and in the case of English early ease is more than paid for by later failure to master.
This is very very true - I've lost count of the amount of intermediate students who simply cannot get over the next hurdle. From today - the word "come". Look at how many ways this can be used - it's no surprise that many learners struggle to gain real fluency and get stuck at the intermediate level.
it amazes me how bad people speak English after years of study.
To be honest, this sentence shows that even natives get English wrong - and quite badly wrong, at that. I'm struggling to see how you can criticise English when you can't even use your own language properly. And you claim to be a teacher? Oh dear...
Especially that many of the English native speakers (at least the ones that taught me and my friends) are incompetent when it comes to teaching phonetics and phonology
No, you're right. The vast majority are absolutely unable to teach the language on any technical level. They might know the grammar (or might not : see above) - but they're absolutely unlikely to have any knowledge of the more technical aspects of English.
None of the native English teachers that I met was able to do that as opposed to one Russian teacher that I had (she spoke beautiful RP English - completely indistinguishable from that of educated native English speakers).
I know someone like this - she has the most beautiful RP accent too. She's a pleasure to talk to - and I suspect dear old Fuzzy here simply doesn't have any educated friends.
so what you're saying is that a native knows the language thoroughly, natively as a matter of fact, and when they are given a job to do, they already know how to do it
Not necessarily, because the native is highly unlikely to be able to teach any technical aspects of the language. They might be able to teach vocabulary about renovating a house or building a zoo, but they're highly unlikely to have much of a clue about the technical aspects of their own language.
I've heard the same "natives are better period" argument many times - and the vast majority of those are the ones who are simply trying to protect the goose that laid the golden egg. Of course they're going to pick fault with Polish teachers - why would anyone pay them a vast amount if the Polish teachers are equally capable?
As a native speaker of English, I've never met a single Pole that even comes close to a native.
Let's be honest, it's in your interest to propagate this myth, because it makes it seem like only natives can teach - and this is quite frankly nonsense. How many native speakers are there in Finland teaching English? Barely any. Yet Finland (and the rest of the Nordic countries) are considered to be excellent at English - which proves the point that native teachers are just a luxury and aren't actually needed.
Already in Poland, we're seeing that teachers like Seanus with real education behind him are highly desirable. But some college graduate in a soft subject, combined with CELTA, isn't particularly desirable and certainly not worth the high salaries that some schools pay.
