Read a lot. Little reading is required anymore, even in college. Understanding what has been read is even less emphasized. Reading should be approached as an athletic kind of training. Power reading should be intense, every day, several hours a day. Writing should be added to the power reading sessions once the pupil is fourteen. Reading unfamiliar foreign languages quickly exposes deficiencies in understanding, as does reading poetry.
Hear, hear. I did not overly trouble myself with English grammar until I began the study of German. It was the contrasts and similarities between the two languages that finally engaged my interest in the subject.
Of course, the downside is that it made me an insufferable Grammar Pecksniff.
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