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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1305 of 1511 24 December 2014 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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So how do I practice writing in a coherent fashion?
You figure out what you want to write about and you write about that. And the key thing is that you figure out what you want to write about BEFORE you put pen to paper because otherwise it's going to be a long, dull evening staring at your keyboard that could be better spent partying with TL speakers. And that's if you hate partying as much as I do. So. The thing is that you need to start with a theme, an idea, which you're going to work out later. Something that makes your brain bells ring and think and go "that's cool!" This could be telling a story about your day, but once you get past the bit where you've mentioned how fluffy Fido was when you cuddled him today, it's not going to last very long. It could be a ten-page essay on botany (not my personal favourite). The point is that you're going to introduce this theme in the first paragraph (the first!) so that we all know what topic you're going to be talking about. Then you're going to use that paragraph to explain what the hell you want to do with that topic. This is especially important if you're writing a longer text (less if you're doing a column or a blog-entry type thing where rambling is a lot more common). But the point is that the tone of the first paragraph should make clear to anyone reading your work what you're going to do. That's why that paragraph is so important. Every other paragraph (except the concluding one) is always going to build on the premise you introduce there. No cheaty-cheaty! Don't try and put it in the second/third/whateverth paragraph, it doesn't work. People generally read the first paragraph first and they quit if that doesn't interest them, so the purpose has to be in there! If you need a second paragraph to explain the purpose of your text, you're writing a pretty long piece already and then you need to look at your professor/editor/whoever told you to write 15 pages in Quechua. The last paragraph is also key because in it you will want to refer to your first paragraph somehow and tie the knot so to speak. Note that this is very hard if you're only writing a few paragraphs, so you might have to make the reference a little short or concise. But that's okay, because conciseness is a virtue. So what you end up having is paragraph 1 - why? paragraph 2, 3.... n-1 all this stuff explaining the why in coherent terms paragraph N (final) conclude and check if you did what you set out to do in 1. In some styles of text, like a formal application letter, this takes very specific rules and you can just follow the guidelines for how cover letters work, but even if you do free writing you need to have some semblance of this structure intact because otherwise No One Is Going To Want to Read It. Not even the guy on lang-8 who corrected the neighbour's awful Chinese text. But a paragraph is really short? How do I shove my thoughts into a paragraph? You formulate a key sentence and you open the paragraph with it. If you're a really advanced writer (that is, not me, a professional journalist or something) then you know all of this already and you can play with it, but if you're not, like me, then the first sentence of the paragraph's the one that does the heavy lifting. The rest just supports him. "Key sentence: - cause - consequence - extra information - so final thought leading into the next paragraph". You split the paragraph where your thoughts can be reliably separated into two. Like in this text; the paragraph above is about formulating Key Sentences and this one is about Splitting Them. Got it? Good. The key is that every paragraph logically tacks onto the previous one, or onto one before that (but then make sure the order isn't random and you tie two thought lines together). Some people like explaining the layout of an essay in the first paragraph entirely, but I'd do that more if it was an academic piece - I forego that crap if it's a blog entry. If it's a newspaper article then I would mention it, by the way. Those articles tend to have very fixed structures. I tend to write pieces that are about five to six paragraphs long (something around one A4 page is good enough). They can be a bit longer if there are more thoughts in your brain to work out, or shorter if writing that much is too exhausting from looking up words, but pick a length that isn't too long so that you don't exhaust yourself while writing (or pick the length your exam stipulates if that's why you're doing it). And furthermore it's good to be concise, because you'll get to the point faster and you'll have to use less clumsy circumlocutions and complex grammar! Keeping it simple is allowed. Recommended, even. Another reason to keep the text this short is to make sure you can keep track of all your mental thoughts during the writing process. Half the battle when writing isn't grammar. It's about getting your thoughts to translate to paper properly. Grammar's just a tool you use to get that done neatly. If you write longer texts you can, and you will, get lost in the wilderness of stuff you wrote unless you've planned everything out in advance (and then you'll have to rewrite everything anyway). Ok, I've got an idea, and I know what I want to write. But who's going to read my stuff? Am I just writing to my computer screen? What's the point? This writing is going to push me into an existential crisis! Never fear. Now you decide the style. Usually your choice of theme somewhat determines the style anyway, but in certain languages there's a written register that you need to be aware of. In French, for example, I wouldn't drop any negations in writing. In speech - almost always. Determine who you think is interested in reading your stuff, and if you can, adapt the wording such that it'll be more