Usage of 方 to mean person, interchangeability of くれる and もらう and passive form

Question

So I stumbled upon the following sentence:

特に日本人以外の人に日本語を教えてもらっている方に質問です

I was having a problem with translating it because of the parsing, but now I kinda get it.

What I could translate was "Especially, I have a question to people teaching Japanese to non-Japanese people", But some people in the chat said it would be

"especially I would like to ask people who are being taught Japanese by a non-Japanese person"

Now, for it to be being taught, shouldn't I use the passive form of もらう? like

日本人以外の人に日本語を教えてもらわれている方 ??

Besides that, I have 2 more questions:

1 - Can I interchangeably use もらう and くれる? Yes or no? and why?

(I feel like I can because there is no explicit topic, but i'm concerned that using くれる would flip the meaning from "people teaching Japanese to non-Japanese people" to "non-Japanese people teaching Japanese to people")

2 - Why would one use 方(kata) here? instead of 人

Thanks in advance!!!

Answer 1

To answer your first question:

Giving and receiving verbs can be quite tricky. Let's work through it 少しずつ. If the verb is もらう, then the subject is receiving something (or a verb in this case) from the giver as in

[subject(receiver)] は [giver] に [verb] ~てもらう

If we use くれる the roles swap and the idea of the sentence changes too. Instead we would say that the subject is the giver and the indirect object (marked with に) is the receiver.

[subject(giver)] は [receiver] に [verb]~てくれる

Let's use 教える. It works well with these verbs.

私は日本人に教えてもらった

I was taught by a Japanese person

日本人は私に教えてくれた

A Japanese person taught me.

If you were to put もらう into the passive form it would really only be used for the thing that was received (the direct object). In that case the receiver and the received would swap positions.

ケーキが彼にもらわれた

A cake was received by him

But this is really convoluted and rarely used. A better usage for the passive form of もらう is as a descriptive relative clause.

もらわれたケーキ

The cake that was received.

In the case with this sentence we are using a relative clause but in the active voice (not passive).

教えてもらっている方

A person who was taught (A person who received the action of being taught).

To answer the second question:

方 is used to show honor and respect to the person in question. 人 can be used just as well but does not show any level of respect. 者 can also be used in that place but has a sense of inferiority (one can use it for themselves to show respect for the listener, just like a humble verb).

In conclusion

日本人以外の人 (the giver) に 日本語を教えてもらっている 方 (the receiver)

becomes

"People who are taught by non-Japanese people"

just as those on the chat said.