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On the Power of Self-Correction | ||
Tags: Corrections | Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5315 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 6 14 March 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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[Thanks to Sprachprofi for suggesting some ideas for this post.]
One of the most powerful tools in language acquisition, and potentially THE most important one in oral production, is the ability to self-correct. Whether you use shadowing, self-talk, or any other activity that involves production, the learner who is able to observe what he produces with criticism and who fosters the skill of going back to fine-tune the language he created has the potential not only to improve rapidly, but to ultimately acquire a very accurate knowledge of the language. Being able to identify errors in your own production implies that you can also notice details in others' speech, including how native speakers may word things differently than you. We are all capable of self-correction to various degrees, but this specific skill is worth honing. If you work on your own, using self-talk for instance, you can foster this skill by checking reference sources every time you have a doubt, and applying this new knowledge right away by rephrasing the sentence in question. If you have the help of a partner, tutor or teacher, he can give you a sign every time a fixable mistake comes up, encouraging you to go back and correct yourself. You can then benefit from his confirmation or correction. Over time, you develop a sense of what you can do accurately and what still needs work, which also helps direct your future efforts. It's easy to get distracted and bogged down when trying to speak perfectly. If you find that this slows you down too much and prevents you from ever reaching flow or feeling in your element, you could identify a few of your most common problems and concentrate solely on those during a given session or conversation. Alternately, you can ask your partner to identify the most recurrent issues and start the next session by pointing out one or two you can concentrate on. It can be something general, like verb tense, noun gender or articles, or something more specific like the pronunciation of one specific sound, not forgetting plural -s, etc. It's possible that identifying a single issue may still slow you down, but it's fairly safe to assume that you should quickly get used to it and gain confidence. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5364 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 2 of 6 14 March 2012 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to add to the good stuff that Arekkusu has contributed. It's important in my opinion to have access to correct examples channel. Yes, there are things that one can self-correct quite readily, but there there is absolutely nothing like having a native speaker draw your attention to something. Failing that, it's a question of finding models you can trust.
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| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4636 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 3 of 6 14 March 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found that a vague feeling that something "somehow doesn't quite sound right" is a good guide. It can still be a challenge to find find out how a native would actually put it, though.
Google (searching for the phrase in question in quotes) and the 'Did you mean' hints can be useful for checking collocations, but for deciding which synonym fits your context best, I found the Oxford Learner's Thesaurus more helpful (for English, haven't come across anything equivalent for other languages yet - tips welcome). Edited by buchstabe on 14 March 2012 at 10:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5315 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 6 15 March 2012 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
Beyond the obvious need for accessible and trustworthy sources of information, you can significantly improve how critical you are before your own mistakes and how proactive you are about them. I work as a translator. Typically, when translators begin their career, they depend on others. They often make mistakes because they aren't sure or couldn't really be bothered to check and they expect the reviser to fix it for them. As the translator gains experience and confidence, he is increasingly critical before his own uncertainties and checks to get it right before it's revised. How quickly they develop the reflex to check independently and to become attentive to those moments of doubt instead of ignoring them is often an indication of how promising a translator is. I'm sure this applies in many other fields. I believe it applies to language acquisition as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4635 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 15 March 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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You might want to add the level at which one should be able to self-correct.
IMHO, nothing can beat good feedback, pages like Lang-8 really do magic. However, it's not always possible to use it, for oral production it may be the wrong platform altogether. "The vague feeling that something could be wrong" is not exactly a great indicator, but well... better than nothing I guess. If you want to state that "awareness is important", I agree. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6404 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 6 17 March 2012 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd say any level. If you study the very first lesson of Teach Yourself, and afterwards write out a self-introduction, you can review it the next day and probably find a few things. You cannot find ALL the mistakes, even at an advanced level, but you can find SOME mistakes. I can recommend this to anyone because correcting mistakes yourself is an educational experience, which helps the brain remember not to make the mistake in the future. This is my scale of how likely it is that I will not make the same mistake again, given the same explanation but in a different context, least to most likely: 1: if someone indicates the mistake and gives an explanation 2: same as above, but I also repeat the correct form or write it out, possibly try to use the same point in a different sentence 3: if someone marks the word or area but doesn't explain what's wrong about it, letting me find the correct form myself before explaining 4: if I notice a mistake without anyone even telling me where to look 5: if the mistake leads to a miscommunication or embarassing situation 5 cannot be set up. 4 is something you could try before asking someone to correct you, but it cannot fully replace outside help because there are some things you just won't notice, no matter how hard / long you try. So all defaults to 3 being the most helpful for me, and unfortunately lang8 only allows for 2 or 1. Edited by Sprachprofi on 17 March 2012 at 2:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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