New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

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New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby tommus » Sat May 14, 2016 5:19 pm

LLorg members frequently mention that they use other forums, such as Lang-8, to receive corrections to their target language writing, and to provide corrections in their native language. And they then mention that the quality and availability of constructive comments on these other forums can vary considerably. In some cases, people don't think they are getting the assistance that they need.

Here on LLorg, we have an abundance of people who have an amazing amount of knowledge and ability in all the major languages and many other languages. And they understand the nature of constructive comments that would be valuable to language learners. And they also understand the importance of sharing their knowledge with others in return for assistance in their own target languages.

Therefore, I contend that we should seriously consider a supplement to what we do here; a new section to this forum to provide an L2 writing correction service to our own members. And to promote a very positive emphasis and tone, I propose that the name of this new section be something like "L2 Improvements by Language" as a Board Index item. There would be separate forum threads with the names of the languages for which there was sufficient interest.

Recognizing that providing improvements can be a very time-consuming process where contributors may wish to help out but not spend large amounts of time, my recommendation would be that the size of the writing for which a member wishes constructive comments and improvements be kept to a limit of perhaps five lines of text or less (at a time). The emphasis should be on "intensive" analysis and improvement as opposed to extensive amounts of very poor-quality text. Attention should be on sentence word order, grammar, correct verb tenses, "what natives would say", etc. as opposed to how would a person write a novel. In other words, quality over quantity. Perhaps the meaning of idiomatic expressions would also fit the tone of brevity.

I don't think we would need to have a credits or points system for contributors. Too complicated. We would rely on the generous contributions by members, and on appropriate acknowledgements and thanks from those who benefit from the constructive improvements as well as their own contributions in return.

So this thread is an invitation for comments, either pro or con, together with constructive ideas, to see if there is sufficient interest to consider proceeding with this proposed addition to the functionality and utility of LLorg.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby iguanamon » Sat May 14, 2016 7:35 pm

I agree, in theory, that we could do this. I see the issue with doing correcting here as the numbers disparity between native English-speakers and L2 speakers who would be, frankly, overwhelmed with correcting and getting little in return, other than the feeling of helping out others. One of the problems people have with lang8 is "drive-by" corrections. Where corrections are made without full explanations. In my experience, you have to give full corrections in order to get good corrections yourself. It takes time, effort and thought to correct someone's text well, in the manner in which you yourself would like to receive corrections. Generally if you as a corrector do this for L2 speakers in your L1 and befriend them they will most often reciprocate for you in their L1- your L2.

Here on the forum, almost all native L2 speakers already have a high level of English. So... what's in it for them? As a second language-speaker of Spanish, I don't feel comfortable correcting learners' mistakes- even obvious, basic, "ser" vs "estar" mistakes. I know many other second language-speakers feel the same. I only feel comfortable correcting in my native language- English. We have some members writing in beginner, to low intermediate, Spanish in their logs right now, who aren't being corrected, because most of the Spanish-speakers on the forum are non-native.

Arnaud does a great job helping learners with their French. Serpent helps out with Russian and I've seen Ogrim lending a hand with Norwegian from time to time. I just believe it would get overwhelming for L2 native-speakers and most second language-speakers would be unwilling to correct in their L2's.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby IronMike » Sun May 15, 2016 1:37 am

New here, but I've seen something like this in the individual language sections. Perhaps keeping an L2 improvement/corrections section there might be best?
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby tiia » Sun May 15, 2016 11:14 am

Because of iguanamon's post I counted the learners and natives of each language based on the thread "Languages learned and spoken on this Forum". Until now only 44 people posted there, but I think it's interesting anyway.
I'm only including languages with more than five learners or natives here. The first number represents native speakers, the second number people learning the language.

    Chinese (Classical & Mandarin) - / 8
    English 25 / 1
    French 1 / 11
    German 6 / 15
    Italian 1 / 9
    (Classical) Japanese - / 6
    Russian 2 / 9
    Spanish 2 / 10

Most people study more than one language, so it's normal there are more learners than natives. But this is pretty imbalanced.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby tommus » Sun May 15, 2016 1:28 pm

tiia wrote:I counted the learners and natives of each language

Those numbers are a bit depressing! Perhaps it is partly due to the relatively small number of people who responded to that thread.

If people feel that there are insufficient numbers of people here to help them with their target languages, then that is depressing. I suppose most of the emphasis here is on how to learn a language, as our name suggests (techniques, resources, etc) rather than help in specific languages. But it seems to me that we should consider ways that we can put increased emphasis on making help with specific languages more available.

Another comment suggested that more help may be happening in the individual languages sections. But there is only a separate section for Spanish, and in the Multilingual Room, it is pretty hard to navigate and focus on a specific language.

