When filling out your teacher profile on the OrangoTeacher website, you’ll be asked if the language you are teaching is your native language. So by this we mean the following:
“the language of the country that someone is born in or native to”
collinsdictionary.com
However, several countries have a number of official languages. And more countries still, have more than one official language.
If you are teaching English, for OrangoJapan / OrangoTeacher to classify you as a Native speaker, you must meet the following criteria:
Speak English as your primary language and come from a country where English is the most commonly spoken language.
For this we follow the UK government’s classification of of overseas (non-UK) countries as majority native speaking. These are the following:
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Australia
- The Bahamas
- Barbados
- Belize
- Canada
- Dominica
- Grenada
- Guyana
- Ireland
- Jamaica
- New Zealand
- St Kitts and Nevis
- St Lucia
- St Vincent and the Grenadines
- Trinidad and Tobago
- United Kingdom (Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland)
- United States of America
If we come across profiles where the teacher advertises their teaching language as their native language but their profile nationality suggests contrary to the above, we’ll edit accordingly (by removing the native indicator) and further review the profile for authenticity.
This might seem a bit of a shock to nationals of South Africa, India, Pakistan, The Philippines as well as other countries. However, although English is widely spoken in these countries, it is not yet considerably more spoken than other languages or dialects in those locations.
But I speak English better than most native speakers!
Maybe your English is perfect, and it could be better than most native speakers. Yes Scandinavians, we’re talking about you here. In that case, we recommend adding some video to your profile where you speak English. That way students can hear from themselves how good your English is. Have fun teaching!
The exclusion of South Africa on this list is laughable and ridiculous. Please do further research before displaying such ignorance on a public forum.
South Africa used to be a BRITISH colony, and English is the main language of education and employment in the country, so therefore completely and totally native.
Shane English School and a host of other reputable language schools indeed only hire teachers from countries in the British Union, of course including South Africa!