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Have you ever wondered how native speakers learn English in school?
If you’re a non-native speaker, it probably looks the same way you learned your own language. So, why don’t non-native speakers learn English the same way?
The truth is, most non-native English countries teach English with different goals and formats than what native English-speaking countries do. Consequently, this difference often leaves you wondering why you still struggle to reach fluency and fight against English learning challenges.
The Non-Native Path to English: A Different Approach
I’ve been teaching English privately in Poland for about 18 years now, so I’m quite familiar with how English is often taught in public schools here.
In fact, I once asked a good friend of mine about it. He’s a public school English teacher with a master’s degree in English philology. Therefore, I was keen to see what that was about and where the differences lie in methodology.
Teacher Jon: “What did they teach you?” I asked.
Marcin: “How to teach English grammar,” he replied.
Teacher Jon: “Where do you start with English grammar?” I prompted.
Marcin: “Well, the basics. The verb tenses. It depends what level you’re teaching, really.”
Teacher Jon: Then I asked him a crucial question: “Did you learn to teach the parts of speech and English sentence structure?”
Marcin: He paused, genuinely thoughtful, then said, “Actually, no. Not that I can remember.”
This conversation, which I included in the prologue of my book English Grammar Explained, highlights a fundamental gap.
There’s a significant difference between what native speakers learn in school and how non-native speakers often learn. It’s this “gap” that leads to many English learning challenges for non-native speakers. To personify these challenges, I’ve created villain names for them, so you can put a face to the problems you face:
What English learning challenges arise from this gap in teaching formats
- A lack of understanding of natural English sentence structure.
- Translation errors and Mother Tongue’s Influence.
- A functional but insufficient level of vocabulary (the Vocabulary Void) that also leads to translation mistakes and (you guessed it) Mother Tongue’s Influence.
- Zero intuitive understanding of English verb tenses often resulting from incomplete and overly simplistic grammar formulas (the work of another villain in The Generic Textbook Golem).
- With all the translation and lack of grammatical intuition, English learners make lots of repeated errors and mistakes (the work of the Grammar Gremlins).
I know, it’s depressing, right? These are just five of the full list of seven English learning villains, of which you can read about in my full guide to English learning challenges.
So, How Do Native Speakers Learn English in School? My 7th Grade Secret
Recently, a student of mine recently asked me about this very thing. She was learning vocabulary connected with jobs at school, but felt it wasn’t helping her speak better. She turned to me and asked, “How did you learn English vocabulary as a native speaker? Did you do something different at school?”
Her question immediately took me back to my own 7th-grade English teacher, Mr. Clarkson. He was a very old guy, and frankly, his classes were extremely boring. Probably nothing like what high school students experience today!
My 7th Grade Secret: The Mr. Clarkson Method (A Conversation)
(Begin Dialogue – Integrates the story and conversation seamlessly)
STUDENT: Jon, I feel stuck sometimes. I know many English words, but when I try to speak, I never have the right words to finish my sentence. I just… stop. My school, they give us topics, you know, new words for travel or work, but it’s not helping me to speak better. How did you learn English vocabulary as a native speaker? Did you do something different at school?
JON: Ah, a great question. It reminds me of my seventh-grade English teacher, Mr. Clarkson. He was a very old guy. And his classes, well, they were extremely boring. Probably nothing like what you guys do in school here.
STUDENT: Boring in what way?
JON: Every day we’d walk in and there it was. A vocabulary worksheet and a dictionary on every desk. You finished one? Mr. Clarkson would check it, reach into his file cabinet, and pull out another. I swear it was an endless supply. My classmates learned to work very, very slowly. They were wise to it; they just wanted to get through the day.
STUDENT: That’s it? Just one vocabulary worksheet after another?
JON: So, I raced through them. We begged him for something else. Reading, creative writing, anything! But no, it was mostly just one vocabulary sheet after another. Looking back, that relentless systematic practice, boring as it was, gave me a massive vocabulary. Words I share with my students today. It was the “boring secret” to my native vocabulary.
