TL;DR: Does anyone else here come from a language background with deep orthography, and have you successfully learned to read without formal schooling? What do you recommend doing?
My native language is Hebrew. I started learning English at 5 when my parents decided to live abroad, and I went to an international school. English became dominant for me at 8 when we immigrated to the US. I don't really know how the fluency grading people often use works, but I generally feel very conversationally fluent. I can understand and communicate about all normal daily topics (e.g., we just bought our first home, and I had no issue discussing financial topics with my dad). There will maybe 1-2 words I won't know if I listen to the news or talk to someone about something very academic, but I can almost always get it by context. I probably sound a bit uneducated, but people don't usually guess I'm American when I visit until I ask for an English menu at a restaurant. I can read very slowly with mistakes, but I am decoding more than automatically/fluently reading. I have never been taught to spell and my handwriting is awful.
I have been trying all kinds of things:
- reading a super familiar book (Harry Potter) while listening to a YouTube recording I found of someone reading it in Hebrew (not sure if this is a good approach, just started this)
- Duolingo (annoying as hell, not friendly to learning to read when you already know the language)
- trying to sit in on Hebrew language classes (pointless, I just ended up being a tutor for other students' conversation skills)
- trying to journal in Hebrew (painfully slow because I have to look up how to spell almost everything)
- iTalki (again, poor fit because my conversational skills are fine).
Would love any advice from anyone else who is in this pickle. Should I be making flashcards of common words to memorize spelling? Doing more audiobook-guided reading? Forcing myself to write more, even if sloppily? I have taken a lot of language classes in my life (ASL, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic... and English I guess but I don't remember that) to varying degrees and do fine with structured programs, but I don't know how to go about it and this situation has bothered me all my life.
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