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The passive lang-8 method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4013 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 12 December 2014 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While I was browsing lang-8 just now, it occurred to me that there might be a counter intuitive way to profit from this site.
Lang-8's primary purpose lies in allowing people to hone their practical skills. The side benefit is that this site has a source of corrected writings and explanations. So why not analyze past people's mistakes, so you do not have to make them yourself? While reading another learner's entry in Chinese, I have often found myself thinking, that this sounds pretty close to something I would say in that language. Afterwards their writing is picked apart by Chinese speakers (especially if the native language is English), and I can see instantly what the elegant way to express that would be. How to get most out of this method: 1) Find people who have a history of giving good corrections with understandable explanations. Go through their history of corrections, and you won't be taking part in that lottery of getting a good correction. 2) Read people's entries who have the same native language as you do, because they tend to make the same mistakes. 3) Sometimes people also provide a native language version of what they were trying to say. This can also be helpful if your level is not advanced. Their interface does not really facilitate this feature, I had to choose Mandarin as my native language for Mandarin posts to show up in my feed. Does anybody use lang-8 this way? Any caveats? Edit: Just to clear up possible misconceptions: I am not trying to argue that writing yourself on lang-8 is inferior, this is just another way to use that site. Edited by hobom on 12 December 2014 at 10:45pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4926 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 9 12 December 2014 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
This would only work if you never planned on taking a language to an active stage. And if you don't plan on taking a language to an active stage, why even worry about mistakes, since you won't be making them while using the language passively. Part of the process of activating a language involves making your own mistakes. There's no way around it, or at least I've yet to know or hear of anybody that has never made mistakes. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4013 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 9 12 December 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are totally right, I guess that sentence was a bit unclear. I actually agree completely with you, making mistakes is crucial to progress. This is exactly what I think the benefit of using lang 8 passively is that those mistakes that you would usually have to do yourself to discover what you got wrong while learning are made by other people. So this is what I mean by saying "you do not have to make them yourself". Of course, that does not diminish the value of writing something yourself on lang-8, this is just supposed to complementary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lemberg1963 Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4035 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Ukrainian* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish | Message 4 of 9 13 December 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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My intuition is that this is useful, but less effective than actually making the mistakes.
Some related research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2014/08/26/di tch-the-laptop-and-pick-up-a-pen- class-researchers-say-its-better-for-note-taking/ Edited by Lemberg1963 on 13 December 2014 at 12:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 9 14 December 2014 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had actually thought of this myself quite a while back when I was using Lang-8 more frequently, though I never put it into practice. It would be interesting to try this especially for my Spanish, which isn't that advanced. I bet I could learn a lot from it.
I need to use Lang-8 more often. It's just that writing can be kind of laborious because I tend to reflect and do a lot of Googling over whether something is correct or idiomatic before sending it off. Edited by tastyonions on 14 December 2014 at 8:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 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 6 of 9 14 December 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The thing about truly fluent speech/writing, in my opinion, is that you do it correctly
automatically. That just requires training. I can do 90% of my writing on autopilot, the 10 remaining percent is making sure my argumentation is coherent and flows logically. Writing practice before that is just making sure I'm learning to use sophisticated vocabulary actively. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 9 15 December 2014 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think there's an important difference between fluent and idiomatic. The former can be had through sheer quantity of communication -- if you talk a whole lot eventually you'll be fairly smooth at it -- while the latter isn't necessarily a consequence. I think this particular method could help with learning the "Chinese way" (in this case) to say something.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4030 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 8 of 9 15 December 2014 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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For me the main problem with lang-8 is the human factor. I've never received two similar corrections on italki
and lang-8, hence I don't know if I should rely on anything. And writing a lot in hopes that everything will be fixed doesn't always work. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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