Join us for the 2nd ROLE Symposium to be held online on May 19, 2025!

Resources For Educators

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▶ Google Drive (in development!)

Teaching materials that are relevant to the ROLE Collective, contributed by ROLE members.

Infographics

Introductory Content

Who Counts as a “Native Speaker”... and Who Doesn’t?

This resource discusses the implications and consequences of labeling individuals as "native" or "non-native" speakers, and how we can work to remedy this issue.

What is “Native-speakerism” in Language Learning?

This resource describes how "nativeness" is idealized and leads discriminatory effects in language learning spaces, plus how we can reframe our own approach.

Research Summaries from the 1st ROLE Symposium

Language as a Border

This resource is based on Dr. Kamran Khan's keynote at the 1st ROLE Symposium. It explains how language can cause people to be perceived as either “citizens” or “non-citizens” by their government or peers, resulting in social and institutional discrimination.

"Native Signer" is Too Narrowly Defined

This resource is based on Dr. Lina Hou's keynote at the 1st ROLE Symposium. It summarizes some problems with the concept of “native signer” and how linguists can improve their research practices to build a more equitable and inclusive field.

Who Counts? Who Defines a Language and its Speakers?

This resource is based on Dr. Wesley Y. Leonard's keynote at the 1st ROLE Symposium. It discusses how settler colonialism impacts who gets to count as Native North American language speakers, and how language reclamation gives power back to the community.

Videos

Public-facing Presentations

TED Talk: Who counts as a speaker of a language? | TEDxOhioStateUniversity | Dr. Anna Babel
TED Talk: Why you shouldn’t judge an accent | TEDxUF | Dr. Ethan Kutlu

Conference Presentations from the 1st ROLE Symposium

Playlist: Keynote Presentations | 1st ROLE Symposium
Playlist: Short Presentations | 1st ROLE Symposium

Texts

Blogpost: Problematizing the Native Speaker | Contact, Cognition & Change Lab | University of Michigan Students

This resource was created by Keri Zhang, Em Jessee, and the students in the Fall 2020 class at the University of Michigan called "Problematizing the Native Speaker in Linguistic Research". It includes discussion based on the class and is aimed at the language research community broadly.

Blogpost: What does “Native speaker” mean, anyway? | Language Log | Dr. Devin Grammon & Dr. Anna Babel
Essay: On Being a Near-Native Speaker | Anthropology News | Dr. Anna Babel
Example Profiles: 4 Examples of Diverse Language Experience | From the article The Problematic Concept of Native Speaker in Psycholinguistics | Dr. Lauretta Cheng & colleagues

These example profiles of language users are adapted from Cheng et al. (2021) and "represent a snapshot of the diversity of experiences that cannot be captured by 'native speaker.'"

For readings based on academic publications, see our resources for researchers.

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