Challenges of Teaching English & Native Speaker Bias

E248: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, your go-to resource for intermediate to advanced English learners. I'm Anna, your host, and in today's episode, we're delving into the fascinating world of language teaching and learning with some remarkable guests: Irina, Richard, and Maria, each with their unique stories and insights into the realm of English education.

🇺🇸 🇬🇧 Irina shares her extraordinary experience of teaching English in China, where she had to adopt an American persona to comply with a company's wishes. Richard recounts his journey from Hungary to the UK, navigating language barriers and dialect diversity along the way. And Maria reflects on her transition from finance to teaching, highlighting the transformative power of education.

📝🗣 Together, we explore the nuances of language acquisition, from the challenges of pronunciation to the unfortunate 'native-speakerism' bias that is prevalent in English-language teaching today.

Want to know more about Irina, Richard, and Maria? Check out their platforms here:
🔴 Capture English
🔵 RichiEnglish
⚪️ British English with Maria

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, the listening resource for intermediate to advanced level English learners. My name is Anna and today we are diving into the world of language learning and teaching with some very special guests. I have Richard, who's an English teacher from Hungary with a story that many might find both familiar and eye-opening. I have Irina, an English teacher who had to pretend she was American for four years in order to teach in China. And Maria, who's lived and worked in the UK for many years but still suffers from an identity crisis. So, I'm very pleased to welcome my guests today. Let me start with Irina. How are you? Good. Good. Thank you. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you. Now, my listeners can't see you, but you have the most fantastic microphone that all lights up all sorts of colours. It's very fancy. It's very fancy. My daughter loves it. I bet she does. How old's your daughter? Six. She's six. Oh, lovely. Lovely. Irina, where are you currently based? You're somewhere in Europe, aren't you? Yeah. I am now in Germany. Because I married a German guy. Right. Right now, I've been living here for eight years. Can I ask what inspired you to become an English teacher? Was it something that you always wanted to do from being a child or something that just came to you as you matured? Well, I always fought this urge to teach because my mum was a teacher, my grandma was a teacher, my sister is a teacher. But I was like, no, I will be not a teacher. No, no, no way. And I studied linguistics, French and English linguistics. And then I worked as a project manager, but I decided like, nah, that's not mine. So, I moved to China to teach English and then I realised, wow, I love teaching! You know, like, it's just my thing. I live to teach. Yeah. It sounds like it runs in the family. So, it's almost like it's in your blood. Yeah, it is in my blood. Yeah, totally. Well, I'm very excited to learn about your China story, but let's come back to that in just a moment. Maria, hi. Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be here. I'm very excited to have you. I feel like I see you on a daily basis because you're quite prolific on Instagram, as is Irina as well. And Richard, you guys are all on Instagram. I'll put all your links in the show notes. But Maria, yes, I find your Instagram account quite entertaining. You like doing characters and things. I try to keep it entertaining. I thought, you know, language learning can be so tedious and boring sometimes. So, why not put fun into it to show that teachers have a fun side. We're not always serious and strict. We can be fun. We can, you know, let our hair down and let go. Maria, what brought you into teaching? Was it something you always wanted to do? No, so like Irina, you know, I had teachers in my family, but it's never been a path that I thought I'm going to take. So I went into finance. I worked in finance and banking. And then I kind of burnt out and left and I went back to Siberia where I'm originally from. So I just kind of was asked to start teaching English because, you know, you speak like a native, so you can teach really well. I thought, okay, let me give it a try. And I fell in love with it. I didn't know I could be a teacher until I started doing it and realised I'm actually good at it. I enjoy it. So, I did that for about eight years. Now I'm back in banking again in a different capacity, but I still do love teaching and I think I wouldn't have been the same person I am today without that experience. It changes you forever. I think teaching is an incredibly rewarding profession. Okay. Thank you, Maria. I'm going to dive a little deeper into your experience in finance, but let me come now to Richard. Why don't you start by telling me how you got into teaching English? My story's, I think it's quite interesting. I didn't want to be a teacher. My English teachers weren't good. My motivation to learn English was Michael Jordan, basketball because I saw a game with the Chicago Bulls and he was fantastic. And after that, that was a interview with Michael Jordan. I couldn't understand what he said, and I just thought to myself, okay, I have to learn this language. And then there was a rapper called Tupac Shakur, and I wanted to understand his lyrics because I always felt he's got something to say. And that was the second motivation for me. So, intrinsic motivation, basically, and that's it. And then my life, as it went by, I ended up here. I used