interesting for them. If you have the vocabulary to do this properly, you're in the upper ranges for your language, by the way. C1-C2 is all about this kind of stylistic stuff. Ok. I have a text. What do I do with it? How do I find out if the Grammar Police will approve? First of all, I personally revoked their badges. Second, this is an important thing to remember: once you've written your text, no matter how much brilliant input, you will have made mistakes and there will be things you can, should, and must word differently. No matter how many novels you've read or podcasts you've listened to. Unless you're at that stage of writing where you're so good that the only person capable of correcting you is a professional editor (because everyone else just doesn't know the subject material well enough), you are not exempt from this feedback. You are not. So who do you pick to give you feedback? Well, it depends on what you wrote. Some things can be corrected by a friend if it's just informal stuff, but if the text's somewhat longer and more complex (or if you're really serious and keep up a blog with your writing practice, like yours truly), it's good to enlist someone who's bloody good at correcting! Who's that? The one who is the most nutty user of red pen. The one that figuratively, really gets turned on seeing your mistakes and gets to cross them out with an evil glint in their eyes. Why? Because they're critical, and they'll point out every single mistake you make. And that's what you want. Because the more critical that person is, the more they'll point out in one text, and that's a whole load of errors fixed already. NB: it doesn't have to be a professional tutor. You do not have to follow s_allard's advice. Some of the best correctors can be your best friends, as long as they're not afraid to dish it out. The most important thing is that they're critical. However professional tutors or writers/journalists have a sixth sense for what is good Romanian and what isn't. So if you're in doubt, or you can't find anyone, enlist that tutor just to help you correct things. I personally spend half my maintenance time in my good languages on tutors who do EXACTLY THIS AND ALMOST NOTHING ELSE. Another reason is that at a high level, your issues are going to be minor and only a critical eye is going to reveal the little stuff that plagues you. Those critical keen eyes will figure out exactly the little things that improve your writing and let you take it to the next level. Be especially attentive if they notice a pattern, because that might mean you have a structural grammatical issue and pay attention to that in particular. For example, if you're like me and you fudge grammatical details, make sure that your corrector is very strict on le/la/les and gender agreement. You'll thank her later. The last thing that I want to mention here - leave your ego at the door. The first time you write something and think it's amazing and you hand it in in a foreign language is going to be a rough disappointment in 90% of cases. This is NOT a slight on your level. It is, I repeat, NOT a slight on your level. They are not there to pat you on the back, they are there to make you better and get you to make the most out of your abilities. At the high levels, one of the most important qualities you need is humility and bravery. Not accepting critism at this stage is where many people fall flat - they think they're good enough and get complacent. That's killing for your progress at the C levels. At the A level - make people give you all the encouragement you can get. You want the momentum and the spirit to learn more. At the C level - make people bitch at every little detail so you can weed out every last error you make. That's how you get better. I've found a good corrector, I'm done with my text, do I get a medal? How many texts do I have to bloody write? As many as it takes for you to be satisfied with your personal goals. Those goals need to be tuned to your needs, so if your goal is to write job applications then you need to write as many as you need to be sure that you're good enough at them. But more is always better. Don't come running to me if your tutor's constant bitching makes you hate yourself, though. Famous last words? That's it, folks. That's my two cents on writing tasks. I'm planning to write something in this log called "The Engineering Approach to Language Learning" and give people some short insights on how I approach problems at various stages in my learning. I'm a firm believer in that people need to seek context-oriented solutions for their problems. People need to zoom in, fix and solve individual puzzles. Once you get into the habit of doing that, you'll progress eventually. Edited by tarvos on 24 December 2014 at 10:39pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1306 of 1511 25 December 2014 at 11:53am | IP Logged |
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Ok, so more stuff on ecology (or well, global warming and the greenhouse effect) in
Greek! This is some hard stuff to write, by the way. My Greek is an A2 probably, maybe a B1 but I'm not really confident and my oral skills are not that fantastic. Greek is definitely a language in which I write and read better than I speak and listen. (There are languages for me in which the opposite is true - they tend to have harder scripts, but I tend to also have practiced the languages more orally; Chinese and Hebrew are good examples. And I am fluent in exactly none of those). Το φαινόμενο του θερμοκηπίου 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1307 of 1511 28 December 2014 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
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The past few days I have concentrated on other things than Chinese (my motivation for