STUDENT: You know that does sound boring.
JON: Exactly. So, while it wasn’t exciting, that daily deliberate exposure to words systematically, one after another, day after day, that’s how we build vocabulary as native speakers. It creates the foundation. I mean, isn’t that what you do in your Polish lessons?
STUDENT: You know, I think you have a point. So, why don’t we learn English vocabulary like you do as native speakers?
JON: Well, I think the point of English for non-natives is to become communicative. You need the kind of words for the limited situations you might face English in life like travel, sport or work. But we native speakers need the total package. So, we learn vocabulary our whole school career not based on any topic but just according to these state-approved lists. By the time we graduate from school, we all have a pretty strong vocabulary.
STUDENT: So, then how can I start learning vocabulary like that? I hate getting stuck! That’s a great question.
JON: Well, um I think the best way is to buy some vocabulary workbooks that are intended for American or British school-aged students. These vocabulary exercises are different. They make you think more about the words—their forms, their nuances, and how they fit into sentences. They expose you to words you probably couldn’t imagine knowing if you didn’t learn it from a native-speaker-aligned system.
STUDENT: That sounds like a great plan. So, where can I find these kinds of books? Perhaps you can share some of these worksheets at the start of our lessons?
JON: Of course! I happen to have several of these workbooks as resources. I’ll start doing some of these exercises with you beginning next week. This will really help you.
STUDENT: Thank you. I think that’ll really help me.
(End Dialogue)
The Moral of the Story: Native English speakers learn systematically
What this story tells you about English learning for native speakers is that we do a lot of foundational, sometimes seemingly “busy,” work. I’m talking about things like:
- Vocabulary worksheets (like Mr. Clarkson’s!)
- Parts of speech and sentence structure worksheets
- Reading comprehension and context clues
- Composition writing
We literally begged Mr. Clarkson to give us something to read and discuss, but he only gave in at the end of that school year.
Why Your English Class Might Be Different (and Why it Matters)
This is a fantastic question that highlights a key difference. For non-native speakers, the initial goal is often to become communicative, to handle limited situations like travel, sports, or work. Therefore, schools and textbooks tend to focus on topical vocabulary for those specific situations.
These topics aim to achieve multiple goals at once, such as learning related vocabulary and the grammatical structures and verb tenses needed to express ideas related to that topic.
For example, a unit on school and education will teach school subjects as vocabulary along with comparatives and superlatives as grammatical structures.
There’s nothing wrong with these types of books and exercises. Yet, they can be supplemented with more native-speaker styled books and activities for deeper mastery.
Native Speakers Learn “English Language Arts”
In the four years between my first time teaching in Poland and my return, I took a job at Sylvain Learning Centers. It’s an after-school program where children go to build their academic skills, get homework help, or learn valuable study skills.
I thought I would be mostly helping learners with homework. However, I was thrust into practicing language arts at every level, from first graders all the way up to high schoolers.
The main focus was to build vocabulary, phonics, reading skills, writing skills, and sentence building rules along with the parts of speech. I thought these resources were absolutely fantastic since the exercises were so different from what I had gotten used to as an EFL teacher in Poland.
Eventually, I returned to Poland to teach again. As I began to build up my personal library of teaching resources, I thought back to my time teaching for Sylvain and started looking for similar workbooks and resources. I knew that these exercises were vastly different from what EFL resources looked like.
What do typical Native Speaker English Resources look like? Let’s break it down.
For starters, native speaker workbooks are not collections of topic-based vocabulary, nor do they focus heavily on verb tenses in the grammar books. Let’s look at each type of skill and explain what these workbooks look like.
1. Native Speaker Vocabulary Builders.
Every English teacher needs to add a mix of native-speaker vocabulary workbooks to their collection at different grade levels.
These books focus on building vocabulary by parts of speech as well as building thinking skills in the process.
