oppressed minorities, I don't think

[Voyageur]

My spelling only really became relatively good (by no means excellent) as a result of voracious reading in my youth (and later years). I hated coming across a word I didn't know so had a well thumbed dictionary beside my bed.

If I hadn't read so many books my vocabulary/grammar would be a bit stunted, and I wonder if kids don't much like reading books etc. that that may have a long term effect?

[Annie]

My spelling only really became relatively good (by no means excellent) as a result of voracious reading in my youth (and later years). I hated coming across a word I didn't know so had a well thumbed dictionary beside my bed.

If I hadn't read so many books my vocabulary/grammar would be a bit stunted, and I wonder if kids don't much like reading books etc. that that may have a long term effect?

Thats fine Voyageur,
I used to pick a word a day to learn,but you need to have a good memory!
my daughter on the other hand, has a photographic memory, she can even remember what page she read something on,wish I had that ability.

[Tim Lund]

My spelling only really became relatively good (by no means excellent) as a result of voracious reading in my youth (and later years). I hated coming across a word I didn't know so had a well thumbed dictionary beside my bed.

If I hadn't read so many books my vocabulary/grammar would be a bit stunted, and I wonder if kids don't much like reading books etc. that that may have a long term effect?

I also read a lot as a teenager - long before I began to care about spelling - and if necessary I'd look up words I didn't know (although sometimes I guessed them from context), but it didn't make me remember the precise spellings. In fact, I once helped with some adult literacy courses, and I remember from the training being told that most experienced readers read that fast that they will often be recognising words from their shapes - which is I am sure what I did - after all, there's not much difference in shape between difference and differance. So I suspect you have a naturally better - more focused? - visual memory than me - such as Robin suggests can sometimes be the case.

In my own case, I think it was something to do with being a mathematician - I felt language ought to be more logical than it in fact is, and I was in some kind of revolt against the freaks of English spelling. Later, when learning to spell better, I was always looking for - and sometimes found - various rules to help me learn. But ultimately, it would have been mainly memory training - for which you don't need any particular schooling.