Teaching Spanish Beyond Native Contexts: Professional and Linguistic Challenges of Non-Native Teachers in India and Slovakia

Abstract

Spanish is now taught far beyond its native-speaking heartlands, and in countries like India and Slovakia, it is non-native teachers who carry this work forward every day. Yet despite their central role, these professionals remain surprisingly understudied. This study listens to their experiences directly, drawing on questionnaire responses from 200 non-native Spanish teachers, 100 in each country, combining Likert-scale ratings with open-ended reflections to build a comparative picture of their professional lives. Three findings stand out. First, these teachers are confident and committed professionals, even while quietly wrestling with challenges around pronunciation, idiomatic language, and dialectal variety. Second, their approaches to multilingual teaching diverge sharply by context: Indian teachers embrace mediation between languages as a natural and effective classroom tool, while Slovak teachers apply it more selectively, wary of its effects on spoken fluency. Third, their institutional realities differ considerably; Indian teachers face persistent native-speaker bias in hiring and limited access to certification, whereas Slovak teachers navigate a constrained academic market and growing administrative pressures. What unites them is this: both groups consistently turn their experience of learning Spanish into a teaching strength. The study calls on institutions to match that commitment with genuine professional recognition and support.