If you see something enough, you'll lose the feeling that it seems wrong. That's why I listen to so much native Japanese audio: eventually the correct pronunciation and usage feels right on a deep level.

Don't even look at something that you know is wrong. Ignore the wrong pattern, and enter the corrected sentences as cards.

I wouldn't 100% trust corrected lang-8 entries; I've seen a few examples where English diaries have been corrected wrong or needlessly.

I think it would be better to work out why the sentences were corrected in that way, then find 1-3 good example sentences from other sources that illustrate this new grammar pattern.

aphasiac Wrote:I wouldn't 100% trust corrected lang-8 entries; I've seen a few examples where English diaries have been corrected wrong or needlessly.

Many corrected entries (in Portuguese) I've seen, while grammatically correct, still sound very strange to natives. I wouldn't trust them at all. Better is to think of Lang-8 as an extra layer of protection against mistakes, not as something that will magically turn any mistake-ridden text into SRS-ready beautiful prose; and never forget Antimoon's advices.

iSoron Wrote:

aphasiac Wrote:I wouldn't 100% trust corrected lang-8 entries; I've seen a few examples where English diaries have been corrected wrong or needlessly.

Many corrected entries (in Portuguese) I've seen, while grammatically correct, still sound very strange to natives. I wouldn't trust them at all. Better is to think of Lang-8 as an extra layer of protection against mistakes, not as something that will magically turn any mistake-ridden text into SRS-ready beautiful prose; and never forget Antimoon's advices.

This is definitely true. I've seen lots of examples where natives have failed to understand the English, and "corrected" it, as well as corrections containing spelling/grammar errors or that stick relentlessly to the original sentence structure, instead of rewriting it more naturally. Luckily, I have some pretty good people on my friends list, so the corrections I receive seem quite reliable, but people should definitely be aware.

...So how useful is Lang-8 then really?

It seems the only advantage it has is to get people to *check* your grammar and skills in the first place. Improving said skills using the corrections seems to be much more difficult though.

I've been correcting some English posts. I expect everyone doing corrections will occasionally make mistakes, either writing a bad sentence or one with a meaning different from what the original poster intended. And I have seen a few people correcting English who IMO have no business doing so.

However, a lot more corrections (including some of my own) could probably be described as "making the sentence better than it was, but still somewhat unnatural". When correcting posts, I'm quite willing to rephrase things, but often I'm dissatisfied with something unnatural in my own work. Why does this happen? If I wanted to express the same idea myself without having seen the post in question, surely I would think of a better way to say it.

By the way, if anyone can rephrase this in a correct and natural way, it's been vaguely bugging me for weeks ;)

Quote:My neighborhood is in a very rural area and it is also so quiet. There are much nature like many beautiful mountains, a clear river, and vast fields.

My neighborhood is in a very quiet and rural area. It's surrounded by lots of nature, beautiful mountains, vast fields and a clear river.

Really wanted to type 「beautiful mountiansとか」　haha

bladethecoder Wrote:Why does this happen? If I wanted to express the same idea myself without having seen the post in question, surely I would think of a better way to say it.

The problem is that, if you were to write it yourself, you very probably wouldn't use a similar sentence structure or most of the same words. It's trying to keep the sentence vaguely similar to the original that causes problems, because the original is something that would never have been written by a native.

(This is also a problem with editing amateur writers, and all translation. If a sentence doesn't work, it just doesn't work. Start over.)

It might actually be to their greatest benefit to completely chuck out the problem sentence and re-write it from scratch the way that you would have. It changes from being a lesson on grammar to a lesson on how natives actually write.

But obviously not everyone is looking for that kind of correction.

QuackingShoe: yes. In this particular case I think the original sentence's use of 'nature' is so completely unnatural (as it were) that I'd be surprised to see a good correction that retained it or anything similar. IceCream's is pretty good.

That makes sense. Further, even if at a rational level I want to throw out the sentence and write a new one, the original tends to cloud my mind somehow so I end up thinking about the subject that way and don't see another way of saying it. For the "nature" sentence, the more I thought about it, the more firmly the original was ingrained. IceCream and pm215 got it: the word "nature" doesn't belong there.

I think there's some special skill needed here, perhaps similar to translation, and the people who've trained it to a high level are probably being paid good money to edit things somewhere else ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if the same kind of problems come up in any language.

I can't find it, but I read a post recently telling how someone's Japanese friend said "this is correct, but do you want me to make it sound Japanese?" and then wrote something much shorter than the original. Would I be right to think this doesn't happen very often?

I just joined a few days ago. This is it: http://lang-8.com/108282

I seem to be getting a lot of すごいがんばって comments, but I dunno... I can never tell if I'm good enough or not. Maybe when people start asking "あの、日本人ですか?" I'll know that I'm doing well. Hahahaha.

