Xmmm wrote:hmmm ... why though?
As a native English speaker in California, I hear non-native speakers all the time. There are different levels of accent:
1. horrible, incomprehensible accent -- what are you even saying, I can't figure it out.
2. heavy, unpleasant accent -- I can understand what you're saying but I don't want to listen
3. light to medium accent -- no problem.
4. nearly invisible accent -- typically people who learned English between ages of 10 to 15. This tends to just be a bit of a lilt. I typically have to listen for a minute or two to be sure it's not native.
5. native
I've only run into one case of #5 in my life, and he claimed he did it by watching TV and singing along with rock songs. I doubt it, but that's what he claimed.
I definitely understand the benefit of moving from #1 to #3, but what's the benefit of moving from #3 to #5? To ... fool people? As Benny Lewis said, most people who are learning languages aren't learning them to be spies ...
Your reaction to no.1 and 2 pretty much sums up why people who need to earn a living sometimes obsess about their accents which in turn just makes things worse for them. No.3 often turns into a problem. No 5 - I've soaked lots of TV in foreign languages as a child, teenager, young adult and not-so-young-adult with little to no speaking and I still have mixed feelings about it myself.