Abstract:

At the highest level, my paper deals with the conceptual / structural obstacles to guided language teaching. In other words it tries to explore and put on record the impediments to structured language learning caused by the teaching side of the confrontation between learners of a language and teaching professionals thereof, the latter including not only language teachers and trainers but also the entire lot of natural or judicial participants of the teaching process. At a more concrete level and in the light of the above, I concentrate my deliberations on a particular one of these obstacles: the concept of so-called ‘native speaker’.

With reference to the – generally known or at least diffusely intuited – fact that science and scientific production are – in connection with the lives of humans and the totality of organic and inorganic existence in the Universe – literally a deadly serious concern, I lay bare on the one hand how (i.e., on the basis of or in accompaniment with what sociohistorical and economical mechanisms and processes) the concept of ‘native speaker’ and related network of conceptual gadgets came into being and general use within the modern linguistic theory and practice and on the other hand how it affects not only the whole process of language learning and teaching but also other significant layers and spheres of social and sociopolitical life.
I argue that the resulting effects are disastrously detrimental to both the process of language learning and other concerned areas of social life, demonstrating and exemplifying my reasoning with empirical evidence from private language teaching market and public foreign language education in Japan.

Keywords:

Language teaching, language acquisition, criticism of science.