3 ms·

Ask HN: How to Perfect Your English

4 points by qnsi 7y ago

I guess my english level is pretty ok. I read most of the information on the Internet / books in english. But I don't talk/write that much. Sometimes I don't feel that confident in my english knowledge. Any good tips on how to be better at this? What I would ideally want is some kind of feedback mechanism that tells me when I made a mistake, for example in grammar. What I can think of: 1) Grammarly - try to write notes in english and check text in Grammarly. But I don't like them having access to all keystrokes 2) Try to add a lot of stuff to Anki - I think a little bit to tedious Ideally, I would have something like Clozemasters (by HN User) [1] but the database they use for english is pretty bad. I am sure there are a lot of you for example from Europe or China that came up with some good solution to the problem of perfecting English [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13676105

gigatexal 7y ago
Have you looked into finding English language YouTubers you could watch/listen to to get a better ear for the language? It might make your skills more native sounding. Same idea with English podcasts. I find having to study the banality of a language tedious but if I’m listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast, for example, and I like tech and am trying to hear English spoken by native speakers, then it’s like I am learning without the tedium.
downerending 7y ago
Hmm. The English in this post is probably already above the average level of English as written in the US. I suppose one thing you could do is to simply encourage your correspondents to point out your errors. A little humbling, perhaps, but there's a lot to be said for rapid feedback. You didn't ask, but here's a little: English in the sense of the language is invariably capitalized. okay is perhaps a more correct spelling, though many use OK or ok informally. most of the information sounds a bit odd. Maybe just most things. Probably when I have made. You're missing a couple of periods at the end of sentences. This is all rather trivial, though. Your (written) English is essentially at a native level.
- qnsi 7y ago
  Thank you so much for pointing out the mistakes. I guess at the end of the day I will have to pay for a teacher to point out mistakes in my speech / writing, then ankify what she points out and try to improve in this way. I still think there might be a NLP based solution that could be of good use for people for example at reddit /r/grammar. They seem to recommend grammarly a lot
qnsi 7y ago
For anyone browsing HN in the future, when they try to get answers to interesting questions this is what I found after an hour of googling: https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is-it-possible-to-learn-grammar-through-spaced-repetition-and-if-yes-how https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is... this is probably the best "forum" to browse and find tactical and strategic information. I link to the specific question, because I think I will go with autogenerated cloze Anki flashcards as adviced in the second answer.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Note that the blog post about autogenerating Anki cards linked in the second answer ( https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d... ) uses Tatoeba ( https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org ) as the data source, which is also where Clozemaster gets its sentences from. You already said that those are bad for learning English, so Tatoeba may not be the solution for you. But that depends on what exactly you think is wrong with those sentences. I contribute to Tatoeba, mostly translating Mandarin into German, so I'm quite interested in hearing from end users.
  - qnsi 7y ago
    Ok, I guess my problem with clozemaster is - I am only really proficient in two languages - polish and english. There is no way to practice English to English with Clozemaster, and I guess Polish-English pair on Tatoeba is not that perfect. I will check Tatoeba

4 points by qnsi 7y ago

gigatexal 7y ago

Have you looked into finding English language YouTubers you could watch/listen to to get a better ear for the language? It might make your skills more native sounding. Same idea with English podcasts. I find having to study the banality of a language tedious but if I’m listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast, for example, and I like tech and am trying to hear English spoken by native speakers, then it’s like I am learning without the tedium.

downerending 7y ago

Hmm. The English in this post is probably already above the average level of English as written in the US. I suppose one thing you could do is to simply encourage your correspondents to point out your errors. A little humbling, perhaps, but there's a lot to be said for rapid feedback. You didn't ask, but here's a little: English in the sense of the language is invariably capitalized. okay is perhaps a more correct spelling, though many use OK or ok informally. most of the information sounds a bit odd. Maybe just most things. Probably when I have made. You're missing a couple of periods at the end of sentences. This is all rather trivial, though. Your (written) English is essentially at a native level.

qnsi 7y ago
Thank you so much for pointing out the mistakes. I guess at the end of the day I will have to pay for a teacher to point out mistakes in my speech / writing, then ankify what she points out and try to improve in this way. I still think there might be a NLP based solution that could be of good use for people for example at reddit /r/grammar. They seem to recommend grammarly a lot

qnsi 7y ago

For anyone browsing HN in the future, when they try to get answers to interesting questions this is what I found after an hour of googling: https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is-it-possible-to-learn-grammar-through-spaced-repetition-and-if-yes-how https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is... this is probably the best "forum" to browse and find tactical and strategic information. I link to the specific question, because I think I will go with autogenerated cloze Anki flashcards as adviced in the second answer.

yorwba 7y ago
Note that the blog post about autogenerating Anki cards linked in the second answer ( https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d... ) uses Tatoeba ( https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org ) as the data source, which is also where Clozemaster gets its sentences from. You already said that those are bad for learning English, so Tatoeba may not be the solution for you. But that depends on what exactly you think is wrong with those sentences. I contribute to Tatoeba, mostly translating Mandarin into German, so I'm quite interested in hearing from end users.
- qnsi 7y ago
  Ok, I guess my problem with clozemaster is - I am only really proficient in two languages - polish and english. There is no way to practice English to English with Clozemaster, and I guess Polish-English pair on Tatoeba is not that perfect. I will check Tatoeba