A question for the non-native English speakers
This is my 15th year teaching English as a second language in Finland (part-time now) and for the most part, I focus much more heavily on the spoken aspects of language than the written. This is because clients generally need higher levels of spoken skill for day to day interactions and even in emails, 'formal' language is rarely required.
My wife however is not a native speaker, she is Finnish and my daughter is shaping up well as a dual mother tongue speaker. My wife's spoken English is great and is better than her written, which isn't bad, although relatively bland. (After you read this, I will delete it from the blockchain 😉 )
Ok, so my question is how has writing at Steemit (or other places) affected your English skills? Has actively writing improved your abilities even though that was not the goal, and has it affected your spoken levels?
The reason I am interested is because I like to group skill development like I do my workouts (when I workout) by performing compound exercises that hit several regions. For most things and skill groupings it is more efficient and more organic meaning it is less likely to be overweighted in any particular region, better balanced.
There are of course many benefits to developing language skills but perhaps because there is the added reward feedback, people are more likely to invest themselves. Get paid to learn so to speak, which may be a future technology that Steem could run and I may speak about later.
So I am interested in hearing some experiences here in regard to language development as a byproduct of community engagenent. This is of course not limited to non-natives though as I am quite sure my written skills have improved as have many other aspects of my skillset. I am even considering a post or two in terrible Finnish to practice.
The floor (comment section) is yours.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
This was written on my phone so there may be even more typos than normal
My writing skills have improved a lot when I started the Steemit. I have written over the past month as much text in English than during the whole school time.
I would love to read your article written in Finnish, but do not use your wife to correct the grammar :-)
PS: The content of the post sounds familiar ;-)
you inspire me.
You can delete it now ;-)
I think that writing on Steemit can only improve when you're told what mistake you have made.
The thing that helps my wife is watching tv-shows with english subtitles. Even though you're watching the show, subconsciously you're picking up the grammar too.
yes, there are many ways that can help and I think in countries that use subs instead of dubs it is generally better.
One trick is to read what you write aloud to yourself as often, if it is hard to say, it probably isn't correct. :)
Not am a native English am I, but instead I learned English in school in English school I have.
The most difficult is word for many different things and then explain it well. Right words can be in the lost when of thinking.
No but seriously, I've found Steemit being a really good platform in attempts to improve my writing. Even when working I usually can manage by learning a few new words and expressions, but on Steemit I will seriously have to dig deeper.
If there is a topic I want to post about, I will need to put my English skills to a test to describe the topic even nearly as well as I want to.
I think that this is key when developing content too as taking the extra time helps to improve the quality of thought also.
thank you dear friend @tarazkp for this amazing post actually i had this problem in the beginning i used to make a lot of mistakes, but now i thing everything is changed for today even i prefer speaking rather than writing, because in my opinion speaking skills will be better whatever you do to improve your writing level, the speaking level will be higher thank you buddy.
It certainly improves the more you write but it improves more when you read from a person who writes better than you. So if you try to write better you will get better, and if you talk with people better in writing
than you and you get used to their 'style' will help you improve.
I don't practice my conversation skills so I'm bad at spoken English, but I'm pretty sure if you improve your writing some of the improvement will get into your speaking and vice versa...
That's how is it for me... Hope it helped.
Yes, thanks. Just trying to gauge people's experience-
OK. Let me share my personal experience. My lingual franca is English tho. But then, my parents have their own tribe/culture as well as their native language. So whenever I go home to see my grandparents, they really do not get to speak English, I would ask them (my grandparents) to speak my native language for me, hence if I don't understand, they point the object they are referring to for me. Its quite a stressful experience but its Fun actually. I get to learn a few tho but wen I go back home, I make it compulsory for my own parents to continue where my grandparents stopped.
I wouldn't say I'm perfect with the native language tho, but I can say with constant practice and constant tutoring from my folks, its been really helpful.
And on steemit, I've met people of different languages too, and I get to use google translate.
But then, I have been able to learn a few things in Portuguese. It's a nice language and I'll love to speak different languages (maybe not fluently) someday.
Thanks @tarazkp
The answer is a big yes. My written English has improved vastly over the five years that I'm writing business plans for international markets, although I haven't done any intentional learning since university. I'm certain that the same is true, or even more true, with regards to the writing of diverse articles on Steemit.
Hmmm I'm not a native speaker, although I learned English at a very young age and now regard it as my mother tongue - in the sense that I think in English and I speak it more freely than Romanian.
I've always written a great deal, even before Steemit, so I don't think it is the platform's merit, if you get what I am saying. But yeah, definitely, writing a lot really improved my English. It's helped me become really familiar with the language, sort of like with an old friend. And since I kind of picked it up (the language, as opposed to studying it), I've always written as if I was telling a story or talking to someone, you know. So yeah, writing and especially communicating with others in English helps a lot.
I've even met some Romanians online who asked that we communicate in English, to improve their skills.
Yes, I understand and I didn't mean just at Steemit but for many, this will be their first push into long form writing and it will really benefit them the more they write.
I know very well :)
Well thinking that writing on steemit ensures that my vocabulary grows, but grammer still sucks. So people need to hear what they're doing wrong while writing on Steemit. At that point it will help becoming a better writer otherwise you won't stop making the same mistakes over and over again.
Try reading aloud back to yourself. It will pick up a lot of the grammatical mistakes you miss if only reading.
Thanks for the tip! Tried it at my new review, but not sure if it helps... (that won't upload to Dtube at the moment hehe :P. Update it’s uploaded)
The writing in steemit and also the reading has improved more my writing skills than the speaking ones. About speaking ones i believe that watching movies or tv shows with subtitles in english helps me a lot, but that only works for people that already have a medium level of english. Another thing that i found here on steemit, its everytime i read some word i don't know the meaning, i look it up in online dictionary or google translate and it helps me grow my english vocabulary ;)
people can use lots of tools to improve or, lots of tools to rely on. personally, I prefer the learning over the reliance.