One Country, One Language - Worldpress.org Following the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989, Russian was abolished in Czechoslovakia as the first foreign language, marking a turning point in foreign language teaching. Learning a foreign language is compulsory in today's Czech schools and students learn two or three languages in secondary school.
German is the second foreign language although students can also choose French, Spanish, or Italian. In areas near the German border, however, German is even taught as a first foreign language.
Since Czech is hardly spoken outside the Czech Republic, a large amount of prestige is attached to the main foreign languages. The training a foreign language teacher receives is therefore continually being improved. In the last few years, the C.L.I.L. method of teaching various subjects in a foreign language has gained in popularity. Every third secondary school in the Czech Republic already teaches its students in a foreign language.
This is a part of a larger article on foreign languages in the EU. It is fairly accurate with perhaps too much emphasis being put on teacher training. There's a good chance that both foreign language teaching and learning have improved because the Czechs' motivation has increased and students can now see real uses for all these foreign languages. It is a little known fact, that very few Czechs actually speak even passble Russian (despite 8 years worth of tuition) - this was due mostly to the fact that it was difficult to use Russian.
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