Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
It depends on a particular school. During my shool time after five years of English lessons in ordinary shool (2x45min lessons a week) I was able to say only three phrases: "My name is Yuriy.","This is a table." and "Who is on duty today?"
I think in this case, Brazil and Russia are pretty much the same. In most schools, they don't focus strongly on English. We have the same 2x50min lessons per week (in general), but it's not that important, I guess, so I can relate to Basil's situation. And if they do focus on English, it's only the written part of it, so you learn to read and write, but no focus at all is given on listening and/or speaking.
That's why the language schools in Brazil are so strong. You can see an English (and sometimes English+Spanish) language school in every single neighborhood.
Even though Portuguese is closer to English than Russian is, not many people here speak English, even in an intermediate level. Among my 5 closer childhood friends, I'm the only one who has a good level of English. My best friends has only studied it at school, therefore all he can say is "My name is ....", "I'm from Brazil" and "Where is the bathroom?" =P On the other hand, among my college friends, pretty much all of them speak English in a decent level.