Should A Second Language Be Taught By A Native Speaker?

Abstract

Throughout the history of linguistics, many research studies have proven that a second language should be taught by a native speaker of the target language. Since Leonard Bloomfield’s army method (audio-lingual method), the field of language teaching has always adopted the method of using a native speaker as the tutor. The objective of this research study is to find answers to the question, “should a second language be taught by a native speaker? The importance of this research study is to emphasize the fact that a language like Tamil is difficult to be comprehended when taught by a native speaker. Questionnaires will be distributed among undergraduates of the Department of Linguistics who have actually faced difficulties in learning a second language like Tamil. Evaluating questionnaires and information gathered from the Internet it will be proved that using a native speaker to teach a second language is not successful in every situation.