the Language Centre (CLA) of the University of Salerno.