Hi everyone,

Just wanted to do a quick straw poll. We’ve had quite a few queries in the past few months from our modern language departments wishing to publish job adverts on jobs.ac.uk asking for people who are “native speakers or have native speaker competence in …”

Jobs.ac.uk take issue with this phraseology but our academics are adamant it is the correct linguistic term and don’t wish to change their adverts. “Fluency” has a slightly different meaning when talking about language learning i.e. the ability to speak relatively quickly and smoothly, but not necessarily accurately. I can see both sides as ‘native’ certainly has a connotation but is qualified by the addition of ‘native speaker competence’.

Have others had this issue? Did you create a policy on it? Any other thoughts? Thanks!

Best wishes,

Sarah

Sarah Guise
Head of Equalities and Diversity

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