I have received corrections. What should I do next?

[Ольга]

How to understand why my variant is not right?

[Cavesa]

Who did you get the corrections from? If it was a tutor and gave you no explanation, than the logical next step is finding a better one.

Finding out on your own, that depends on the kind of mistake. If it looks grammar based, look again in a good grammar book and try to find out the root of the trouble. If it is vocabulary or a phrase, googling should help. Simply googling stuff turns out websites with examples, so that you can see situations similar to yours and get an idea. This won't help with 100% of the mistakes, but should cover the majority. But really, if you have someone to correct stuff for you, than you should be getting a high quality correction.

[Ольга]

Nope, it is not a teacher, it is a native, but I pay some sum (very small) for his corrections.
Usually, he writes something like "obscure", "replace this with that", "natives don't say like that"

[Ольга]

I think, the best thing I can do, it is to rewrite the essays, using the corrections.
I have heard that numerous copying of corrections, rewritten by hand is very helpful.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Nope, it is not a teacher, it is a native, but I pay some sum (very small) for his corrections.
Usually, he writes something like "obscure", "replace this with that", "natives don't say like that"

Most of the corrections I've done in Swedish have been grammar mistakes, word order and word choice. Maybe you can ask your tutor to at least tell which kind of mistake it is? Sometimes there's no better explanation than "that's (not) the way natives speak". Cavesa suggests googling, and I agree. Some learners want to write texts that are beyond their level in the language. Learn from native content. I can only write posts like this in Swedish and English, and English has been a part of my life for many many years.

[Xmmm]

I gave some corrections. My reasons:

1. Sometimes the word choice is not right. For example you said 'fields' and both your tutor and I said to replace it with 'genres'. In the context of your essay, fields is just wrong. Making movies is considered one field.

2. Verb tense agreement. Sometimes your sentences got long and either verb tense stopped agreeing or you used a verb tense not normally used in that type of writing.

3. Number agreement. Sometimes in long sentences with lots of phrases your singular became plural and vice versa.

4. Generally sounded clunky. It's hard to explain what is wrong when nothing is technically wrong but is just doesnt flow.

I would recommend:

1. Don't write sentences more than twenty words long. It is usually bad style anyway to do so. And 80% of your trouble was in the long sentences. Keep your sentences short enough that you can control every word. And as a side effect people will say "this writing is so crisp and clear! Not like those turgid essays by the other students I have to read."

In english, shorter is better. Period. End of story. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" As Mickey Spillane said.

Anyone who tells you differently is a questionable authority.

2. Read all of George Orwell's essays. Not 1984. Not Animal Farm. His essays. He was the greatest essayist of the 20th century in English.



Edited multiple times for typos as I'm on a phone.