The Different Types of Language Teachers You Need to Finally Master Your Second Language

Native Speakers aren’t the only people qualified to teach languages

Orbis terrae compendiosa descriptio : quam ex magna universali Gerardi Mercatoris Domino Richardo Gartho, geographie ac ceterarum bonarum artium amatori ac fautori summo (1637) by Gerhard Mercator. Original From The New York Public Library. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.com — In the public domain, CC0

So, you’ve finally gathered the courage, and have separated the next six months of your life to devote to learning Xhosa, so you can finally understand Trevor Noah. First of all, well done.

Now you need to gather all your passion for Scottish Gaelic and find the right teacher. You don’t need to rush to find one before you start, if you’re reading this, you can find lessons on Youtube for any language you want for free. That’s the best starting place, but, you will hit a wall. Eventually, you need a teacher.

The Native Speaker

When you’ve been speaking a language for your whole life, you develop an intuition for why ‘I necessary coffee’ doesn’t sound right. Native speakers get that, but they might have to think for a while when asked why someone couldn’t just substitute ‘need’ for ‘necessary’ since they are so similar in meaning. We just don’t.

When learning a language, the goal is to become as close as possible to a native speaker. Pronunciation, grammar, semantics: we look to the native speaker to define what is the right usage of all these and more.