Perceiving English

Back when I was teaching English, I found it interesting to observe how my students perceived my own native language. As rule, Japanese ESL students tend to treat English as an exact science, with absolute "right" or "wrong" answers, and whenever I'd give a vague reply about a certain word being correct in some situations but not in others they seemed disappointed, like I'd divided by zero or something. Many of my students were amazed that Americans have a subject called "English" in our schools, and they seem to imagine that we all automatically know every aspect of the language just by being born in an English-speaking country, so why would we ever need to study it? Everyone makes occasional mistakes with spelling or grammar, but if you're an English teacher in Japan, you'd better watch yourself, since students aren't equipped to comprehend the idea that their sensei might not know everything about English like the back of their hand. I had one student who told me she was able to understand English perfectly once she mastered the compound verbs which are quite common in English, like take on, take off, take over, take in; the rest, she told me, was just mastering vocabulary.