Your points are interesting. My dd9 is in that category of having gotten terribly minimal english instruction especially in writing. They seem to have spent the past four years teaching them to write, "all in all" or "as you can see." Her spelling and writing are good enough, so she doesn't get a lot of attention.
However, she also doesn't like to read much and isn't picking anything up outside of school so I wonder if that may account for her semi-lackluster progress in LA.
My oldest got no better instruction (except for one year), but she read constantly. It seems that she has picked up a lot about good writing, vocabulary, grammar, etc. just through reading good writing. Other than the Twilight series she read a while back (and admitted herself that it was very poorly written), her reading tastes have never run along the lines of Junie B. Jones.