And yeah, I get fixes really quickly, like in a matter of hours!


the only downside of lang-8 is that it's done on the computer, so you can pretend to know how to reproduce way more kanji than you can actually reproduce by pen. (I can't can't write shourai or shougai to save my life on paper, but on the computer it's so easy to type 将来生涯 in!)

Well, I just signed up and posted a quick 自己紹介 and already received 6 comments with some minor fixes (within 15 minutes!). I must say I was pleasantly surprised, though I see what people are talking about when they say people correct to how they would say it, because most corrections were simply other ways to say it (though perhaps more natural?).

Anyway, I have a question for you Lang-8 vets: What's the protocol for thanking people who correct your stuff? Do you post a comment? What happens?

Also, if someone comments at the end of a correction with something, how do I respond to that? I tried to post a comment to a correct but it doesn't seem to show, and the only thing I can seem to do with final comments is add them to my notebook.

Any insight here?

I created a Lang-8 account a while back but never to used it again. So I created another one.
bodhisamaya
It really is a great site. I posted an introductory journal just now and within five minutes I had three users correct me. I made a mistake in every sentence! One of the mistakes was really embarrassing. I typed 大阪風　instead of 大阪府, and didn't catch the typo. Other than that, I discovered my grammar is really bad and my gf is not correcting me :mad:

As I look through journals written by students learning English, there seems to be several mistakes from those supposedly doing the correcting :o

bladethecoder Wrote:And I have seen a few people correcting English who IMO have no business doing so.

I agree, but it's also not limited to English people correcting Japanese people. In my academic career I've seen essays go to TAs and tutors that do so many unnecessary corrections. Even my resume, submitted to my friends for comments, has simple rewrites of sentences that essentially say the same thing, in the same tone. =)

Quote:However, a lot more corrections (including some of my own) could probably be described as "making the sentence better than it was, but still somewhat unnatural". When correcting posts, I'm quite willing to rephrase things, but often I'm dissatisfied with something unnatural in my own work. Why does this happen? If I wanted to express the same idea myself without having seen the post in question, surely I would think of a better way to say it.

That's the frustration I reached when writing on Lang-8, which is why I stopped. The sentences I am using in Japanese, I'm not sure if they sound natural at all, and it might be because I think in terms of English phrasing, connotations, and style. I feel like I should read more first...

ocircle Wrote:...but on the computer it's so easy to type 将来生涯 in!)

This is a little random, but you just reminded me of something:

What is the English word for 生涯教育？I remember there's some Latin term for it, and I used to know it, but I am drawing a complete blank. I think there's a Latin term for 生涯学習 too...

Aid me, o' wise English speakers

The dictionary (Kenkyusha) gives 生涯教育　lifelong education; continuing education and basically the same thing for 生涯学習.

Wikipedia also agrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelong_learning

Ryuujin27 Wrote:I must say I was pleasantly surprised, though I see what people are talking about when they say people correct to how they would say it, because most corrections were simply other ways to say it (though perhaps more natural?).

Hmm, I thought we were just talking about all the English speakers who will correct grammar but are unwilling or unable to offer other ways to say things, so the original poster's unnatural sentences remain unnatural after correction. Perhaps things are different in Japanese after all.

----

kainzero: In the second paragraph you quoted, I was talking about my corrections of English posts. And in the first, I was talking about people who were obviously English-learners themselves, and whose English level sometimes seemed lower than that of the Japanese person they were "correcting".

Hmm, I really still can't figure out for the life of me how to comment on people's comments. Is there any way to do this? I feel I'm being rude by not replying to the people's comments.

Aijin Wrote:What is the English word for 生涯教育？I remember there's some Latin term for it, and I used to know it, but I am drawing a complete blank. I think there's a Latin term for 生涯学習 too...

Make up a fake Latin word like "ad eruditum" or "vita doctrina" and pretend it's a word. Throw in a few real Latin words for good measure and you'll be safe. It's not a real Latin word per se, but I don't think your average grammar nazi would notice. Those personae non grata spit out pretentious words ad infinitum and argue against so-called poor grammar ad nauseam to the extent that it's considered an argumentum ad hominem while it is they that should learn grammar. Then again, I'm not a native Anglus speaker so take it cum grano salis.

Anyway, I think 生涯学習 and 生涯教育 are literal translations of "lifelong learning/education." Adult education is also kind of 生涯教育, but it's not Latin... Hmm.

As for lang-8, I think it works for advanced learners, but I'm not sure if it's a great site for beginners. Obviously you can improve your writing through lang-8 if your second language is already pretty good; you have practiced writing in your mother tongue by writing essays and whatnot and getting feedback from teachers/peers. So you can take full advantage of it if you have strong passive skills to the extent that pretty much every correction makes sense to you. But if corrections are beyond your passive skills and/or you can't pick up on bad corrections, I don't think it would help much.

