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Written corrections? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4981 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 7 16 April 2014 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would be interested to learn what others here do with written corrections. There are various ways how to obtain them, including writing on lang-8, having a native friend correct one's own writing, working with a tutor, assignments in class etc. Once you get your piece of writing back, what do you do with it?
I can think of a few strategies, but I'm probably missing a few as well. Not all of them may be effective. It would be interesting to get your opinion on effectiveness as well. Here are the strategies I can think of: Read through the corrections, and then - do nothing else - update your text - let it rest, later write the same text again, trying to remember and use the corrections - practice some or all of them, e.g., by thinking of additional example sentences that use the corrected form or phrase, possibly have that corrected as well - try to use the corrected phrases in speech - research relevant grammar or vocabulary - note the error and the correction down in a list or notebook - SRS the corrections I personally think that the last strategy is dangerous because many corrections only correct the most glaring error but don't always result in sentences a native would produce. Of the others, I often only update my text and leave it at that, but I'm wondering whether it might be more effective to work a bit more on certain corrections. But how? Do you have a strategy or best practice you're happy with? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6448 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 7 16 April 2014 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Update your text if you're going to look at it again.
I also tend to make sure I understand the problem. I'd look or ask for similar examples rather than think them up myself. Agreed about SRS. But you can always ask natives to correct things that don't sound downright wrong but just awkward. Of course when you're a beginner there's not much sense in doing that. But there's also the option of SRS'ing the corrections themselves and not the resulting sentences, ie either a specific word/form/phrase, or even the declarative knowledge a native speaker gives you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5617 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 7 17 April 2014 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I copy the updated text. By hand. I don't intentionally look at it again, but when I find such a text, I usually think I don't make those mistakes anymore* so that approach seems to cut the deal for me. When it's only a few mistakes, I might not copy the entire text but only the sentence or paragraph a mistake was in.
*I just come up with new mistakes to make. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6554 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 7 22 April 2014 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I have occasionally received corrections to some of my hazardous ramblings in other languages, and I'm thankful for the effort people have put into those corrections. But there are different kinds of corrections. The most valuable ones point to patterns of errors which I repeat again and again, and in that case it is obvious that I take them very seriously. Other corrections are interesting in their own right because they inform me about aspects of a target language, almost like those mini-articles about language which you can find in some newspapers and homepages. These corrections would have been interesting even if I hadn't made an error. And finally there are corrections to words I just use once in a blue moon, or corrections to constructions which I have attempted just for the fun of it, but with a clear conscience that I might be transgressing the limits of the language in question. And even though I still appreciate the effort of those who correct such things I don't learn much from the corrections.
The big question is always: do you learn more from mulling over old errors or from studying correct constructions and trying them out, maybe committing some mistakes in the process. And here my general viewpoint is that it is better to write 100 sentences with fifty gross blunders than one single absolutely correct sentence. Edited by Iversen on 22 April 2014 at 3:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5281 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 5 of 7 22 April 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
I think Iversen's advice is a bit tongue in cheek but it is important to produce a lot of output. At the same time it is very important to get corrective input if possible because the great danger is the consolidation of bad habits if errors go undetected. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6554 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 7 22 April 2014 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I divide my activities into intensive ones and extensive ones. My tolerance for errors during extensive activities is quite high because the main purpose there is to learn to use things fluently rather than 100% correctly. I have have once describe the relevant demeanour during the extensive activities as 'working like a bulldozer', and bulldozers don't care about each pebble on their path. On the other hand intensive activities are only relevant if you care about the details - though still without getting totally absorbed into the study of little used and murky expressions and constructions (you can care about those later when you have learned the basics). So my remark was not simply 'tongue in cheek' - I do think that you sometimes have to let go without caring too much about errors.
And in the same vein: I'm not terribly scared about fossilized errors. Oh yes, they can become a problem if you don't discover them yourself and nobody ever tells you what you do wrong, but I actually think it is easier to correct a persistent error once you have reached a level where you can express yourself without too much effort. The problem is that people who reach this level become complacent and stop looking for things they could change in their speech and writing. And then it seems that their errors are cast in stone, where it actually just would take a day or so of concerted effort to change some old and erroneous pattern. Edited by Iversen on 22 April 2014 at 4:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4981 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 7 of 7 22 April 2014 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the comments so far. I agree that it seems difficult to come up with a constructive, forward-looking approach.
The last few days I’ve been toying around with the idea of an error journal (or rather learner’s journal); I wrote a short post on the first day of that experiment. I’ve been enjoying working with the corrections I’ve been receiving on lang-8, but it’s a time-consuming exercise. Basically, if my grammar is corrected I try to express the principle at work in my own words, and I always complement the suggested corrections with lots of additional examples from either my own corpus or Google. I believe this addresses the two main points made in the comments above - noticing, and moving on. Recently, I’ve also started to add selected corpus examples to Anki as cloze deletion cards (never my own sentences, they might still be unnatural in other ways). Another thing I’ve done is to rewrite one entry which was particularly bad. First, I worked through the corrections as described above, then I wrote it again without consulting my notes anymore. The result, of course, was slightly different in terms of structure, content and wording, but it came out pretty good and with only very few errors. What do you guys think about such a journal? Is it overblown? Any other good ideas? Edited by Bakunin on 22 April 2014 at 4:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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