I grew up in a mostly Mandarin and sometimes Wu-speaking household in China with a ready stock of, and ample access to Anglo-American media. Growing up I almost exclusively watched subtitled and sometimes dubbed American cartoons, but didn't start learning English until 9 when I hit 3rd grade. All of the English teachers I've had since then until 15 spoke with varying degrees of a Chinese accent, but tape accompaniments in General American English to our textbooks were available, so there was a source of native pronunciation. I was very socially isolated during childhood, so I didn't speak Chinese as much as other people would have, which might have helped me get a better grip of English. Regardless, by the end of middle school (15), I didn't need to actively study English anymore because I was passing tests with flying colours, sans revision. By this point, some weird things are already starting to show, like how I never really bothered learning grammar, but more or less just "felt" them most of the time. I've also expanded my English entertainment to YouTube gaming videos re-uploaded to Chinese sites, so I was getting a lot of semi-natural native English material on a daily basis, and subtitles became unnecessary. At this point, I've still never met a native English speaker.
For highschool, I went to an international school teaching GCSE & A-Level & Chinese HS Curriculum in 3 years, this time with native English speakers from America, Australia, Wales and Scotland for teachers (about half of the time). And going through those 3 years, English certainly offered shelter from Maths and Physics, both of which I've had to drop. By senior year, I was able to speak General American English fluently, and without a discernible foreign accent. My English accent also came about that year after a whole lot of not doing homework and binging Game of Thrones. Other more novel accents included: stoner, valley girl, "Inposiburu Japanese", hillbilly, "Hyper-Down-Under", and "It's-a mi Mario". I think most of those came from GTA and South park because I was an egdelord. Later in my senior year, I did my IELTS test for the first time, without preparing, and came out with an 8.0. I ended up being accepted by a university here in Scotland and came here when I was 18. My first time in an English speaking country.
When I came to Scotland, I was still primarily speaking slightly choppy General American English, though in a few months the choppiness was gone. My English accent also started to pop up as well, when one day I'd wake up speaking GAE, and the next day I'd be speaking RP. I can code-switch between two distinct accents that are evolving in different directions. Eventually, my RP, now mixed with Cockney, took over as my primary accent, and I was taken to be from London when I was in Manchester. MAE, now fallen out of use, took on a very slight southern drawl. That's the situation at the moment, but I'm looking forward to adding Scottish influences to my still very English accent. Thinking back on how I got here, it's all kinda confusing. I don't really believe anyone's born talented, which makes me think basically adopting English as the language of my entire media diet from an early age might have helped a great deal. I've always been able to achieve stunning levels of proficiency in subjects that require a lot of accumulation and not a lot of thinking, as I basically learned English through pathological procrastination while trying to do other things. Probably not a very good idea for other people to adopt, since I've basically had to culturally isolate myself from everyone else around me, but I wanna know if other people's had similar, if less extreme, experiences.
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