Posted: Dec 12, 2011 11:25 pm
I learned English at age 12, or just before. I had had a year of
Swedish, so prepositions were a familiar thing by then. My summer at
age 12 I was in summer school. Most of the other kids were dislexic or
had other learning difficulties. We concentrated on reading, which was
fine with me. By fall I went to school and actually skipped a grade. I
was advanced in math and they gave me some kind of IQ test. They
figured I could do it and I did, math and science was fine. I only started getting As in English
as well by high school (about 2 years English at that point), B's before that. Spelling made no sense so I
memorized the spelling of difficult words as I would pronounce them in
Finnish. Finnish spellling is phonetic, so you need to memorize the
spelling of a few odd combinations like nk and ng, the rest is
obvious. Foreigners get the double consonants messed up, though.
Swedish, so prepositions were a familiar thing by then. My summer at
age 12 I was in summer school. Most of the other kids were dislexic or
had other learning difficulties. We concentrated on reading, which was
fine with me. By fall I went to school and actually skipped a grade. I
was advanced in math and they gave me some kind of IQ test. They
figured I could do it and I did, math and science was fine. I only started getting As in English
as well by high school (about 2 years English at that point), B's before that. Spelling made no sense so I
memorized the spelling of difficult words as I would pronounce them in
Finnish. Finnish spellling is phonetic, so you need to memorize the
spelling of a few odd combinations like nk and ng, the rest is
obvious. Foreigners get the double consonants messed up, though.