I am always willing and able to offer assistance in English (as I used to do a fair bit on HTLAL), but of course, there is an abundance of native English speakers here.

About the imbalance between learners and natives: The large number of English natives is understandable. And that produces more demand than supply because few people seem to ask for help in English. But for other languages, if you consider just a person's principal target language, the balance would be a lot better. The ideal situation is that people are providing corrections/improvements of about the same amount as the help they themselves are receiving. Then nobody is overburdened and everyone should be happy with the mutual exchange of help. And a number of people who are quite proficient in English as their second language probably overestimate their proficiency and could probably benefit from constructive comments on their writing. Members here are quite reluctant to offer "improvements" in the main English threads in fear of offending people's sensitivities but in a section of the forum devoted to "improvements", constructive comments could be offered and received freely.

Am I reading the mood of the forum as not being very interested in feedback on writing? Are people generally more inclined to go elsewhere, such as Lang-8? Is feedback not seen as a significant part of how to learn a language? Is it a bit too "embarrassing" to do it here? I think the answer to these questions should be "No". If we want to strive to be the best (or one of the best) places on the Internet to learn how to learn languages, we would be well served to expand what we offer.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 16, 2016 2:45 pm

The idea is great (I find it a bit weird too, than we are reluctant to correct each other in the main threads) but the disbalance between the number of English natives and natives of other languages may be too big.

I wouldn't probably dare to make correction in my second languages, like iguanamon. An just a few people are learning Czech, therefore it would be the same trouble as anywhere on the language exchange market: my native language is worthless. It's the Zimbabwe Dollar of the language exchange market. While Arnaud might get overwhelmed, or the two or so active Spanish natives.

Tommus, the idea of artificially creating more demand for corrections by English natives is good but impossible. For example, I am not interested at all in intensive corrections of very short texts in English. I am not overestimating my abilities (and I don't think most htlalers are), I know my limits well. My grammar has been deteriorating during the last few years and I get shocked by some of the mistakes I make between 3am-5am (and even more by those made earlier). But I am simply not interested in perfectioning my English, it is not a priority language, my level suffices for all my needs and I have never loved it. And truth be told, I am already too good for some of the uses as the international language of non-native speakers is Intermediate English. I have already had to dumb down my English for various people, which was pretty demotivating. There is simply no reason why I should strive to improve, I won't ever sound native anyways. I would, however, be interested in the novel (or short story) writing feedback, which is simply impossible in a forum setting, for very good reasons. :-)

So, the idea is great. It could work. I agree we would be able to provide each other with high quality feedback (not often the case on italki. and once you get the first correction to your post, no matter how bad, people are not gonna "waste time" with giving you more). But the main question is: "do we have enough people to keep this thing alive?"

Perhaps, to test the idea out (and find out whether there can be a kind of native/learner balance achieved), we could simply try, we have nothing to lose. However, I think it might be a good idea to make it "obligatory" to post in the subforum's sign up thread, so that we have better data on the amount of natives/learners of each language than the thread tiia mentioned.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby tommus » Mon May 16, 2016 10:53 pm

Cavesa wrote:The idea is great (I find it a bit weird too, than we are reluctant to correct each other in the main threads) but the disbalance between the number of English natives and natives of other languages may be too big.

Thank you. You just taught me a new English word! My immediate reaction to your comment was to point out that "disbalance" should have been "imbalance", and put a smiley face after the comment. But just to be sure, I looked up "disbalance". Surprise! It turns out to be an English word. It is very seldom used but it means essentially the same thing as "imbalance". It is apparently an old word that has fallen out of use. However, most native English readers would probably believe that it was not a correct word. So even the thought of offering corrections (improvements) was useful. My urge to provide corrective comments is twofold; to help the original poster, and to help ESL readers avoid thinking that a wrong word (or wrong grammar, etc.) is correct.

But I am simply not interested in perfectioning my English.

I think your English may be a lot better than you give yourself credit for. So to help make it even better, let me offer that "perfectioning" should have been "perfecting". ;)

Perhaps, to test the idea out (and find out whether there can be a kind of native/learner balance achieved), we could simply try, we have nothing to lose. However, I think it might be a good idea to make it "obligatory" to post in the subforum's sign up thread, so that we have better data on the amount of natives/learners of each language than the thread tiia mentioned.


I agree. We have nothing to lose, and potentially much to gain. And the way we do it can be tweaked as we get some experience with it.
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Re: New forum section? L2 Improvements by Language

Postby Cavesa » Tue May 17, 2016 8:27 pm

I am not sure but I believe disbalance is used quite often in the medical textbooks. But thanks for the "perfecting" correction. But as you see, that is why we shouldn't be shy to correct each other in the normal posts. I much more likely to uncover my weaknesses in a longer (usually too long) post. (And thanks for the compliment. :-) )
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