In my country, the English is taught from elementary school. We learn a lot of grammars and read a lot of articles. But I still feel my English is poor when talking to a foreigner, although I've learned English for twelve years. I just want to know how the native speaker learn English in school.
I can give you how we learn Chinese in the class. In elementary school, we write the characters for many times as homework or as punishment. If you've learned Chinese, you know how hard it is that writing Chinese characters. And then we learn a lot of articles from acient Chinese. I can say my Chinese is poor because I've never got 60 in Chinese exam, but I can get 90 in English exam.
The paradigm is completely different for us. Our "English" class is for grammar, for reading literature, for composition. We usually get English grammar or English composition homework, and later on, in junior high and high school, reading assignments, where we're assigned chapters of books to read and analyze.
But all of our other classes like math, social studies, science, and even gym classes are, of course, taught in English also. Even when we have our foreign language classes later on, the translations are in English.
We start off with just learning to write better, then start with focus on how to write a sentence. Eventually, we start to discuss and work with different parts of speech: interrogatory, statements vs commands (my brain this early isn't working to remember actual names of these), and questions. Then, that there are 2 parts of sentence. Then,we work on prepositions and phrases, adjectives, adverbs, and more parts of a sentence. We thgen do writing of papers and work on how to flow with topic and closing sentences, and how to end a paragraph and essay. Lots of work even for us to learn to speakand talk more fluently.
Same to me in high school, we learn a lot of grammar structure, I can pass the exam but then I can not remmember anything what I learn before. Untill now, I can not remember grammar structure too. when I write this comment, I just write what I think in my mind. I dont care about grammar.
