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First major crisis of confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3888 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 9 of 15 21 January 2015 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
While you definitely should get back there and learn from it, when you're getting corrections from native non-professionals (i.e. people who aren't teachers, editors, etc.), try to remember that they sometimes go a bit overboard with corrections in favour of "preferentials". Don't feel bad the moment you get a text back covered in digital red pen. It really is necessary to sit down and consider exactly what's being corrected, why, and how serious the error was. Not all corrections are equal! This became abundantly clear to me the other day in a discussion online in a Swedish grammar community. I, a native Swede, wrote a perfectly correct (albeit a bit literary, old fashioned, and belonging to a higher grammatical register than your average break room chat) sentence and ended up being corrected by several fellow native Swedes because they "would never have written" what I wrote. And just today, I got a French correction where the person who kindly donated their time to help me out made a lot of inexplicable changes to the story, such as switching out the verb "can" for "want" or moving a "of course" from one clause to another, so that the emphasis was on the wrong clause. I had to sit down and look at each correction individually to sift the educational from the slightly irritating. Helpful natives are awesome! But helpful natives often don't know how to let your individual voice remain yours. Fight the feeling of defeat, knowing that it's not all equal, and tackle each tiny correction objectively: Big mistake? Small mistake? Not a mistake? Unsure? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4454 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 10 of 15 21 January 2015 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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What kind of deflates me is when I get four sets of corrections that all differ from each other. What the heck am I supposed to conclude from that? :-)
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4848 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 15 21 January 2015 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes corrections are overzealous or just wrong. I once got a Swedish text "corrected" for starting a sentence
with och ("and"). It's true that some people recommend against doing this, but ultimately it's a stylistic choice that some Swedes avoid and others don't, just like it is in English to start sentences with "and" or "but." But even assuming your readers' corrections are justified, remember that you often have to change the surface form drastically to make a sentence just a little bit better. For example, an entire phrase may be switched out for an idiom, making it look like you wrote five words of utter nonsense, but actually your sentence was OK grammatically and meant the same thing, but there's just a somewhat preferred alternative to it. If they can correct your writing at all, that essentially means it was good enough for them to understand it, so no matter how far it looks from the corrected final product, it was probably pretty close. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5051 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 12 of 15 22 January 2015 at 12:55am | IP Logged | ||
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yantai scot, I hope you will feel much better soon.
Just like on HTLAL, it is always good to "caveat" when correcting. I.e.: "I take dog for walk." Response: I understood what you wrote, but a native wouldn't say it in this way. To use the word "dog" in this context without a possessive or an article isn't quite right in this sentence. The dog could be your dog or just "the" dog. It sounds better to me if it were phrased like this: "I take the (my, your, our, his, her, etc.) dog for a walk." My point is that not many people go beyond the minimum in correcting. Those that do provide a good explanation are worth their weight in gold. It also helps to correct their (and others) English in a detailed manner. People notice and some will reciprocate in kind. Hang on to the ones who do. If you are just a "drive-by" poster, you won't have time to cultivate correctors. If you become a regular and build a couple of good correctors, then corrections are much more useful. It does take time, consistency and effort to do this, though. Edited by iguanamon on 22 January 2015 at 3:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4591 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 13 of 15 22 January 2015 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you! I could hug all of you as what you've written is so relevant!!! I had my last OT session today (v. good) and we agreed that taking criticism both positive and negative is a lifelong work in progress.
It hadn't even occurred to me as to the quality of the feedback or how they'd differ or even that there were more subtle/helpful ways of explaining the corrections. This makes me feel so much positive about getting stuck in and also help others with their English in a way that I would appreciate. That's my weekend homework- get back on italki, deal with the first correction, write another diary entry and book another lesson with the teacher I had before!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3645 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 14 of 15 23 January 2015 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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You said that TV shows and films were currently very 'blah' for you. That is the case for
me most of the time. When I feel like I don't want to watch or read, I find it preferable to do quite boring, mundane activities (even when it goes against what I usually do and believe most of the time). I might test myself on vocabulary, do a little bit of coursework or even some grammar. It sometimes feels easier than pushing myself through a tv program that I can't let myself go enough to enjoy. As there's no real expectation that I should be enjoying myself while going through anki, I can just go through it semi-mindlessly and actually feel better once I have done it. That being said, I am the kind of person who really enjoys doing mathematical equations, even though I don't particularly like maths, and cleaning stove-tops and oven grills. It's something about being methodical, I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3702 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 15 of 15 05 February 2015 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was close to giving up as well, and I too suffer from a lack of confidence, but Lang8 helped me greatly I learn a great deal from those who correct me. I also love reading, and my first challenge in French is to finish Harry Potter Book 1. It's difficult, and rewarding, I learn lots of words (I can understand a great deal of what I read, and when I can't I learn from that. Treat every failure as a learning tool. That is all I have.
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