Good points. It's funny that I have a good friend from Amsterdam who speaks excellent English with no discernible accent! (unlike me)


>Well, I often tarry since my a$$ is draggin' so I'll jump in.
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>I think the native speaker requirement is reasonable, if they are teaching spoken language. ( though with the Dutch it gets trickier - the only non-native speakers of English I have ever met with no discernible accent were Dutch )
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>I am sure the point is not "language developments" or correct grammar but a native speaker accent. If I were running an English language school i would look for native speakers and those with accents that represented the most vanilla flavor in the their home country ( BBC - home counties, TV anchor-person US etc ) simply in fairness to the students. If they could reproduce regional dialects for students for demonstration purposes, great, but for basic drilling ( and spoken English is generally taught through TEFL methods ) it is not fair to drill heavy Cajun, Bawstun, Cornwall, Highland Geordie etc.
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>I prefer French as it is spoken in Africa, simply because it easier for me to understand or as they speak it in Langue d'Oc since it sounds more like Spanish to my ear, but for a teacher I want a someone from Tours or Paris. ( actually, I learned most of my spoken French from Levantines in Istanbul and Izmir and I am told I sound like a Corsican gangster in a bad 50s film <g> )
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>I did have a friend, a girl from Texas, who taught in a junior high school in Eastern Turkey and not only did she speak Turkish with a Texas accent but her kids spoke English like Joe Bob Briggs.