One of my books, Daily Skill Builders grade 4-5, contains a “Common Core” word list of about 400 words and exercises words in groups of 8-10, mostly by parts of speech. These words often don’t have any connection with each other apart from the fact that they are the same parts of speech.
This is what I mean by “horizontal vocabulary” development. Vertical vocabulary builds by topic, whereas horizontal vocabulary just builds vocabulary full stop. This way, you’ll get a wider range of vocabulary than what an EFL vocabulary book gives.
Furthermore, many vocabulary workbooks build your thinking skills. Another book in my collection, Spectrum Vocabulary Grade 4, pulls together collections of “thinking vocabulary” exercises. Here’s a look at some exercise types:
- Classification exercises offer a lot of “odd one out” exercises. These seem simple, but done verbally, they are a goldmine for getting English learners to contrast and spell out similarities and differences in the form of compound, complex, or even compound-complex sentences.
- Analogy exercises often populate books like this and are another great way to exercise compare and contrast language. Another benefit of doing these exercises aloud is that they tend to fix common collocation mistakes like “similar than” or “similar as” that learners sometimes make.
- Synonym, antonym, and homonym exercises are common staples in books like this. These exercises force you to “think in English” because you’re relating English words to English words.
I could go on about this and other similar books like it. The point is, the exercises I’ve just explained all force you to think.
2. Native Speaker Grammar Builders
English language arts grammar books also focus on a different approach. You can practice everything there is to know about each part of speech before you even think about trying to learn the verb tenses.
In fact, the grammar workbooks I’ve purchased hardly do any work on verb tenses at all. Instead, they focus on the following:
- Sentence structure
- Parts of speech
- Sentence types
- Sentence building rules (like parallelism, dangling modifiers, and other great exercise types)
Recently, I did a “dangling” modifier exercise with one of my advanced students and he had never experienced anything like it before. I used the opportunity to teach him some rules surrounding correct and incorrect word order as well as how to fix broken sentences.
3. Reading Skill Builders
Reading skill builders really challenge your English thinking skills. Books in this category are short story readers with follow-up questions after each text. The kind of exercises you’ll find are:
- Inferences
- Author’s purpose
- Summarizing sentences
- Sequences
- Context Clues
- Cause and effect
The exercises I express here are the very essence of “thinking in English” exercises.
I could go on to other categories of books like pronunciation-specific books, writing books, and more.
How to Start Learning English the "Native Way"
“So then how can I start learning vocabulary like that? I hate getting stuck!” my student asked, voicing a common English vocabulary problem.
Well, the best way is to use vocabulary workbooks intended for American or British school-aged students. These vocabulary exercises are different. They make you think more about the words—their forms, their nuances, and how they fit into sentences. They expose you to words you probably couldn’t imagine knowing if you didn’t learn it from a native-speaker-aligned system.
“That sounds like a great plan. So, where can I find these kinds of books? Perhaps you can share some of these worksheets at the start of our lessons?” she asked.
Of course! I have several of these workbooks as resources, and I’ll start doing some of these exercises with you beginning next week. This will really help you.
The Proof is in the Pudding: My experiment with a real student
As a private teacher, I’m blessed to have dedicated and ambitious students who take every opportunity to learn. Therefore, I gave one of my longtime students a vocabulary workbook with a wordlist of about 400 words that American 5th grade students might learn from.
He ended up doing all the exercises from beginning to end – [how many in total over what time period]. Afterwards, we discussed his experience. One thing he admitted was he completely agreed with the video clip I played him (the conversation about Mr. Clarkson).
My student agreed that his English learning was more topical and that it was aimed at making him communicative in English. He also stated that while he’d already known a lot of the words taught in that workbook, there were some total surprises in the vocabulary lists.
He appreciated how many of the related exercises gave you definitions and the context to use the new words. And, he wished that he could have learned English more this way. We both agreed that the topical learning was probably necessary if not incomplete.
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So there you have it. Now you know how native speakers learn English in school.
Please comment below with your stories. How did you learn English at school?