to teach in Hungary, but I always felt that was something missing. And I had a chance in hospitality and went to the UK, which I first hated because I wanted to go to the US. So, my story is interesting. I didn't like the UK. I love the US. I didn't want to be a teacher. Now I'm a teacher. I didn't like tourism and hospitality. I had to work in tourism and hospitality. So, anything I did was completely the opposite I wanted to do. And then I came back. I wanted to delve deeper into tourism and hospitality, and now I became a teacher. When you came to the UK, and I guess this question I'd also pose to Maria as well. Is there anything about the UK, like experiences of the UK that contrasted with what you were expecting that was surprising for you? I'll start with Maria. I'll try not to turn this into a therapy session because there was quite dramatic and traumatic experiences for me. You know, I came as a teenager and honestly, I think it's the worst time one can migrate because I was already having like experiences back at home. I was settled in my life and then suddenly you come here and everything is different. And the way you speak and the way you behave, people just see it as really strange and aggressive and rude and I got lots of, let's say, bad feedback from my school mates, but I learned the hard way of how I should speak, how I should behave. And I did have to mould my personality and my behaviour quite significantly. In a way it was good because I think if I had come as an adult, you don't always get the same direct feedback, you know, from people who are more maybe polite and indirect. But teenagers can be brutal. So, although it was a brutal experience, I really had that feedback that I needed to change, both the way I spoke and the way I behaved. You know, there's no good without the bad, right? Yeah. Kids are brutally honest. I used to do touring theatre and I've done lots of shows for lots of different audiences, but it was the children who would boo me. I remember being ill, I had laryngitis and I was the leading lady and I had to sing quite a lot with laryngitis. So, it sounded awful. And adult audience would recognise I was poorly and just, you know, politely clap and say'oh poor thing'. But the kids were just like,"boo, that's awful". So I can get how hard it can be dealing with teenagers when you are a teenager. Okay. Richard, what about you? Okay. Good. My experiences were slightly different. My girlfriend, my brother and I, we just moved to the UK and everything was so different. First of all, because before that I taught for language schools and I said to myself, what can happen? I can speak English. But on my first day, I cried because I couldn't understand the words really. Think about it, touching Leeds International airstrip and before that I only learned RP because back in the days before YouTube, before Instagram, we only had, you know, the resources from textbooks and then cassettes and CDs. And I thought everyone was speaking RP and, no, definitely not. Not in Leeds, no. Exactly. So, the first question I couldn't understand and I was like, okay, is it the right country? I couldn't understand a word. So, I had to adjust and adapt. The dialects and accents is something that I think catches a lot of people off guard. Many of the students that I have are living in like Liverpool or in Scotland and places where they speak the English language, but it's just such a strong accent. And they've got their own dialect. It really throws people. Yeah, I worked with a lot of native speakers in China, Americans, but most of them, they were British and they all had different accents. And my students, I remember they used to ask me, like, why do they speak so differently? I guess Maria will agree with me that where we come from, we don't have that much difference. We don't have that many dialects, even though, well, I'm not from Russia. I'm from Uzbekistan, but I studied in Russia. And my sister, she lives in Moscow and the other sister lives in Kemerovo. And these are totally different parts of Russia. But they can speak and they can understand each other, you know, and they actually sound the same. Where in China or in the UK or in Germany, you go 100 kilometres away and you don't understand the person. Yeah. Like, my goodness me, my husband comes from Bavaria and we live now, not in Bavaria. It's like 500 kilometres from there. People actually understand me better than him because his dialect is so strong. Yeah. Yeah. I guess like in my case, it was my students were used to watching films in American accent and it's easier. It's familiar. That's a good word. Yeah. Actually the head teacher in the school where I taught was an American from Texas. His pronunciation was quite different. So we had a lot of fun. We shouldn't understand only RP, or only Australian, yeah. We need to understand every kind of accent, German, Chinese, French accent, yeah. That's the goal of actually teaching English because, yeah, we are all different. Yeah, I think it's good to choose one model when you're learning pronunciation, but it's important to open your ears up and expose your ears to multiple models and lots of varieties and really understanding. So, I trained at drama school. And this is initially where I got my interest in language and voice and presentation. I was obsessed with my voice classes and the accent classes and understanding the vowel shifts between accents and understanding why someone has a certain sound. So, I always just love kind of really delving deep into those differences and when you see a great actor pulling off a convincing accent, you're like, wow, I didn't realise you weren't from that