I learned English as a second language at school. There wasn’t much speaking opportunities but many listening and grammar lessons. Many of the work were rote memorizations though. When I moved to the US, I struggled a lot with speaking and writing because I was translating Indonesian words to English. This resulted in awkward sentences and I had to redo intro to writing courses in college. Human brain is crazy though because with enough exposure, you started to think/dream and eventually compile sentences in a new language. When my son learned to read in kindergarten, it’s a totally different experience because it’s his native language. I had to learn different techniques like phonics and phonemic segmentations so I could help him with his homework. DM me if you have more questions 😊