How did you learn English?

[Ouroboros]

Interesting topic, My uncle lived in Ireland for 20 some years, and when he came back he made sure every kid in the family learns how to speak English, it was a great thing he did and I'll always be grateful. But the problem with learning English the way I did, is that I royally suck at grammar and also have a ridiculous Irish accent.

You didn't share your story lad, how did you learn English? I'm guessing it involved a lot of books and classes, since you do it so neat and proper..

[Mehrbod]

Interesting topic, My uncle lived in Ireland for 20 some years, and when he came back he made sure every kid in the family learns how to speak English, it was a great thing he did and I'll always be grateful. But the problem with learning English the way I did, is that I royally suck at grammar and also have a ridiculous Irish accent.

You didn't share your story lad, how did you learn English? I'm guessing it involved a lot of books and classes, since you do it so neat and proper..

My learning did involve a lot of books, but no classes. I can't explain just how much I hate attending a class and learning with other people. I've developed this sense over the years that if too many people are all doing the same thing, then the thing's ought to be just plain wrong or unnecessary or avoidable in some manner! That's how much I distrust popular judgement

The only thing I've ever learned from attending these so-called educational classes - besides language, were some phone numbers which ironically enough, none of them worked out as a relationship anyway! :)


However I learned what I know by using a very simple translator, you selected the word and the its translation would pop up on the screen.
With that in hand, I read some pretty interesting books. It was rather tiresome at the beginning, reading and understanding one sentence could take up to ten minutes whiich easily bores most people, but then reading paragraphs took about the same time, and in no time I could read a whole book without using the translator that much anymore, since most of the meaning's guessable through the context anyway.

But the whole vocabulary I learned this way was stored in this part of the memory called "passive memory". I could understand pretty much everything, but I couldn't verbalize any sentences whatsoever. That was the case until I moved to Canada and that's where the magic of non-linearity revealed itself to me!

The first day I couldn't formulate one single proper sentence, but in less than a few days, every word that I've had ever learned magically found its way into my speech and working memory (active-memory), and before I knew I could speak English rather fluently!