place. The actor in Fifty Shades of Grey plays an American guy, but he's actually Irish. Now Americans might watch him and say his accent isn't great. You could tell straight away he's not American. But to me, I was like, he's an American, obviously. And then I heard him in another series, a really good series, and he was doing in a fantastic Northern Irish accent. I was like, wow, he's an American guy doing an amazing Irish accent. That's impressive. And then I realised, no, he's actually Irish. I think when people can really understand how to switch accents, I think that's such a great skill and achievable to everyone. People say to me, I can't change my voice. I can't change my accent. I'll never sound like this or that or the other. Like, well, actors do it all the time. It's just about understanding the differences and then practising. So, it is achievable, but the question is, do you want to, and why would you want to? Have any of you got any interesting stories of any misunderstandings that have come from hearing different dialects or idiomatic language that you just didn't realise meant what it meant? Yes, while I was working in the hotel and it was January, I think, it was really, really cold. And I left the door open and one of the co-workers said, something like this,"put'wood in t'hole that's brass monkeys outside". Oh, gosh! And I was actually looking out the window and looking for monkeys and I couldn't find any monkeys there. This is quite a familiar phrase for me cause I grew up in Lancashire, which is not that far away. We're neighbouring Yorkshire. And so my grandparents and the people I would spend time around would always say"put wood in t'hole, put wood in t'hole". And what this means to our listeners is close the door basically put the wood of the door into the hole. Yeah. Put the wood in the hole. It's brass monkeys means it's cold. Very cold. Yeah. Shut the door it's cold. Maria, have you had any experiences like that at all? I genuinely couldn't understand my Scottish neighbour. He was speaking to me and telling me stories or something. And I literally said, I'm so sorry. I tried several times and I said, I'm so sorry. I can't understand you. Yeah. He had the shock on his face and I felt really bad for him. But I think it can be really frustrating to even like British speakers who have, as you said, stronger or more peculiar or less clearer accents. Yeah. They must really struggle as well. Right. So, when we're talking about foreigners speaking, we should think about natives struggling as well. Yeah. I mean, there's some variations of like the Scottish accent can be very, very different and quite hard to grasp if you're not used to it. I had a similar situation with an American cousin that I have. And we were young at the time, so I didn't have very much experience of anyone outside of my northern friends. So, she came over to visit and we were playing together and she kept saying things that I didn't understand, the things like doll carriage. Which is a pram, but she said a doll carriage, but I had no clue what she was talking about. I'd never even heard the word carriage, I don't think, which,"We'll play with a doll carriage." And then she's like,"You want some gum?" And obviously, and that seems so simple to me now gum. It's obviously chewing gum. But we said bubble gum or chewy or chewing gum, but we never said just gum. When she said that I was thinking like gums around your teeth. What is she asking me? And things like diaper as well. I'd never heard diaper. We were obviously playing with dollies. For us, a diaper is a nappy and we don't use diaper at all. And so when she's like, let's change the diaper, let's put the diaper on the dolly. And I was like, what are you talking about? So, I felt really uncomfortable because I didn't feel like I could properly communicate with her. So, native speakers have it as well. I think it's a universal thing. Communication between people can be tricky regardless. One thing that many of my students say that they struggle with the most are things like phrasal verbs, idiomatic language, collocations. Phrasal verbs particularly prove tricky because there's no set rule, blanket rule and way to learn lots of phrasal verbs in one go. You have to learn each one individually and each one may have multiple meanings depending on context. So, it can be tricky. I think a lot of students underestimate how important phrasal verbs can be though. That's the most difficult topic to teach also. And for students to learn, for us also to learn. I think I learn one phrasal verb a day, even being proficient in the language, yeah. I think the most problematic one for my students is look at, look for, look out, because they kind of know that look is like to look with your eyes, but that actually look for is like to search for. We don't have it in our language, you know. So, it's the concept they have to learn as well as the language. Like if German speakers, they kind of have it just instead of prepositions, they have prefixes. Right. So, they understand the concept. Russian speakers don't, and they're just like, why, you know, like, why do you need to do that? Yeah. They're like, yeah, you have search, why do you need to look for? Yeah. I think you're right. Learning in context is probably the most effective way to do it. My sons struggle. I occasionally film my sons and my eldest, I think, is going to be in the creative industry. He loves videoing, he loves being on camera, and he's always asking if he can be involved in what I'm doing. So, occasionally I put him on, and people are often surprised. He's five years old, obviously he's speaking very well. Quite