How did I learn English

When I was  eight years old my parents bought a new house in a new niegborhood, so I had to go to a new school. In this school everything was taught in English, everything except Spanish of course. I remember that the teacher spoke in English all day long, but it wasn't hard for me to understand. I had to learn many vocabulary words with their meanings in spanish and learn dialogues by heart to represent in front of the class. We also read stories, listening to the teacher and trying to follow  the lines with our fingers. That's what I remember from third and fourth grade.
 In fifth grade, it was a bit different, there were levels from the higher to the lower. I was in the higher; at the begining I felt lost because the rythm of the class was too fast for me, reading on my own, answering questions aloud, learning vocabulary words in english and of course grammar, many diferent exercises to practice present perfect or past continous. But as we always read a text, those structures were in those texts, so it wasn't so difficult, the teacher taught us a "kind of formula" and then we applied it making the exercises. At the same time, every week, we had to learn 10 or 15 verbs and their tenses, and every week represent different dialogues or tell poems in front of the class. The stories were about different topics, one month travels around the world, the other buying at different shops etc....
 In high school, we wrote many texts and read some books but I remember only one "Tom Sawyer" I don´t know why I forgot all the others.
 Even though learning english was easy for me and I liked it a lot, it was too different from how english is taught now in my school.