Czechs Increasingly Prefer Native-Speaking Teachers When Learning Languages

Chairman of the Association of Language Schools and director of Channel Crossings Vítězslav Bican said that in his experience Czech students strongly prefer to study with native speakers:

“Although Czechs often have years of experience and study at an education faculty behind them, and native speakers are often not comparable with Czech teachers in terms of pedagogical training, [it is perceived] that native speakers know the language enough.”

Bican continued to say that Czech learners see native speakers as dominating in the areas of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary while Czech teachers have simply learned these aspects of the language.

Several other language schools interviewed by the publication agreed that native teachers of these particular languages are disappearing from the Czech Republic.

“Brexit will certainly be a risk factor, where the market will see the disappearance of a large portion of native English speakers who currently have the automatic right to work within the European Union.”

Additional factors given for the deficit of native speakers employed at Czech language schools were lack of money and career prospects.

“It is, therefore, necessary to increase the salaries of teachers to give them the motivation to stay, but doing so will [mean an increase in] the cost of education for clients,” Bican told iDnes.

The article cites the increasing demand for native teachers of English and German and also notes the rise in popularity of Russian and Asian languages among Czechs; romance languages have seen a decline.

Experts say that both groups of teachers bring benefits to the experience of learning a language.

Native speakers grasp the subtleties (irony, satire) of a language, can use colloquialisms naturally and have good pronunciation while non-native speakers can better relate to their students’ cultural background and understand the differences between the languages.