Parlez-Vous..... Another Language?

From Yahoo News:
"France Calls for Plan to Improve Language Teaching"

It seems odd that the French start learning another language at such an early age and yet many admit they can not communicate in that language. I have been to France many times and before I studied French I tried to say some basic phrases only to be made fun of or ignored. I even went over to French once with my high school French class (after only learning the language for 4 months) and found the English teacher at the French school could barely speak the language - how is she supposed to teach her students if she doesn't even know it that well? Hopefully, the French can create a good education plan that will actually work and the French will move away from the stereotype of refusing to speak English and instead will see that English is the only "World Language" and that if you want to communicate with others around the world you need to know and use English.

Just across the border in Luxembourg, children speak Luxembourgish as a native language and are taught certain subjects in French and others in German and then on top of that learn English as a foreign language. That's a total of 4 languages they learn. I know Americans and other native English-speakers aren't that good in learning a foreign language. I think that countries in the world need to do more to address learning English (in areas where English isn't a native language) and on the same note the English-speaking countries need to do more to encourage it's citizens to learn another language.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091013/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_foreign_languages