Corrections work only when you can understand why the corrected versions are better, i.e., corrections should be used to move your passive skills to active skills. Nothing can directly improve your active vocabulary/grammar if you have poor passive skills.

You can tell which writing is good but can't write that way on your own? Feedback from skilled native speakers will be of great help. You can't tell if it's a bad writing style? I guess what you need to do is read and listen to native material.

Aijin: What is the English word for 生涯教育？I remember there's some Latin term for it, and I used to know it, but I am drawing a complete blank. I think there's a Latin term for 生涯学習 too...

Aid me, o' wise English speakers tongue

~~~~~~~~~~~

Reinforcing what others have said, in the US, "Lifelong Learning" is a term that you will hear very often.

There is a Japanese teacher on Lang-8 who corrects my entries. While most of the users on Lang-8 make only a few corrections here or there, the teacher completely rips my entries apart, LOL. I actually like it, though, because I am pretty much certain that his corrections are, well, correct. That, and he describes grammatical terms in detail so that I can understand what my mistakes are. At first it was a little intimidating seeing my entry almost entirely rewritten, but now I am sad any time he does not correct my journal.

Some of the English corrections I've seen on that site are just... dreadful. Since I want to help these people to recognize proper English to the best of their abilities, anytime I see an unnatural sentence, I just completely cross is out and rewrite it. It may bruise their egos at first, but I feel like it will help them more in the long run.

Aijin Wrote:

ocircle Wrote:...but on the computer it's so easy to type 将来生涯 in!)

This is a little random, but you just reminded me of something:

What is the English word for 生涯教育？I remember there's some Latin term for it, and I used to know it, but I am drawing a complete blank. I think there's a Latin term for 生涯学習 too...

Aid me, o' wise English speakers

I personally prefer "lifelong scholar", but that is not a direct translation. "Lifetime learning" sounds a little bizarre to me; one is constantly learning throughout their lifetime, whether one likes it or not. I also just don't like the way it looks.

bladethecoder Wrote:kainzero: In the second paragraph you quoted, I was talking about my corrections of English posts. And in the first, I was talking about people who were obviously English-learners themselves, and whose English level sometimes seemed lower than that of the Japanese person they were "correcting".

Yep.

And in the first paragraph, I was saying that people also power trip, like how I found it silly I had people who had clearly learned English as a second language, correcting my university essays. =)

And in the second, it is complicated to correct based on either natural sounding or technically correct... which is why I didn't like writing Japanese, because I think in English and organize my thoughts that way to create a technically correct (or so I hope) Japanese sentence, when I do not whether I am practicing correctly with natural sounding Japanese.

Anywho, there's a really useful post on Lang-8 on how you want your corrections done. (Or if you're smarter, you can use it to tell people how you did your corrections!)

Ah, I think I see how your post relates to mine now ;)

Nice link. Now, that's a useful idea, to *say* how you'd like your entries corrected =P

Aijin Wrote:What is the English word for 生涯教育？I remember there's some Latin term for it, and I used to know it, but I am drawing a complete blank. I think there's a Latin term for 生涯学習 too..

Not Latin, but Greek:
opsimath -- someone who starts or continues learning in adulthood.
polymath -- someone with proficiency in a wide variety of intellectual pursuits.

"Polymath" fairly rare, but still in use. I just learned "opsimath" today.

As I understand it, the difference between 教育 and 学習 is that 教育 implies classes, teachers, etc, like "education," while 学習 describes the results: increased knowledge and skill, like "learning." In that case, the commonly used equivalents should be:

生涯教育 -- continuing education (US) further education (UK)
生涯学習 -- lifelong learning

Cultural note: when "opsimath" was in common use it had a negative connotation. This is yet another manifestation of the "mudsill theory:"

People are not equal. In every category of ability, success, and power some people are fated to rise to the top and some to fall to the bottom--by biological nature, divine decree, social expediency, whatever--this same theory has appeared again and again with different agents. That fate is not lightly cheated. Don't bother trying.

Thus, someone who is destined for greatness will begin with amazing early ability: "prodigy." The rest accept their fate--except for a poor few who leave "their place" in an ultimately futile quest to run away from who they are.

Those people are "opsimaths."

If that's what it implies, I'm glad to see the word go.

Conflict Theory holds true, indeed, indeed.

Those are two awesome words, thank you I love learning new vocabulary. Opsimath is someone who specifically begins learning late, as opposed to early though, isn't it? Doesn't really fit the lifelong learning, more just presents the end of the spectrum.