There were times in my childhood when mastering the English language felt like an impossible task. It just didn’t make any sense. Every rule seemed to have a bizarre set of exceptions and there were so many inconsistencies.

Sounding out words was all well and good, but then silent letters and double consonants would come along and flaunt their illogical quirks all over my exercise book. It seemed like a cruel joke that even the word ‘phonetic’ wasn’t spelled phonetically.

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