The answer is the same. Englishmen - and women - don't learn English. They acquire it as children. At school they may learn French, or Spanish or German (or any other foreign language) but why would they need to learn English ?? They learn to read, they may learn creative writing in English, or later they may study literature - but that's got nothing to do with learning the language. As I said, you do that as a small child interacting with others.
I imagine that when Chinese students study 2000 year old articles that too has a secondary aim - learning new characters, studying written style or whatever - ?? And if your question is really how do English speaking students do that, they don't. Obviously, there isn't the problem of characters - by the time they are about six most kids can read. And in terms of developing the ability to write, simple specially constructed texts would be more likely to be used. The BBC has some good resources for teachers/kids for use in
literacy and
English classes - click on the links to see the type of approach taken.