A few weeks ago I was asked by an intern at the IT department of the company I work for to review a text he had written for his English class. He wanted me to correct it, if necessary. I noticed he had two small mistakes in his text. I told him that I found those two errors, but that I would not tell him exactly where, because the text should represent accurately the level of his English skills. I said that two mistakes in a page-long text should not ruin his chances of graduating.

I was very surprised to find out that his teacher gave him a 5, saying the text was unintelligible and basically wrong. I felt personally responsible, for I had told him that the text was fine, so I decided to go to his school, which is located near Nam. Miru (thus frequented by many well-to-do people from the Vinohrady area). We found the English teacher in question and I confronted her, in Czech, about her non-sense judgment.

She acted very arrogantly and told me that she should be the one to know what is correct English and what is not, for she teaches it. So I switched to speaking English. She was in shock, her eyes betrayed she was not understanding a word of what I was saying. Although I had just asked her which words or sentences she thought were not correct in her pupil's text, her answer was "yes". So I repeated the question, this time simplifying my American accent, but her next reply was "sure". Then I asked "is it my impression or you don't get what I'm saying?" She was obviously incapable of understanding even that. So I requested her, in Czech, to explain to me, in English, what was wrong in the boy's text. Her face turned red and she replied "Roman knows English very little, I did not understood what he writes for me"... Horrible English! I do not expect English teachers to speak flawlessly, but in her case I should say she spoke less than her pupil. In the end, she agreed to give him a 3! I would give her a 5...

This would be just a singular case of a bad teacher in one school, if it had not happened three times before. In 1998 I confronted the English teacher of a friend, under similar circumstances, and she was totally unable to carry a conversation in the language she taught. The two other cases are actually of friends of mine who teach in local schools. I invited them, in separate occasions, to dinner, when some of my other guests were English-speaking-only. Both were very limited in their grammar and, oddly enough for a teacher, made the typical Czech mistake of mixing up "teaching" with "learning" (as is also common here with "lending" and "borrowing").

It is appalling the lack of control over whether English teachers can really speak English. How many boys and girls fail in their English classes because of such false teachers?