I am a native English (L1) speaker, born, raised and currently living in the USA. I have also lived/studied/volunteered/travelled all over Europe, lived in Siberia and am now planning to move to Seoul. I have a Master's degree in Adult Education and a TESOL certificate.
I have two things to say about this topic:
1) As someone who speaks Russian fluently and has in the past been more conversant than currently in German and French as well, I would say that relations with people in their native language are quite different than making them speak English, if it is not their first language. For example, I found that in the Louvre in Paris, when a Parisian and myself were admiring the same painting, and he found out I could speak French he began to tell me about other exhibits around the city. In Russia, I spoke Russian even with English teachers, even though I offered to speak English with them if they wanted to. I felt I was much more accepted as one of them by speaking their language with them.
2) Also, as an ESL/EFL teacher, I am very sensitive to try to avoid any possible insinuation that English (or the USA) is "better" than their language. I feel this can be a kind of cultural imperialism. Just like we are afraid of losing our biological diversity, I think we need to be concerned about our cultural and linguistic diversity too. In Russia, for example, I tried to approach English teaching from the standpoint that it was helpful for them in world/international communications. Also, I took into account that they might be using English to communicate with people from all different countries, including non-native (L2) speakers. So I looked at it in an instrumental way, that English might be useful for them.
By the way, I feel very unprepared going to S. Korea without knowing the language. I'm going to put a lot of effort into learning it though and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up before too long. I DO NOT want to just hang around the expatriate community. Oh, heavens, I avoided Americans in Russia. Americans have all the answers, are god of this world, and don't think we have to learn other languages and cultures. That's a generalization, but really, I never met one native English speaking English teacher who knew Russian the whole time I was in Russia. I met one German missionary couple who knew Russian. It was pretty bad.
