How did you learn English?
PrevNode LinkNextWell, I am Israeli-born, but my parents moved to the United States when I was one year old until I was five years old (first to Dallas, Texas, and then to Rockville, Maryland), where I spoke English with the fellow children. However, after I returned to Israel at the age of five, the children there ridiculed me for my English. As a result, I did not want to speak it, and so forgot most of it, and just spoke Hebrew (which is my mother language). Possibly worse, I lost many of my earliest childhood memories, as I thought about them and remembered them in English.
After that, I had to regain English much more painfully as I learned it at school, and from other sources such as computerised Adventure games, books, films, Television shows, and the Internet.
Shortly after high school, I felt that my English has dramatically improved. Nonetheless, looking back at my English text from a few years back, I cringe at how bad it was, and some native speakers tell me that some of my writing is non-idiomatic.
I'm still trying to improve and not rest on my laurels (like I try with other skills and moral qualities I care about).
Note: I think my English improved after high school, despite the absence of a formal scholastic frame, due to a mixture of reading books, reading Internet texts in English, reading software documentation (I was employed as a software developer), watching some Television shows, and more practice at writing English texts (using computers' keyboards).