fluently. But people are surprised that he struggles with some basic things still. He struggles with pronouns and he struggles with tenses, especially irregular verbs. He can't figure out his irregular verbs and we are constantly just gently correcting and still five and a half years old, still struggles a lot. And so people give themselves a hard time over things like phrasal verbs and what seemed like some of the most basic aspects, you know, something like look for, they'll give themselves a hard time saying, I can't get this. I keep making this mistake, but you just have to keep using it in context. I think that is the best way. And hopefully you'll have someone around you who can just give you a little pick up, a little nudge, a little correction so that it gets picked up as you go. But generally as long as people understand you, I don't think it's such a big deal. I will also add in here that I teach a lot of phrasal verbs. I've got a phrasal verb course. I love them! I've gone through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phrasal verbs and their multiple meanings. And occasionally I'll come across some that I'm like, oh, I didn't know that one, you know. I think the teacher who thinks they know everything is not a good teacher. The person who stops learning and thinks they know everything, they're wrong. If you're going to be an effective and good teacher, you should always be open to learning. Just because you're a native of the language doesn't make you an expert at the language. I found it surprising, every single day there's something new that I learn about my own language that I've been speaking for over 40 years, and I still learn more about it each day. Learning a language, in this case, learning English is a lifelong journey. It's not something that you can speed towards, master quickly, and then you're done. It's a continuous thing. And if people set themselves up for that journey, then I think they'll find more success and satisfaction in the journey too. Okay. So let's touch briefly on pronunciation. Do you guys consider pronunciation to be important in your teaching? I'm going to start with Maria. 100 percent. You can't say pronunciation is not important because it's a huge part of communication, being understood. However, when I have a new student join, I always ask them, how much do you want to sound as a native speaker? Are you concerned about these particular sounds that do not quite sound right? So, I do ask them that question. And I have some students going, yes, yes, I want to sound as, you know, correct as possible, whatever the correct means to them. But I had a student say, you know, I really don't care that I have a strong accent. So, at that point I'll just drop it. So, I think it's really important to ask the student the question but also offer them your opinion. But I think people do confuse pronunciation and accent. I mean, there is an overlap, absolutely. Because if you have a Scottish accent, you have to Scottish pronunciation as well. Students are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that accent is not the goal or shouldn't be the primary goal of language learning, at least depending again, if they need to pick up a certain accent, maybe they are actors. Maybe they want to blend in, in a certain region. But I do think pronunciation needs to be looked at from the start because when you develop bad habits, even say at elementary level, it's much harder to change them later on. So, I say start looking at pronunciation right from the start, integrate it into your lesson, but do not make it the only thing, right? It's not going to make you speak fluently just having the right pronunciation, so there needs to be a balance with other elements of the language. I agree with you. I think the earlier it's introduced, then it can save time later on. Just trying to find some good habits especially around the vowels, good vowel pronunciation. It's about clarity because there's nothing worse than learning for years, getting to a certain level, and then getting into a conversation and people saying,"I'm sorry. Sorry, can you repeat that? I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And usually it's because there's a number of vowels that are just not being pronounced or not rounded in the right way. And so, they're being confused for other vowels and it's confusing everything. And so, I think learning from the beginning how generally they are pronounced and choosing a model should be based on where you plan to be or work. So, if you're going to go and live and work in an American company and you're going to be surrounded by American English, then perhaps an American English model would be a good model. Look at their vowels, look at their rhoticity, look at what's different about them. Whereas if you're going to come and work and live in Scotland, then perhaps you need to really get a handle on the Scottish way of pronouncing vowels and how they really roll their R's and, you know, I think it's important to know who you're going to be communicating with the majority of the time. In my view, maybe history, the history of language should also be focus sometimes. And I do it and after that, oh, now, now I can get it. Now I can understand it. For example, the word aye which means yes in the North, I tend to say aye still when people ask me something,"Aye." And"what's that? What's that?""Oh, it's just the Northern way of saying yes". And it comes from the Vikings. Yeah. I think learning history of pronunciation, accent and language actually does make it more interesting. Didn't you have an issue in a supermarket, Richard, at some point with a pronunciation