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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| jimmyy Newbie Belgium Joined 4061 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 4 11 March 2014 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi
I've been struggling for some years with a mediocre level of English, and I do speak English every day, it's just that I'm using more my intuition and my bad habits rather than the grammar rules and the fancy vocabulary (that only sometimes comes fluently). How shall I approach reaching a better level of English? I think that I need a private tutor that could identify my mistakes and actively correct them, because all my interlocutors even the native English ones they do not stop and say, hey jimmy you've made a mistake here, you should have said this instead of that. I've tried reading grammar (Murphy's applied grammar) and it's working, but two days after I would forget the rules and go back to my old habits... I call it Hollywood English, meaning you learn it from movies. I'm ready to invest some money and time in it. Do you have any ideas on how to approach it? is it with a private teacher(one to one(more expensive but more efficient), or in a group(less efficient but also cheaper)?? is it study more grammar? or maybe some website with varied exercises, that would combine in one exercise several grammar rules, but not the classical approach here is the grammar rule, here are the exercises, to make you think a bit beyond what's obvious. I was thinking that I could find some English teacher/ tutor even over the internet, with so many countries having English as native language, or do you think lessons over Skype won't work? I also have a slight preference for American English, as I was saying Hollywood English.... Any help would be appreciated.... If this is not the place to ask such questions could a moderator move it to the right section of the forum. Thank you I have a feeling that I'm not the first one experiencing these kind of difficulties. Many thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5056 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 4 11 March 2014 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum, Jimmy! You don't mention what your native language is. That would be helpful to know. lang8.com is a free writing correction site where you can write in English and be corrected by native English-speakers. I don't think you can specifically request Americans, but the way to be popular on lang8 is to correct English-speakers' mistakes in your native language. Then go into detail and tell them why the mistake needed correction. Go beyond the minimum and be helpful and you'll find your efforts to be reciprocated. After a while you'll find a core group of people you can depend upon.
Alternatively, there may be learners of whatever language you speak natively here on the forum. A post offering to help native English-speakers with a language exchange may be reciprocated. There's also italki.com for language exchange partners. Otherwise, yes, a private Skype tutor could be very helpful Since you've requested help, I'll make some corrections for you:
There are some stylistic and grammar errors in your text. I replaced shall with should here. There's nothing wrong with shall, it just sounds better to my ears. When you refer to a tutor, that means a person rather than a machine. We use the personal pronoun who to refer to people and that to refer to things in this type of construction. The word interlocutors, is not one that has ever crossed my lips- I replaced it with conversation partners and changed "all" to "none of my" and "not even" to make the sentence sound better. Interlocutor is a Latin/French origin word typically reserved for very formal speech, perhaps a scientific dissertation. The rest is just punctuation and capitalization. Otherwise, your English is quite good and completely comprehensible. It just needs some polishing. I'm not an ESL teacher or a grammar expert, even in my own language, but I wanted to give you an example of what to expect from a writing correction website. If you go to lang8 and make corrections to writing samples from learners of your language with helpful comments, that will help you to get useful corrections as well. If you just go through and cross out a word without comment, you won't win many friends and your corrections will be reciprocal. It will take time to cultivate the right people. Making corrections isn't easy. It's often very time consuming. At a high level of a language, a professional tutor will be more helpful than an amateur native-speaker like me. It's their job. Good luck, Jimmy! Edited by iguanamon on 12 March 2014 at 7:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4047 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 4 11 March 2014 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pay attention to how you use English and to that how other people use English, preferably while reading a book and like that.
Reading grammar is not about reading a thing once then remembering it for the rest of your life; forgetting is learning. You should forget everything after the first time, that's the point! How I studied advanced English grammar was like this: 1. I took a single grammar point such as the subjunctive, read the few pages about it on the grammar book, observed how it's used, then I always tried to pay constant attention to spotting out the subjunctives in Youtube videos, books, movies, you name it. 2. I read a -lot- of books. The fancier, the better. Cormac McCarthy, George R.R. Martin, classics of Anglophone literature, and eventually, all of the grammar makes sense to me now. My English is not perfect either, prepositions and their use are such alien concepts to me and I will probably never understand why in English you have to say "look me in the eye" and "throw it in the bin" instead of "to" in both cases, the latter just makes me think of the act of throwing being performed while being inside a bin. In conclusion, I suggest that you find your own way, whatever that might be. You won't even necessarily need to invest any money in it provided that you can access a library with a good English section. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimmyy Newbie Belgium Joined 4061 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English | Message 4 of 4 11 March 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
First of all thank you very much for your replies. What I should have specified in my above post is that I need to improve my English, as much as possible, within the next two months. I'm very happy with your replies because it confirms my theories. iguanamon, I realised that I need to write if I want to progress because in speaking I can't make breaks and start thinking of the most appropriate way of expressing an idea. You've also found my weak spot: last week I've done 4 lessons with all their excercices (written on paper) on the relative clauses, and it was all perfect, no mistake. One week afterwards I forgot it and in practice I still use my old habits... Henkkles, I had the exact same idea, and I've tried it with the books, but I got a bit disappointed because some grammar rules are appearing every 10 pages, I was reading at that time the expressions such as : "how long", "... since" "For" "When" to master the differences between the present perfect and the past simple. For the last two years I'm pushing myself to do some more homework to progress, but it's not really working. This is why I was thinking to find somebody that could help me identify these repetitive mistakes and make me aware of them and correct them regularly until they will be part of my active vocabulary. Do you know any companies, freelancers, websites? I think lang8 is a great website, but as iguanamon was saying you need to invest some time before you'll find the right partner with the right skills. Many thanks 1 person has voted this message useful |
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