Inevitable Job

"You are an American English speaker?  Would you like a job?"

"We want to speak English with an American accent."

"Will you edit my paper?  I'll give you 50,000₩..."

As Americans living in Korea, we hear these sorts of things all the time.  Riley and I have been offered countless jobs teaching and tutoring English to all ages and situations.  I don't think people believe us when we tell them that we have no teaching experience and you probably don't want us to try to teach anyone English.  Most don't understand that just because we speak English, it doesn't mean we know how to teach it.  I do not remember all the words for grammar (like progressive tense?), or how to teach phonics (cat=kat).  I didn't even know what an idiom was until I came to Korea and was asked about them.  I suppose since the majority of foreigners here are English teachers, they assume all foreigners are born to teach English automatically.

The American accent thing is really interesting.  We have many friends from Europe and Africa who speak English fluently, either bilingual or as their only language, but they have a much harder time getting a job here.  For some reason, Koreans like the American accent better.  We have a Korean friend who learned British English, and she sounds really really neat when she speaks English.  However, she doesn't like her accent because its not American.

Even though we have gotten out of teaching English jobs, there is one job we cannot escape, editing.  I have edited thesis, brochures, speeches, presentations, applications, resumes, and essays many times since coming to Korea.  Sometimes they are for friends, but it seems more often they are friends of a friend.  These are not just Koreans either.  I've edited English writing of friends from China and the UAE as well.  The topics have ranged from Chinese-US trade relations, to lotus species, to reactor systems.  At least in editing writing I don't have to worry about explaining why a sentence sounds funny.

So, if you are a native English speaker in a foreign land, expect to have someone say "will you please check my grammar?"