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Making Mistakes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Al Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6505 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 12 09 January 2013 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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I have found that sometimes my own perfectionism gets in the way and I either default back to English or just find another way to say something. Most of the time my instincts are correct and I could have said what I wanted to. I wonder if this can be overcome.
So how about it? Does it bother you when you make mistakes speaking your target language? Does that make you hesitant to speak in some situations? How do you overcome this? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4657 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes  Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 12 09 January 2013 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
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It used to bother me, to the point of hindering my speaking.
Currently my advice is: When speaking, allow for mistakes. Look for clues. What bothers the native speakers the most? Try to eliminate these mistakes. Pick one, try to take one breath more before uttering a sentence and try to avoid this one mistake when speaking. Ideally, include times to get your speaking corrected when the opportunity is there. Ask your counterpart to signalize a mistake somehow but not to interrupt your sentence. This way, they leave it to you to stop and ask for clarification. When writing, try for perfection. To help your speaking, formulate the whole sentence in your mind before starting to write. Don't go back and edit a sentence during the writing. Complete the sentence and if it came out completely wrong, start again. When the text is finished, get it as perfect as you can. Use spellcheck, look up grammar in books, whatever it takes to the perfection. Ideally, proofread it for the second time few hours later. Use text-to-speech with typed text, because this way you find the real typos. Read it aloud, sound it out. My English writing here isn't perfect. I am partly ignoring the checking and re-checking part myself in exchange for speed. Still, I am previewing each message and proofreading it as carefully as I can. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sumthae Diglot Newbie Poland studyinglanguages.wo Joined 4341 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Indonesian | Message 3 of 12 09 January 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a perfectionist too. If I don't know how to say something, I use different way of
saying (asking the person I'm talking how to say "definition") but quite a lot of times, they are guessing correctly what I wanna say and I'm learning the new word/phrase this way. Sometimes I switch to the dictionary (smartphone!), only as a last resort using English. A lot of times English may not work either, cause the person I'm talking to may not know it (or not know it well enough). You just say what you wanted. If it'll be wrong or they won't understand you, they will probably correct you or ask. If it was wrong but they still got the meaning, they may not correct you, but you can talk them into that. ;) No, it doesn't bother me making mistakes in the target language. Because... one can make mistakes in the native language, so no need to worry. I'm using mistakes as a good learning tool. I'm not hesitant, I'm lazy. I may rely on natives knowing English when they're around. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 4 of 12 09 January 2013 at 1:13pm | IP Logged |
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Mistakes are part and parcel of learning. Embrace them and learn from them rather than allow a fear of mistakes to stop you from using the language.
It's also worth bearing in mind that all those people who speak excellent English as a second language were learners themselves once. They certainly didn't become fluent overnight and must have gone through the whole process of making lots of mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 5 of 12 09 January 2013 at 2:12pm | IP Logged |
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100 mistakes a day is my goal. Then I know I'll have used it.
7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5130 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 12 09 January 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged |
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Look at it this way. When you revert back to English, you'r probably making a mistake in
your native language somewhere along the line, too. Languages and perfection don't go together. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sibsil Triglot Newbie China Joined 4814 days ago 9 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Korean, English | Message 7 of 12 10 January 2013 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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You have to make mistake to learn. Be afraid of mistake = be afraid of learn. Don't be afraid!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4586 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 8 of 12 10 January 2013 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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I don't have a problem making mistakes... it's part of the learning process. The important
thing is that your mistakes are addressed (at least the more egregious ones if your speech/writing contains multiple ones). You need the feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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