4- Learning English

I started to learn English as a second language one year before I started puberty; I was twelve years old, in seventh grade in a public middle school in Egypt in transitional programs (Children's native or primary languages and the English language are used as a means of helping them learn English).

In Egypt, there are private English schools that use immersion programs (Approach involves teaching the new (English) language to non-English-speaking (NES) and limited-English-speaking (LES) children by a teacher who is proficient in the learners' primary language. However, the teacher uses English only.) They start teaching English language since kindergarten, and they teach science and mathematics in English. Of course, the students in these private schools master the English language skills much better than other students in public schools.

 The teachers, in my public school, were just following the curriculum that was government mandated, higher-order language functions, and focusing on language rather than on the culture or the content area subject.

The instruction was focusing on reading and writing skills and ignoring listening and speaking skills. Therefore, I felt that the morphology and syntax levels in English are much easier than phonetics and phonology levels. Also, there was no material other than the books.

My first language (Arabic) has a different script. So I spent the first month just studying the alphabet, how it is pronounced and written, and the difference between the upper case and lower case. Then I studied the greeting, short paragraphs, some stories, dialogues and a lot of grammar.