It is interesting how many people on this board learned to read and write before they went to school quite a few people have stated they don't remember not knowing how. (This is true for me too since my learning-to-read stories only came down as family anecdotes later in life; I don't actually remember the phonics books.) I guess we all got hooked on language at an early age...or we wouldn't have ended up here!

About learning to write...to this day, my mother insists that my handwriting was ruined by my Canadian teacher when I came back from Italy. We learned cursive writing right from the get-go in Italy, starting in grade one, so I came back in grade three with great handwriting and all my classmates were just learning. My mother had to ask special permission from the teacher for me to use cursive in my assignments because that's what I was used to using. I got a lot of flack from the other kids "GASP! You're not ALLOWED to use cursive writing on your stories yet!" "Ummm...I am...because the teacher said I could...." This did not increase my popularity in the class. Anyway, the teacher still forced my to write my letters in the North American style, so I lost the great script I had learned in Italy. I still find Italian handwriting easier to read. For one thing, it isn't slanted way over to the right like the classic version is here.

Interestingly, my writing continued to deteriorate so that by grade ten I couldn't really read my own writing. I then taught myself to print just as quickly as I once wrote, and now everything I do (except my signature) is printed.

Anyone else prefer printing over writing (not counting using this beast of a computer to make your writing neat)?