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Recently a dichotomy has developed in the field of TESOL between native English speaker teachers (NESTs) and non-native English speaker teachers (NNESTs) with some in each camp promoting one over the other, but this only separates rather than unifies our profession. In this article I suggest that it is not in anybody’s interests to continue with this dichotomy if we are to be recognized as a profession within the wider academic community and that we should be debating critical competencies related to effective teaching instead, regardless of if one is a NEST or NNEST. In this paper, I point out that it is not who you are in terms of your ethnicity, culture or race as a TESOL teacher, but what you know in terms of your effectiveness as a teacher regardless of your background.
Thomas S. C. Farrell (Wed,) studied this question.