Did I Improve My English?

I just finished my English classes from a volunteer teacher. In the last class, our teacher asked us “Did you improve your English?” My answer was “I’d thought I would have improved my English more.” All of my classmates had the same impression. We were happy with our English teacher. He always brought interesting topics like recycling, foods, art and education systems. The classmates were coming from all over the world. Sometimes I had different ideas from them. I enjoyed talking about these topics and listening to other's opinions. All of my classmates really enjoyed our class, but we’ve never been satisfied our English. Even I could talk about some specific topics it didn't help understanding daily conversation. As my excuses, people in Manchester speak very fast. They are talkative and speaking to me, but they don't care whether I understand them or not. Even though I didn't understand what they said, I pretended like I understood. And the conversation was over. It was frustrating.

When I watched TV at home, I didn't fully understand the story. I needed to read subtitles. It was tiring. Yes, I’m lazy. I had dreamed that after staying one year in England, I could be a fluent English speaker. It's been one year since I came here. However, it didn't happen to me. Sometimes I feel happy about my speaking, but still I don't feel any progress in English.

In my daily life, I'm not expected to speak fluent English. All I'm expected to speak is short clear sentences. So it doesn't help in improving my English.

I'm not saying I'd like to speak like a politician, but I'd like to communicate with local people without a problem. I'll stay here more, so I wish I could improve my English before coming back to Japan.