Fine tuning at a higher level

[zjones]

Language exchanges can be tricky, but if you're looking for quality advice then I highly recommend taking a foray into that territory. And when you do, be clear about what you want. It will be easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have a French friend who is probably C1 in English, and I spend a couple hours a week teaching him idioms, correcting all his mistakes, and working in-depth on his pronunciation. Of course, it's an exchange, so he also helps me a lot with my conversational French. It works out well for both of us, but it took time and effort to find a good language partner/friend.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I came to think of this thread from January:
32000 words of intensive reading - an accidental experiment

[Kraut]

I'm sure I also make plenty mistakes that I'm not aware of, which is where corrections would help.

Would double-translation help with this? Translating the L2 > L1, then translating the L1 text produced back to L2 the next day.

Back-translation (bi-directional translation) has worked for me, it forces you to find back to the correct version in the target language, you don't need a tutor. When I translate into German I don't look for the stylistically best equivalent, but for the best still correct form, a vehicle, to find back to the original. I repeat old material many times, this is a priority before new input.

The example is from a talk about "Gone with the wind" in Spanish.

[iguanamon]

Before Hurricane Maria wrought havoc upon my life last year, I had been considering taking a course online through the Escuela de Escritores in Madrid. One of my favorite authors, Laura Martínez-Belli is one of their online instructors. They have a variety of courses, designed to teach creative writing where you follow the course and write for evaluation by the instructors who are all professional writers in Spanish. There is weekly interaction with the instructors and fellow students online.

Losing high-speed internet connectivity for months and then accompanied by a dramatically increased workload prevented me from pursuing this. I plan on starting it around the end of this year. The classes aren't cheap, three month courses are around 345 euros, but when you consider how much it would cost you to leave work for three months to do this in Spain... it's a bargain. My fear is that my vocabulary range isn't as broad as that of a native-speaker and my creative writing in English doesn't set the world on fire. I contacted some of the instructors and was told that the only way to find out is to try and that a lot can be said even with a vocabulary range that isn't as wide as a native-speaker student. Payments are cheaper if made in full up front or can be done in monthly installments. I was thinking monthly installments would be best for me in case I were to find myself lost and floundering, I could bail.

I was thinking that their online course Escribir Microrrelatos would be a good introductory course for me. It's a six week course on writing microrrelatos/flash fiction- think Aesop's Fables length- for 165 euros. The current course starts on 09/19 and finishes on 10/31.

[patrickwilken]

Before Hurricane Maria wrought havoc upon my life last year, I had been considering taking a course online through the Escuela de Escritores in Madrid. One of my favorite authors, Laura Martínez-Belli is one of their online instructors. They have a variety of courses, designed to teach creative writing

This sounds like a really cool way to improve your language skills. I am really interested to hear how this goes.

[smallwhite]

My question: What has worked for you you at an intermediate/advanced level to stop making those really small mistakes? Is verbal correction good enough to stop making those mistakes? What about written language...is having somebody correct your writing and pointing out why you made mistakes a good enough method to get you to make improvements and stop making the same mistakes?

What do you mean by really small mistakes? A1 grammar and A2 vocab? Or C1 C2 stuff but only one syllable off or something?

I was going to suggest writing but sensed deja vu:

Writing to improve speaking and push from B2 to C1
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=3011

Thanks everyone for the advice, I will definitely start using Lang-8 OR I will practice telling the stories I have written down to my tutor who can make on the spot corrections.

How did that writing go and do you think it can help with your current problem?

[Brun Ugle]

I'm wondering about taking corrections that I might receive on sites like Lang-8 and trying to put corrected sentences into an anki deck. I'm not totally decided on how to layout the cards yet, or if this is worth doing, as I think native speakers don't always mark all errors, and sometimes you get one set of corrections from one native speaker, and a different set from another.

I don’t think this is a good idea. Oftentimes when writing by non-native speakers is corrected, the end result still isn’t entirely natural. I often find when I correct someone’s work, I can fix the grammar and make it somewhat more natural sounding, but to make it sound like it was written by a native speaker, I’d have to rewrite it completely from scratch in my own words.

I think a better idea would be, rather than putting your own corrected sentences in Anki, find native-written sentences that illustrate that particular grammar point, word or expression that was corrected, and put those in Anki.

[NoManches]

My question: What has worked for you you at an intermediate/advanced level to stop making those really small mistakes? Is verbal correction good enough to stop making those mistakes? What about written language...is having somebody correct your writing and pointing out why you made mistakes a good enough method to get you to make improvements and stop making the same mistakes?

What do you mean by really small mistakes? A1 grammar and A2 vocab? Or C1 C2 stuff but only one syllable off or something?

I was going to suggest writing but sensed deja vu:

Writing to improve speaking and push from B2 to C1
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=3011

Thanks everyone for the advice, I will definitely start using Lang-8 OR I will practice telling the stories I have written down to my tutor who can make on the spot corrections.

How did that writing go and do you think it can help with your current problem?

I still make some really silly A1/A2 mistakes, usually when I'm super tired. Most of the time I catch myself and make an on the spot correction, so I'm not too worried about those types of mistakes.

One of the things I would like to work on is when I say something in Spanish that makes perfect sense, but just sounds "off" to a native speaker. Sometimes I will be saying something in Spanish the way I would say it in English, but to a native speaker they can probably tell what I'm doing but not make a correction or even ask for clarification because they still understand what I'm trying to say. I can think of so many times when somebody will talk to me in English (their L2) and do the same thing. I would never stop to correct them unless they specifically asked for it, so they will probably assume what they said sounds great and will keep saying it forever and ever.


Writing has helped but I have not been consistent enough with it. I don't like the idea of writing in Spanish without receiving corrections because I feel like I'm making some bad habits stick without realizing it. It is really hard to find somebody to make corrections on writing, and to take the time to explain everything to you. Even most of the paid tutors I've found online would rather have a conversation and maybe briefly talk about writing mistakes because it is so much easier for them. Also, I've noticed that improving your writing DOES help with speaking to a degree. However, we write differently than how we speak so I find that some mistakes will only be made while speaking, so that is when you need to correct them. Recently I have been making writing a bigger part of my Spanish study so I hope to see better results in the future.

Looking back on that post makes me chuckle because I thought the gap from ~B2-C1 would happen a lot quicker. 2 years later my Spanish is much, much, better...but I still wouldn't say I'm at a C1 level. Thanks for sharing that @smallwhite, it's always good to look back at your thought process or ideas from years back...

[James29]

I approach this issue by simply telling myself "this is important to me." People who speak well "care" about the way they speak. People who don't "care" will not speak well.

If I'm watching a telenovela and I hear someone say things differently than I would say them I simply think about it and try to make my brain neurons fire. Eventually it becomes second nature. I always try to listen for a new way of saying something. If you just think about it and look for it things will continue to get better. If you think about it as "I'm looking for new and better ways to say what I already know" it has a less negative feeling to the process and the brain seems to pick things up better.

I guess what I am saying is really just "don't worry about it" and let it take care of itself. You "care" about it so it will fix itself.

[lichtrausch]

I think it basically boils down to paying closer attention to how native speakers use the language. Active listening/reading, if you will. That will make all that massive input stick better, and any time you try to produce something in the language, you will be able to cross-check it against your internal database. After applying this method for sufficient time, a red siren should go off in your mind when you produce an ungrammatical utterance or choose the wrong word. You will still need to train the habit of speaking correctly and fluently, but you will have a compass to guide you.