aaleks wrote:
First off all I don't know any secret sauce for getting native like writing. This is just my experience and I'm definitely not an expert. The thing is I do not understand grammar the way it's written in grammar/textbooks. And honestly I can recall only a couple weekends (literally) when I was studying grammar in a kind of proper way aka sitting behind a desk and doing grammar exercises. That was about one and a half year ago when I tried to write in English the first time and found out that I need to learn some grammar because I was writing things like "I going" (without am, are, is), etc. I can't remember how much time I've spend on studying grammar that way but I'm afraid that it's hardly been more than a couple week in the past 6 years.
I think I've learned a lot more grammar/about grammar through input and noticing things. Probably if I had paid enough attention to what I read in regard to grammar since the beginning I would have known that I need to put "be" before "-ing" words in that context or that "have/has" goes after "would/could/should" in "would have been" etc. But all so-called phrasal verbs and the like, as well as irregular verbs: go/went/gone, do/did/done, etc. I learned from exposure.
If I were to do it all over again I would've worked only on the grammar topics I had not understood, and tried to fill the gaps like that one with "I going".
I'm not sure that my way of studying is really an effective one. (tbh I think it is not) Probably people who can learn grammar through textbook do the same a lot faster. So no, I do not recommend anything I just share my experience
I love that you can share and talk about the process because you are still in the middle of it. I'm happy to have these discussions with you
I'm going to try a bunch of stuff (per these last couple pages of log) and see where they get me. Hopefully I will see a good improvement. If you wanted to try writing without checking, putting it away, checking it yourself and then passing it off to someone for final edit, I'd be happy to go over your writing for your if that would help. I might try to do that myself with an italki tutor later this summer after I've gotten through the materials I'm planning (for lack of access to friendly native speaker.. I could equally try and make some French friends I guess). As always, I love your updates =====
The weather has been lovely here and we've been outside quite a bit the last couple days. It is a nice change from being stuck inside, sick in bed. I went over to a friend's house today and saw she had everything labeled in Russian
I realized we are getting close to the end of May and close to the end of the first month of the super challenge. I'm doing fine on the film portion for each language, behind on all the reading. Not unexpected for Russian and Icelandic, but no excuses for French. Although French won't be a big deal to catch up so I'm making a point of that today. I'll plan to post my tally at the end of the month.
