Bad Mistakes vs Good Mistakes
After years of reading and editing English posts on Journaly, I've realized that corrections and suggestions are a powerful language-learning tool. This is because there are two basic kinds of mistakes generally made by users: basic grammatical and usage errors made by beginners and intermediate learners, which I'll call "bad" mistakes for lack of a better word; and then there are more "innocent" mistakes made by advanced learners who are at a level where they're simply fine-tuning an already impressive command of the language. These are "good" mistakes because they allow us to deal with the finer points of the language that have to do with syntax, semantics and idiomaticity. This last element is extremely important at this stage. It's the difference between a sentence that grammatically follows all the rules, but semantically and practically isn't something a native would say in that context. I'll cite the following post as an example of good mistakes in an excellently written excerpt from a story:
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At four in the morning, Samuel woke up on the sofa. He had fallen asleep halfway through the movie. The recurring dream that had awakened him had left him disoriented and cranky. Cold to the bone, he went into the kitchen and washed his face in the sink. His own reflection in the still dark window, made him feel even worse.
"You look terrible," the voice said.
"Well, thanks for your honesty. I don't feel any better than I look."
"Why don't you go to bed and get some sleep?"
"Because I have to write. My editor is pushing me," Samuel said, as he walked to his desk.
"Editors are a pain in the ass, if you ask me," the voice said.
"I didn't ask you, but if I did, I couldn't agree more."
"I wasn't asking you," the voice's pitch sounded higher than usual, "I was making a statement."
"So was I," Samuel said. "And now, if you don't mind..."
"Mind what?"
"Zip it."
"Okay, but I'll be on standby if you need me."
"Of course you will... but button it already."
The detective quickly turned on his phone, made a call, and paced back and forth as he waited for someone to answer at the police station. The nun looked at him from the doorway. "Larry? It's Mulligan, from Homicide," the detective said on the phone, "Is Parker there?"
The nun took a few slow steps forward to eavesdrop.
"I don't care where he is! Get him right now!"
The nun took two quick steps back. The detective turned around and lowered his voice. "I need you to trace a phone ASAP."
The nun could barely hear what he said and took one of her ears out of her wimple.
"An abbess." he said. There was a long pause. "For God's sake! A.B.B,E,S,S, Abbess! Do you get it now, or do you want me to go there and help you hold your pencil?"
The nun put her wimple in its place, anticipating the end of the conversation. "Is everything okay, Detective?"
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To be continued…
This is very informative. Thank you for your work! I'm sure many users will learn something valuable from this. We should praise and embrace our mistakes.
Absolutely, but also the good mistakes of others. We have so much to learn from them!
Yes, indeed. That's what Journaly is all about. We're a community🧡 and we should try to help each other.
Very interesting. I also think this boils down to active vs. passive vocabulary. I haven't written a piece in English for a long time and could see myself making these mistakes to be honest. Nice post for those striving to achieve a bit more in their works.
I’m so glad you found this helpful 🤩 Some of it is in fact passive perhaps for beginners, but I believe the advanced level is where you start revisiting what you deemed passive in the early stages of learning (because you had more important groundwork to cover), and start making it active as the finer points of your target language. That’s precisely why “good” mistakes are so priceless.
Great analysis. But the problem is that there's no agreement between native speakers themselves because they have different opinions and experiences. For example, ''I raked apples into piles." Some native speakers will leave this without any corrections, but another will recommend changing 'piles' to 'groups'.
They're both correct: piles if the apples are on top of one another in a heap; and groups if they're different color apples and you group them by color, for instance. Context is everything, so there's agreement among natives — you just need to give them more context.
Thanks!
An interesting thing I've noticed: The non-native English-speaking world makes this fine-tuning incredibly difficult. When I try to use a more advanced structure or phrase, most people simply get confused, and sometimes they don't even understand it, so I have to switch back to a simpler version of my language.
But that's a good thing because then you can learn the correct way to say what you were trying to say in the first place. I recommend that instead of switching back to a simpler version, you ask how to express what you were trying to say. We're all here to learn. If a native speaker gets confused or doesn't understand, they should ask you what you mean and help you.
Stay safe, Uly! I heard that the biggest hurricane is heading to Florida. I'm praying for you and my other friends there.
@CocoPop how is the hurricane season so far?
The season itself has been ok for us here in South Florida. Helene hit the north of the state, and now Milton is going to hit the same area. So I'm thankful that the season has been so favorable for us here, but I feel terrible for the people above us and I pray for their safety even as they wait to be hit again sometime in the early morning tomorrow.
I'm glad to hear that you are safe. I'm still keeping praying for my friends in Orland and my painting teacher in Tampa.
Thank you! Yes, hopefully your friend evacuated and went somewhere else to wait out the storm.
Thank you. I really hope so too.