[Guidance] : Look your weakness in the eye
Lets talk about weakness
Being good at something is one thing but being brilliant requires you to look your weaknesses in the face and accept them. You need to be able to accept the fact and take action towards improving them if you want to step up and grow.
It is easy to ignore your downfalls and push them to one side. It’s easy to try and forget about them and concentrate on what you’re already good at. It’s easy to play dumb.
It’s challenging when you take your weaknesses seriously and decide to work on them for the better. If you can do this, you’ll be able to take steps in the right direction to polish your skills up to a brilliant sheen.
My downfall
My biggest weakness when it comes to writing is my vocabulary. Take a look at my second paragraph and see my use of it's easy from each sentence.
I considered using variations of the word and turning it into a stronger statement, but I thought that it would be a decent example of the slip-ups I’ve noticed when it comes to improving my writing further. These slip-ups can be edited and rectified if you are willing to read back over your work and consider how you could polish it up, but that won’t help until you realize that the weakness is there.
I decided last week that I would take the action to improve my vocabulary so that my writing will evolve and transform into something greater.
Vocabulary.com
Funnily enough, I typed www.vocabulary.com into my search bar and landed on something quite magnificent.
Before I show off this amazing site and share some snippets of the features, I’d just like to drop a quote from the site that is stated by the team over at vocabulary.com. I have to say, it’s very admirable and when you see the project, I think you’ll share the same opinion.
Our team comprises talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, united by a shared belief that effective educational technology has the power to transform. While we believe that collaboration yields the most innovative solutions, we also value the potential for an individual to make a significant difference.
Hold on… what was that?
we also value the potential for an individual to make a significant difference.
Now that is potent. Every individual has the potential to make massive change without needing to collaborate with others. There are many people here on the platform that work as an individual to make a huge difference in many lives with the use of their words and language. Yes, they have an audience and supporters who follow them, but a direct collaboration is not apparent in their content.
Being able to create certain epiphanies for others with your writing or content is extremely valuable (and it will become more valuable as the years go by). Improving your language and how to express yourself genuinely is a significant step in the right direction when it comes to creating change in other people’s lives. I believe this is what we should all strive to do.
Give us the snippets!
I’ve only been using this site for the past week and I’ve been seriously impressed by the way that they have explained, educated and enticed me with the site and how it delivers the language. They show you how certain elements of vocabulary are structured and executed, while also giving you great facts and insights as to why it became a part of the language in the first place.
I’m going to leave a few snippets below that show the main feature of vocabulary.com that I’ve been using. This feature is called The Challenge: All Words and it’s the default when you first join the site. You can change out the vocabulary lists; there are 500,000 to choose from!
You are given a statement/paragraph, or sometimes a definition, and you have to select one of the four words to fit the space given. If you answer correctly you are awarded 100 points (woohoo rewards!), I’m unsure if you can spend the points on anything. I think they may just be your score.
Once you’ve answered the ten questions, you are given a review of your session where it lists the words you’ve been learning and adds to the percentages according to how well you answered them. I am unsure if this is timed to show the certainty as to how you answered them, that would make sense though because it would give a better gauge of your mastery to certain words.
You can check out your progress on this screen. You are able to see your ‘trouble words’ and the progress you are making towards mastering your vocabulary. This is a great way to monitor your progress and it’s also a good way to look back and grab some words that you may want to use in your writing.
Being able to see all of your progress in one place really helps out when you are trying to improve any skill. If it's a portfolio for your art. An SD card for your music clips. A spreadsheet for your trading earnings. Having somewhere to revisit and review helps with your memory retention and everyone should understand that what you learn, doesn't last forever.
How many of you can tell me what you learned at your high school?
Take a look at this quote taken from a study called How Fast Do Students Forget What They Learn in Consumer Behavior? A Longitudinal Study by Donald R. Bacon and Kim A. Stewart:
The retention curve for knowledge acquired in a consumer behavior course is explored in a longitudinal study, tracking individual students from 8 to 101 weeks following course completion. Rasch measurement is used to link tests and to achieve intervally scaled measures of knowledge. The findings indicate that most of the knowledge gained in the course is lost within 2 years.
