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Cutting down on errors | ||
Tags: Corrections | Error | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5386 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 12 20 September 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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You could make a mistake 20 times, if no one mentions it, you'll never be able to correct it. So I try to set up an environment where corrections are welcome and I correct myself right away whenever one is pointed out. I don't expect to correct it forever right away, so I allow myself to make the same mistake a few times, and generally, it will usually fix itself.
If there is something you can't get rid of, ask yourself why. Are you missing the point? Then make sure you get it. Do you get it but it keeps coming out wrong? Then practice that specific point, ask people to point it out deliberately, etc. As you try to correct yourself, you also pay attention to what others are saying and this is perhaps the most crucial part of correction in the long term -- being able to self-correct by comparing what you say to what others say. This is especially feasible when a person replies using a different wording than what you offered. And lastly, I think you can correct everything solely through oral language, and I don't thinking writing or reading has any particular bearing, unless of course it's the only possible input you have. Still, correcting yourself orally has a lot more impact than changing some letters on paper (or on a screen). Edited by Arekkusu on 20 September 2012 at 6:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 10 of 12 21 September 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's important to differentiate various kinds of errors. Pronunciation errors are in a world by themselves. Writing errors are, in my opinion, of a least three kinds or levels. At the lowest level, it's getting the mechanics right. That's the right words, spelling, morphology, syntax and word order. At a next level, it's using the right idiomatic expressions. And at a third level, it's the register, style, tone of voice, degree of politeness, etc. All of these are intimately interconnected of course.
There are of course reading and oral comprehension errors although we don't talk about them so much. Things like idioms and metaphors can be challenging to understand. In my opinion, the major source of mistakes for adult learners is the underlying presence of the native language. Many, if not most, of the mistakes we make come from attempting to translate from our native language into the target language. This always leads to mistakes. The only way to solve this problem is a combination of considerable input of good models and, more importantly, instant correction by a trained and patient tutor. If you are not corrected, you will never really improve. There are just too many ways to go wrong. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 12 13 January 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Me too. I don't know how to reach this level of correctness. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 12 of 12 12 February 2013 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not an expert in the subject but do find for European languages you can get spell
checks & grammar checks. If you have a copy of a word processing software on your computer, you can usually enter the text and let the computer pick out more common mistakes. The computer may not be able to pick up all the mistakes but at least you know your words are not misspelled. You still have to read over the paragraph you typed and then copy & paste the text into your E-mail. The 1 language that absolutely cannot be spell checked is Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese). There are many words that sound the same and unlike English there are no break between words in a sentence so even the best input software you have can't spell check. You enter each character individually with Pinyin phonetics. A friend recent sent a letter in Chinese with 2 typos: 友 instead of 右 (both came out as "you" with Pinyin) and 的 instead of 得 (both came out as "de" with Pinyin). Otherwise you can try feeding the text into Google Translate just to see if there are spelling mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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