problem? What was that? Yes. Yes. In Asda, I had a problem with pronouncing flour a little bit differently and it took me literally half an hour to get the flour because I said'fluer' instead of flour. And I totally misunderstood things because to me, that powder thing that you use to bake with and cook with was'fluer' and not flour. The shop assistant asked me,"Would you like flour?" I was, it's white, powder."Oh, you'd like flour. Would you like flour?""No, no, no. I wouldn't like flower. I'm not giving it to anyone. We'd like to cook and bake.""So, flour.""No, no, not flower." It took me half an hour, really, literally. I was in France and my French is worse now than it ever was because I've not used it, but I had basic level French, and I could cope in many situations. But I remember having to go to a local DIY store and ask for petrol to put into the lawnmower. But I didn't know the word for petrol and I didn't know the word for lawnmower either. And so I'm trying in my broken French to communicate with the chap that I needed petrol for the lawnmower and he couldn't understand me at all. And so, I ended up miming, like pulling the starter cable going. People just thought I was a complete nutter. Like, who's this woman doing this weird miming and strange sounds in the middle of the DIY store. So, yeah I think when you are in those situations, we mustn't forget that we do have other tools at our disposal these days with technology. And if push comes to shove you can always grab a pen and a piece of paper. If you can't do it with your gesticulations, you can always try and draw something or write it down. So there are other methods of communicating other than just using our words. So, I'm going to come back to Irina because I want to know what happened in China. You had to pretend that you were American for four years. What on Earth? Can you imagine? Me? American? Well, actually, like, my pronunciation was very neutral after graduating university. I was like very neutral. Only later I picked up on this British pronunciation. But yeah I moved to China. I was sure that my degree in linguistics and my level of proficiency would be enough. But then I was politely asked to pretend to be a native American. Why? They prefer American accent. Even like when I started with my British accent journey, they told me like, but you will never get a job in China. That was hard, you know because I couldn't really have this 100 percent connection with my students. Because I needed to lie. I needed to lie about my past, about my friends, about my parents, like about everything. So, I loved them. They loved me. They loved my teaching style. But instead of that, I just needed to lie. So, if they had found out, or if you had said,"No, like I'm not American." And told them who you were, would that have meant that you would have lost your job? Yep, yep. Yeah. Isn't that terrible? Regardless of your qualifications, the fact that your students loved you. Yeah. I should have been proud of myself by mastering the language, you know, but instead I felt bad, I felt ashamed, like oh no, I'm not worthy enough to teach as myself, I need to pretend. Yeah, so, imposter syndrome. So, that brings us into the subject that I wanted to broach today of native speakerism, which for the linguists out there and for many English teachers out there, this will be a term that you're probably familiar with, but for just English language students, you may not have come across this term before. But it's actually something I was oblivious to until maybe three years of teaching English online, I started to become aware of this issue of native speakerism, which is exactly as Irina described. It's this bias towards native speakers as teachers of English, regardless of whether they are qualified, have experience, whatever, if you're a native speaker, you are deemed to be superior as a teacher. And therefore you tend to find with companies across the globe, there'll be better rates of pay. In some cases there are bars to non-native English speakers teaching. It will be native speakers only allowed to come and teach for our company. There'll be different rates of pay. I've heard stories of people saying, I was employed as a non-native teacher, I was kind of hidden away in the classrooms where people couldn't see me teaching, where the parents couldn't see me teaching and the native speakers were put in full view of the parents. I was kind of like the embarrassing secret. And so basically non-native teachers being made to feel second rate, regardless of their experience or qualifications. And, you know, as native speakers, you'll have a spectrum. There are going to be very qualified, very knowledgeable, experienced, fantastic teachers of language. And then there are just the native speakers who don't understand anything, who don't have any skill in teaching, who don't care, who just teach because it's something easy to do because they know the language. And I think the same goes for non-native teachers. There'll be a spectrum. There are people just coming into it. Maybe it's a quick, easy stop-gap. Maybe they don't have many skills within teaching. They know a bit of English and then there are going to be highly qualified, very passionate, excellent teachers who've spent years and years honing their craft and there'll be everything in between. So, I think taking into account whether you're native or non-native should never really be a consideration. I think personally, I think every person should be individually assessed as to whether they would be right for a company or for a student. The only real experience I have of this, obviously I'm the native here, so, I haven't