Is Accent Important In Learning English?

A Filipino man walked into a language institution in Taiwan. He tried to apply to teach English but was turned down. The reason was that he didn't come from an English speaking country although majored in English, earned rich experiences, and speaks standard American English.

It's not fabricated rather a true story I heard recently. As a Taiwanese, I understand why they reject people from non-English speaking country to teach English even it sounds like discriminating. It's all about business consideration. No market no money, so the problem lies on customer's impression towards non native speakers. Taiwanese are still biased to foreigners. They were influenced by history, war, and technology. White people stand in a leading position of the world, so they have an impression that is those western developed countries are better than them. White superiority beats North Asian's confidence but also brings them ethnocentrism to South Asian.

I met a mother at a party in Cebu whose goal was studying English at that time. She asked me how many native teachers in my language school.
"No one, all of them are Filipinos," I said.
"No one!" she showed a surprised face and kept asking me in a manifest suspicious voice, "Are they good? Do they have the Filipino accent?"
Suddenly, I felt extremely uncomfortable and my mind roared in silence "Who gave you the qualification to say that? Is your English better than them?". After this question, I had no interest in talking with her.

In having conversations with various nationalities, I don't think a person's accent is a priority condition in learning English. Pronouncing in a wrong way is a bigger problem. Everyone speaks a languages with an accent. Sometimes, it's hard to understand someone especially if they have a strong and different accent. But if they pronounce it accurately, most of the people will get the meaning they wanted to express.

I also got the similar response from my university classmate. She has been to Greece and Turkey. Both countries are not an English speaking country, so I inquired her: "Would it be difficult to communicate with them?". She said, "If your English is good enough, it won't be a problem for you to catch what they are saying".

To enhance our entire language ability is way more important than dealing with your teacher's accent and nationality. Everyone has its own specialty that someone doesn't have, and this is what we can learn from them.