The most effective methods

I am an English teacher at secondary school in Prague, Czech Republic and I have just read some discussions about "poor standards of teaching English" at schools in the Czech Republic. I think - as I have been teaching English for about twenty years at all kinds of schools and levels - that I have a lot of experience and can notice interesting things when it comes to "what makes a good English teacher or a good English lesson". The school whee I teach offers students' exchange programs and some of our students spend a year or two studying at high schools in the US or UK and come back. And it is really interesting to compare them with those students who don't have this experience.
And there are some other interesting things I must mention when it comes to criticizing the standards of teaching English in the Czech Republic.

Firstly, what is interesting is that the students who have studied in an English speaking country, don't come back boasting flawless English. They still make mistakes from time to time, are not familiar with all phrasal verbs our upper intermediate books teach, and only few of them come back without a Czech accent. Another interesting thing is that
none of these students excel in tests as compared to the "non-traveling" students. We
organize something similar to FCE tests each year and the best students in these tests are not those who have studied abroad! I can only agree that those who have studied abroad can express themselves as fluently as the best non-traveling students, but usually
not much better.

One surprising thing - a student who has studied in the UK for a year came back and when I told the class what I expect from them and listed "flexibility, open-minded attitude", the ex-British school student did not know the term "flexible". But what is more surprising is that when I was teaching "sports" she could not undertand why I wanted the students to think about the topic using different views rather than telling them
direct definitions. I told her, "look, in the future, if you want to study philosophy or humanities or work for a successful compary, you will have to be flexible and you will have to come up with new ideas and different views. Now I want you to think, not to memorize facts. I would expect more modern and open-minded attitude from a former British school student. Some of my students criticized the fact that I had never studied at a "foreign school". It was a kind of questionnaire, but they might have been joking. We all know that some American or British schools are excellent. But we also know that some are not.

In the internet discussion someone said that a student of English must not learn from someone with wrong pronunciation. They probably meant "accent". I stayed in the US some years ago and met a lot of Polish and some Korean Americans. None of these people spoke with an American accent. Yet, they are living in the US as Americans and are successful and have no problem communicating. Some of them even make a lot of grammatical mistakes. Americans. So I don't think it is such a tragedy if you learn English from someone with a foreign accent. Take Milos Forman, a Czech American, he speaks with PERFECT Czech accent, he has the most beautiful, pure, totally Czech accent I have ever heard, yet his vocabulary and grammar is flawless. When I was living in New York City, my English was better than most people I met during the day.
Of course, most of the people were Chinese, Russian, Polish and other minorities.

One person in the dissussion pointed out that a friend of her, who had studied English in Czech schools, is not able to watch American films without Czech subtitles. This is another interesting argument. I often notice that when I watch a film in Czech, my native language, and the dialogues are about politics or something detectives deal with, I have no idea what they are talking about. Of course, in English it is the same thing. I don't understand politics or the world of gangsters and their language. I don't think a quality school will teach students to fully understand films in English. The world of slang is unlimited and I don't know what kind of method or book or teacher could teach complete American or British slang. I think you have to live in the US or another English speaking country, watch movies regularly and speak to locals who speak local English and then you - after ten years of such life - will probably understand everything.
But read some Nietschze to them in English and unless they are crazy about philosophy, they will have no clue what the book is about.

So people have all kinds of naive ideas about learning a language. I have been using English every single day, reading, writing, speaking, for about 15 years and I still make mistakes, don't understand all words and sometimes watch films with Czech subtitles when I want to understand all details. So it seems it is impossible to learn complete English, but it is possible to become fluent, read and understand things you are interested in, write about things you are into, and speak about some of the things that
you like.

One of my colleague, who is from Australia., told me the other day: Why, I don't understand why your school hires native speakers. Some of you Czech guys are fluent in English and you (he meant myself) are almost fluent in English.

Wow, after teaching English for 20 years and using the language on the everyday basis,
I am almost fluent. Bummer! Anyway, although I am not fluent, I have an excuse.
My native Czech sounds strange and I cannot express myself without using some English structures. When I write an essay in Czech , an expert, a journalist will find about 20 mistakes in style per three pages. When I wrote an essay as an entrance test for my TEFL course, the teachers said my essay was much better than most of the native applicants' essays. Now, something is wrong with teaching English in the Czech Republic! It must be the Soviet propaganda's fault.