experienced native speakerism really myself. I've not been on the receiving end of this problem, but I have experienced it in other industries an actor, I trained for many years. I went to the most prestigious schools. I'd spent years and years training to become excellent at my craft. And I was constantly barred from even auditioning for some of the lower end kind of shows and performances because I wasn't a celebrity. So, in the acting industry, it's about whether you have influence. And so someone can appear on a talent show where you're not even a talent, you're just a person who's happy to be looked at. You can be a loudmouth on one of these programmes, get a lot of people talking about you and then you get the leading role in a West End like pantomime or a West End show because you were that loud mouth who got chosen for that reality TV show. No acting training, you know, no understanding of how to project your voice or be on stage or tell a story. And then people like me who trained for years and years trying to get those jobs were just overlooked because we didn't have that following. And that would always just be like a stake in the heart. Like that's not fair. But let me come to you, Maria and see,'cause you work not just as an English teacher, but you may have had some sort of bias working in finance within the English speaking world. Cause that's quite a competitive industry. So, have you had any kind of experience like this? None whatsoever, actually. Sorry to disappoint, but I think finance world, like, is a lot more inclusive, in a sense of where you come from, as long as you speak well enough, can express yourself. To be honest, it was mostly British, like, born people, but, you know, like, even the fact that you're asking me this, you see me as an outsider. It still triggers this feeling of, I still have to prove that I belong here. I am British. I grew up here. Why am I still seen as an outsider as a foreigner? But I guess it will always be like that. So, it's an unpleasant topic for me to think about. At the moment where I'm working, all of my team members are British. They kind of see me as British, but a couple have commented on my accent or the twang in my accent, whatever it is that they hear sometimes. But I don't think there is such discrimination on the basis of how you sound. Right In this industry I think it's a lot more inclusive. It's not acting where, you know, it's essential how you sound, or, you know, you have certain preconceptions of what an actor should sound like or where they should be from. I think finance banking is different in that sense. So, no, I've not felt that. Well, that's reassuring. I think that's quite reassuring for people listening'cause especially if they're going to come and work in the UK, that you found it to be really inclusive and you know, that you haven't found it to be a barrier at all, that actually, as long as you're clear and people can understand you, then it's not a problem at all. I'm not talking just about myself, you know, I'm talking about colleagues who were from different countries and had, you know, a lower level of English or were not always clear, even 100%, but yet with their talent and hard work ethic they were still able to get really good jobs. Obviously, their English improved with time, but it wasn't a barrier to entry. That's excellent to hear. And so, what about as an English teacher, have you ever experienced this native speakerism? With Irina, for example? For me, it was a funny one because some people see me as a native speaker and some see me as a non-native speaker. I just say I'm native level. I grew up in the UK. Make of that what you want. It's up to you what you see. Do you see me as a native speaker or not? I don't care at the end of the day, it's do you see me as a good teacher? Do you see me as the right person to help you? So, I've kind of left it to my students. I do educate and spread awareness to say that, you know, we should look at so much more than just where the person is coming from. As you said, skills, experience, teaching ability, as well as personality. You need to be able to connect with your teacher above all. You need to be inspired by your teacher, right? And it's not about whether their English is absolutely perfect. You know, and I've had students take lessons with me because they loved how I sound it and they wanted to copy it. And I said to them,"You're not going to sound like me by taking a lesson with me. It's not going to happen. You need a lot more work than that. I've had to put in a lot of work and I grew up in the UK to sound the way that I do." It's just fascinating that people will jump to their own conclusions. They will form their own biases and opinions based on their experiences, and you can do your best to try to change that. But I think there will always be different teachers and different students, and it's just a matter of matching in the best way possible. So, I do not feel that discrimination anymore, but I've had students go,"Oh, I love that you're not a native speaker." And then someone said,"Oh, I love that you're a native speaker. And I know I can talk to you." So, I'm still the same teacher and I still speak the same way to both of them, but they have completely different opinions about who I am. Yeah. I love your attitude to it. And you're absolutely right. You know, you spent so much time here. You grew up here. You are a native. There are some natives who are born here, learn the language with their parents, but leave when they're five years old and spend the rest of their time living in another country. What's the difference between them and you? You know, we're in such