the1whoknocks wrote:Hey Tarvos. I couldn't help but notice something you said on another thread, and I was hoping you'd indulge my curiosity for a moment:
tarvos wrote:[...] I usually have extended sessions with iTalki teachers focused on improving my writing, such as for Czech, French, Spanish and Russian. I've also done it for Romanian but not for many of the others.
Would you mind sharing what these sessions, in particular, might look like for you? I'm looking to start working with a tutor again sometime soon in order to improve my writing, and it would be helpful to know what a more experienced learner might expect from such a session. Is there anything in particular you tend to look for from someone who is helping you improve your writing? Any particular format/ routine you follow?
I would have asked you in the original thread, but didn't want to risk hijacking it. Thanks for your time!
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Also, since I'm asking, I thought I'd at least mention a bit of what my writing sessions have looked like:
- Before our next session, my tutor reviews my writing, but without making any corrections. Using a pre-determined color scheme, they mark things to indicate that they are either plain wrong, awkwardly phrased or otherwise unclear. I correct it on my own, and together, we talk about what I wrote.
- Before out next session, mytutor will still review what I wrote but we will talk through my thought process and how to say things better/ differently during the session.
- If the focus of the session isn’t on writing, but I wrote something anyway, we’ll just run through the piece quickly with them correcting it on a shared screen, and me asking interrupting if I have any questions.
- Sometimes my tutor just correct what I wrote and e-mail it back to me, eventually.
All of these things can happen. It depends on the tutor and also on what you ask them to do. It also hugely depends on your level.
What is most important for me is not that I get corrected, but that I get the appropriate type of corrections - depending on my level. You see, I'm not always at the same level and for example in Spanish I can usually second-guess any corrections that I get because my level is high enough that errors are few and usually more a mark of sloppiness than inability.
The important criteria for a writing tutor and dedicated sessions are the following:
1. The choice of tutor is critical. You want them to catch every last detail. They should never go easy on you and they shouldn't let you off the hook. I love it when my tutors don't compliment me but push me harder. That's the way forward. And eventually you'll get compliments just because your level has become so impressive there's very little to correct.
2. At lower levels you may need explanations. If you're at C1 or C2, often you won't need them - then having the corrections being marked and thinking about them yourself will really help. You can see improvement within just a couple sessions this way - I went from quite convoluted writing in Czech to very well-structured sentences in a few months.
3. You should pick subjects that challenge you a bit to use vocabulary out of your way, or set a goal that you're not allowed to look up words in a dictionary. I tend to write my articles in the space of an hour or so (yes! sometimes even less!) and I rarely if at all look up words, just so I know that my production is automatically correct. I don't make my articles too long either, so when I write, they're about a page A4 each, and they usually have the following structure:
one paragraph introduction
2-4 paragraphs content/argument
one paragraph conclusion.
In this way I can also ensure that I am writing a coherent text. Usually my texts tend to be argumentative and not descriptive, but I've experimented with more informative texts in order to change style (because register can also be an issue).
4. If the language you speak is Romance, you want to practice texts with a lot of subjective value judgements because it will force you to practice the very necessary subjunctive tense. And if you're working with French the format of texts is quite convoluted and standardized, so you want to pay extra attention there.
5. Writing is a skill, and what really helps is knowing all the linking words that allow you to enumerate, express cause and effect, and also know 50 different ways of saying each of those things so you don't repeat yourself over and over again. The first language I learned to do this in was English, but think of it this way: if you're speaking Spanish, can you think of five ways of expressing contrast without using "pero"?
6. I use a spellchecker to get rid of stupid errors with diacritics and such. We live in the 21st century - let's use technology to our advantage. If you'd use it in an office situation you can use it here. You should be able to use dictionaries unless you're preparing for the exam situations. I sometimes don't just to check whether I can come up with a good article without needing them. (I usually can!)