it is running low - I am thinking that I need to change my methods for Chinese somehow - I need an approach lighter on textbook material that my teacher uses, perhaps to switch teachers to focus more on new vocabulary areas, to develop my speaking and so on). I also really need to concentrate on Hanzi which I'm sorely neglecting. The fact I still don't know enough Hanzi is now starting to hamper progress as it prevents me from my usual tactic to amass vocabulary, which is read like an idiot. (The same could be said for Greek and Hebrew, but in Hebrew I have at least read one novel and in Greek I've been doing tons of writing exercises.) It's also been Christmas and I've worked more, so that's reduced the intensity of my spirit. January will be less intense, so I have all the time I want to return to my Chinese studies in the new year and to keep going with Greek (it's important because Greek is the next language that I will have to use in-country, if I don't visit something in between - which I probably will, but likely that will only force me to use languages I already know well such as German or English). In the category of polyglot weirdness I can also present to you the tale of the family members that believe I speak Spanish. (I haven't really studied Spanish properly ever). However I have a fairly basic vocabulary I can use accurately and I know the pronunciation rules, so I will sound fairly good even when pronouncing something basic like "claro que no..." or something. My parents also were weirded out when I spoke Spanish but I assured them I hadn't studied it - I don't think they were really reassured on this count. You see, this is a polyglot problem - which languages to keep and which to drop? I haven't studied French seriously for a while, and I can feel my motivation dropping, but I know that the only motivation I have is social contacts. And to rekindle motivation I should see a serious use for the language somewhere and for that I need to rekindle my interest in French culture (or at least Francophone culture because my interest was always bigger in Belgium and Switzerland than France itself). I've also booked half an hour of Hebrew as a trial class to identify how to work on my weak points, which in that language are reading and writing. As you can tell, I have a very organized idea of how I want to improve my language: I like to fix certain issues that really bother me. Some of them are big in scale so they take a longer time (Hanzi aren't covered in a week, for example), others you can do by simply forcing yourself to take a new look at the way you are using a certain language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1308 of 1511 31 December 2014 at 2:51pm | IP Logged |
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Χωρίς μεσάζοντες
This is about the organization in Greece that helps people sell their wares directly to their customers by cutting out the middle man (and keeping prices down, lower than in supermarkets). This is locally sold produce (such as olive oil, cheese, potatoes, tomatoes, milk etc) that people can produce themselves. It's become a trend in Greece to combat their current dire economical situation. It's based on a Dutch documentary I saw on the topic, but many of the interviews were in Greek (subtitled in Dutch). Also part of that documentary was an interview with the Czech economist Tomas Sedlacek who believes we should stop defining economics so rigidly in terms of numbers and growth, and try and redefine it more in terms of the socio-economic implications so that it is better suited to society. Edited by tarvos on 31 December 2014 at 2:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1309 of 1511 01 January 2015 at 6:46pm | IP Logged |
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Hi!
So happy to see you back on the Russian team, you have been sorely missed! And I look forward to seeing your opening post about 2015! Great to see all the impressive advice you have written on the writing process. Hugs from Cristina Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 01 January 2015 at 6:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1310 of 1511 01 January 2015 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
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@Cristina: Thanks! I never know if people actually read my musings, but I guess from
the amount of votes at least a few people find my thoughts useful. I can't change the title of this log, sadly, but this is the log I'll continue to use as my treasure trove, so people will be able to find me here. As for my plans for 2015, I already set out tentative goals in my summary, so I won't do that here again. What I will do is put down, as I said, some examples of how I concretely aim to tackle my biggest language-related issues in 2015, to show people how I actively deal with problems that I have. I'll also put up some that are open to advice, or I'll explain how I have done things in the past. This is what I term the "engineering approach to language learning" (inspired by Benny Lewis, but that I'm going to make more concrete here). Benny covers the mentality on his blog but I want to cover the idea of how you concretely take steps to tackle specific problems, and how you remain self-critical when engaging in language learning in order to improve. Edited by tarvos on 01 January 2015 at 8:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 1311 of 1511 01 January 2015 at 9:19pm | IP Logged |
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tarvos: maybe a moderator will help? 2014 and Gumiho no longer exist, after all. Welcome back to the Russian team and welcome to the Scandinavian one, btw.
I read your log all the time. This year I need to do a problem-solving approach too, if I want to see progress happen. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1312 of 1511 01 January 2015 at 9:28pm | IP Logged |
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I'll PM one of the mods about it, or contact them privately (I am in regular contact with
at least one). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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