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There are apparently many more non-native speakers of English in the world than there are native speakers, and as a consequence of this the traditional rules of the language-learning game are under pressure to change. Up till now, the native speaker teacher has based her authority on her ‘nativeness’ which gives her the ability and right to pass judgement on the passability of non-native students’ utterances. To a large extent, wherever in the world English has been taught, the teacher’s own native version of English has been the yardstick by which communication has been judged ’successful’ or ‘accurate’.

In a world where there are more non-native speakers than native speakers, though, the balance of power is tipped somewhat, and cooperative communication and adaptability become more important than traditional considerations of ‘accuracy’. Research into communication between two or more non-native speakers has revealed widespread use of the following common errors :

• Non-use of 3rd person present simple tense -s ( She look very sad )
• Interchangeble use of the relative pronouns who and which ( a book who, a person which )
• Omission of definite and indefinite articles where they are obligatory in native-speaker English, and insertion where they do not occur in native English.
• Use of an all-purpose tag question such as ‘isn’t it?‘ or ‘No?‘ instead of ‘shouldn’t they?‘ ( They should arrive soon, isn’t it? )
• Increasing of redundancy by adding prepositions ( We have to study about … and Can we discuss about …?), or by increasing explicitness ( black colour versus black and How long time? versus How long? )
• Heavy reliance on certain verbs of high semantic generality, such as do, have, make, put, take.
• Pluralisation of nouns which are considered uncountable in native-speaker English ( informations, staffs, advices )
• Use of that in clauses instead of infinitive constructions ( I want that we discuss about my dissertation ).

Thus we can see that this new majority of non-native speakers, when talking with each other, manage to communicate adequately even though they say things that, from a native speaker point of view, they should not say.

So, what does this mean for the native speaker teacher of English? Clearly, some sensitivity is required to the aspirations of one’s students along with a degree of flexibility in the classroom that allows students to become aware of what it is that makes their English comprehensible.

My take on this, at the moment, is that in the beginning students should learn the language of native speakers - at least that would appear to be the most common aspiration among beginners - and should use a certain kind of native English (be it American or Canadian or Australian) as a standard against which to judge if an utterance is correct or comprehensible. From there, as competency is developed, a student will absorb English from her environment and so, if living in Singapore, is likely to pick up the indiosyncracies of Singaporean English (for example, pronunciation of ‘th-’ as ‘d-’ or ‘t-’). It would seem desirable for students to learn a form of English that will be as widely understood as possible, and this is why I recommend learning from a native speaker, or from a non-native speaker with a high level of proficiency in a native form of English.

Students need to be taught about the development of English as a world-wide Lingua Franca and to be made aware of the many varieties of the language that exist. This, to the extent that they will be able to avoid ugly linguistic snobbery and concentrate on heart-to-heart communication. Native speaker teachers need to be sensitive to the fragility of their position as ‘language expert’ in the classroom, and to concentrate on providing students with the kind of language they need for their particular situation. With lower level students, however, I would continue to use some native standard for what is correct or acceptable, at least as a general guideline.