Just like most people in this thread I disagree with the idea of using (exclusively) native speakers in audio and...

Just like most people in this thread I disagree with the idea of using (exclusively) native speakers in audio and video tasks for two main reasons.

The first one relates to my belief that very often authenticity translates into appropriateness in the sense that students may feel that the features/accent they are exposed to are the ones they should try to emulate if they want to be considered "natural" speakers of this language. I've seen students struggle to sound like BBC or CNN news presenters and be genuinely shocked when realising that the British or American "territory" they had in mind actually consists of such a great range of different varieties.

The second reason has to do with the fact that it is -to my mind at least-unrealistic to expose students to something which they will rarely come across in their everyday/future life. This goes back to the notion of what is considered "correct" or "natural" English and it is one of the first myths to be busted when travelling abroad or living abroad as many of us have.

What I always found interesting was the implications of saying that someone speaks with an accent as I always thought that the sentence itself is a pleonasm (everyone speaks with an accent anyway, so why add that extra dimension of the accent?). A while ago I came across this post on the Psychonomic Society's blog on the issue of accent judgment:

https://featuredcontent.psychonomic.org/you-heard-that-right-accent-judgment-but-not-accent-perception-is-influenced-by-expectations/
https://featuredcontent.psychonomic.org/you-heard-that-right-accent-judgment-but-not-accent-perception-is-influenced-by-expectations/