a globalised world these days, I think that judgement should not be based on where you were born. It should all be about the individual. For those of you who have had to pretend to be American for four years and like hide who you are and obviously experienced negative circumstances, I am sorry for that. Even though I would never do it, I often feel guilty that my countrymen would do anything to make people feel uncomfortable. I've seen that the British Council and other bodies within the UK are working hard to kind of press down, push against this prejudice. I think we are trying to take steps to be more inclusive. I know Brexit. I know. It doesn't help our, our image. I didn't ask for it. On my birthday. On my birthday, actually. Oh gosh. It was probably, yeah. You don't want me. You don't want me at all. It's not me. It's not me. I do. I do. No, no, no, no, no. I was just joking. I was, but think about it on my birthday. Good morning, Richard. We're out. Yeah. Anyway, let's move on from this, from this and bring it to a close. I do think that probably one of the best ways that our listeners can help this situation is just to stop worrying about whether someone is a native or a non native and when picking your teachers and picking your models, just literally go off each individual's skill set. Do you get a good feeling from them? Do they inspire you to learn? That's always a big one for me. Do you feel inspired to learn? Do they care? Do they know more than you? If they know more than you, then they can teach you something. That's always been my view of it. I think we should celebrate the diversity and the richness that all teachers bring to the English education. We should break down biases. We should open up the world to every voice because it enriches the tapestry of language learning. Remember that our differences and our unique experiences make teaching a very dynamic place and make the teaching world a dynamic and rewarding place. So if you are a teacher of English, because some of my students never intended to, but after spending time learning English, decided to start teaching themselves. For those of you listening, I want you to not feel set back, not feel opposed in any way. I don't want you to feel nervous or like you have imposter syndrome. You definitely deserve to be here as a teacher. You know, we can all help each other. We all have something to give with our own knowledge and our own experience. There's a place for everyone at the table. I mean, my five year old teaches my three year old how to dress himself, how to put his shoes on, how to eat properly. And even though my five year old isn't always right, in teaching, he is growing a bond with the person he's teaching. He is learning himself because we learn more through teaching. And, you know, he's just being a good human being. And I think we can all do a bit more of that. No one's perfect. We can all just keep improving our skills and our knowledge to better serve our students. We learn through experience. Okay. So know your own worth. Don't let anyone stop you from teaching. And also don't let anyone make you pretend to be something you're not. Be proud of who you are. So I want to say a huge thank you to Richard, to Irina, and to Maria. These guys do also have platforms where they share their voice. I'd like you to go and check them out. I'll put their links in the show notes so that you can go and check out their work, go and give them some support. Thank you guys for being with me and thank you to my listeners. Do you have anything else to say, Maria? I know we talked about diversity and I think it is really important, but I also think the reason why some students had those bad experiences, right, like Richard had a teacher he didn't like or wasn't teaching him the right things, is because as human beings, not just as teachers, as human beings, we need to be honest with ourselves and our students about our limitations. So I think too often teachers try to pretend they to know more than they do or they are not honest when they don't know something or they need to check something. So whether you're native or non native, be honest about what you can do and what you cannot do and do not let your ego get in the way of someone else's learning. And I think when more teachers start to do that, it's not going to be a question of native, non native, but what can you do as a person? That's excellent. Excellent advice, Maria. Thank you. Absolutely right. Irina, any last words? Yeah, just keep learning. Always, not only English, just everything, just sometimes close your mouth, open your mind and learn, learn, learn, because that's so important. So just learning and have fun. Always have fun. I love that. I love that. Close your mouth and open your mind. I think that's gotta be like a new slogan. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. And last but not least, Richard. Everything was mentioned. Maybe I can add something to that. I look at English language as the lingua franca of the 21st century and maybe the future. And all of you said it, diversity, diversity. Voices. Think about it. In just the UK, there are approximately 60 different accents and dialects. So if they cannot agree on one specific thing, then the world is so much bigger, isn't it? Yeah. Thank you, Richard. Okay. So I want to say thank you again to you guys for giving me the time. And for giving me your voices and your experiences and insights, really appreciate that. And for anyone listening, if you have anything to add to the story, then feel free to drop me a message by whichever platform you are consuming from. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.