"They" attempted to teach me both French and German and in both cases I quite literally had no idea what was going on. A* pupil in English and English Literature.
I am sure it is different today but certainly in the '80s and into the '90s you could arrive in senior school with perfect English and no idea why.
The shocker for me was that I'd spent my whole short life up until that point just correctly intuiting all of the weird grammar modifications and then suddenly I couldn't. Any attempt to explain went right over my head as the framework to explain them was just missing.
"They" attempted to teach me both French and German and in both cases I quite literally had no idea what was going on. A* pupil in English and English Literature.
I am sure it is different today but certainly in the '80s and into the '90s you could arrive in senior school with perfect English and no idea why.
The shocker for me was that I'd spent my whole short life up until that point just correctly intuiting all of the weird grammar modifications and then suddenly I couldn't. Any attempt to explain went right over my head as the framework to explain them was just missing.