This is dependent on the level of understanding, meaning that someone who has a soaked up the information and aquired a deep level of understanding will have a better chance of retaining the information over someone who has understood the topic at surface level.
What are your weaknesses?
We all have them. There are some things that we don't want t think about and there are some that can be addressed right away. If you have the time to reflect on yourself and address some of these weakness, do it today. If you decide to confront your weakness and you're planning to do something about it, take some form of action. It doesn't have to be much, just take one little step of action today to get those wheels spinning.
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I always liked to do a mental exercise, trying to express the same sentence by using different words, while paying attention to the nuances, the subtle differences of the words. I looked for potent words that had the ability to deliver the punch, to make the desired impact.
Later on, when I learnt other languages, I adapted my little game. I tried to see how can I convey the same message in a foreign language.
For each language I learnt, I continued to find new ways of expressing the same thing. That's how I ended up having five thoughts in the back of my mind while I was talking. My brain got used to translating from one language to another with such an ease that I was able to translate in real time, become an interpret.
This little game not only helped expand my vocabulary, but it enabled me to become fluent much faster in another language.
This is an extremely valuable comment and it's something I'm going to try out myself.
I can see the link with learning new languages faster and it's amazing how the little exercises transferred into the ability to interpret successfully. You are a very interesting person indeed, after our chats yesterday I've got a little inkling that you have a brain that I need to pick for more knowledge!
Thanks for dropping by with this @lymepoet, I appreciate it massively.
We recommended this post here.
With all the non-English speaking writers here on Steemit trying to write in English I think your suggestion of vocabulary.com could prove invaluable. Looks like fun too.
As far as retention from high school...or college....gone baby gone! Especially my favorite subjects like Calculus - what was a derivative again? No idea.
Capitalizing on your strengths and working on your weaknesses is a formula for a life well lived. Time to get to work!
I think you're right when we look at it across the board but my posts are usually centered at my existing supporters and followers and for future use in BuddyUP. But you are totally right though!
Hahaha, that's exactly it though. Total waste of time and effort (I didn't put in much effort to be quite honest..)
That's the winning formula! Get knuckled down and stuck into it :)
being a non-native english speaker and writer, vocabulary is a problem for me as well. I understand english pretty well and know all the words (I mean as much is reasonable) but I can't seem to remember all those fine words when I am writing... lolz... will have to check this site out, thanks for sharing
The first step in getting over your weakness is recognizing it!
I've talked about my weaknesses in various posts too and how I've worked over time to overcome them.
There's a Spanish rapper that puts a person's growth and advancement in a pretty interesting way "A human is like a sculpture, you don't grow by adding but by removing what you don't need by force" he refers to our weaknesses in that line.
Each day we need to strive to get over our weaknesses and become the better version of ourselves.
Nice article, I picked up on your first point of 'Its easy'
'It’s easy to try and forget about them and concentrate on what you’re'
and this came to me..
'You could try and forget about them and concentrate on what you’re'
We are all different and I am a native English speaker being a resident an native of the United Kingdom, but this writing thing is a whole new game.
I will have a look at your recommendation, I'm also trying to become better at all this.
My weaknesses are trying to make everyone happy and trying to get involved in so many places that I end up not helping anyone and stressing myself :)
And I can't say no. It's like I suffer from real-life FOMO.
Also, you are defining something that sounds like a massive transformative change. Like a boiling point in human development, when certain goals are shared in a community, movements form and take the said community by storm. No collaboration needed, as the same goals are shared by simple thought evolution. I would like to be a part of that, and I am already seeing other people sharing my view. @lishu wrote about that and I am sure that he would like to be a part of your community also.
I veered a little off course, but it's still something in the same area :D
I will take the test, also.
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