Unfortunately, traditional language teaching in schools has been consistently failing to prepare the students to acquire a new language, yet there is little innovation to change it over the years. That might be changing now, as reported in this article at Washington Post:

In the Cultural Identity in a Changing World course, 16 students sitting in a four-hour class last week learned about chameleons in apartheid South Africa, people whose official racial designation was changed by the government through the stroke of a pen. Indians became colored. Chinese became white.

The course is designed to teach the nitty-gritty of language acquisition -- reading, writing and oral communication -- through the context of content rather than through drilling of basic skills, something common in traditional classes for nonnative English speakers.

(The full article is here) I wish every school and community college that offer ESL course would do the same.