Hi there,
I promise to be brief today ahaha :)
I've finally resumed my private classes in English. I have to say that I'm over the moon. It's been amazing to get in touch with native people again. I was missing it a lot. However, there is one thing that I still struggle with.
Like I said in one of my posts, I love getting feedback from my tutors. I love, even more, when they point out my mistakes. However, most of them are mistakes that I'm aware of. It may sound weird, so let me try to make myself clear. For example, one of my tutors writes my mistakes down and then asks me how I can make them right. That's fabulous, by the way. The funny fact is that I know how to correct them. Although they're simple and obvious for me, I still make the same mistakes over and over again.
Besides that, since I already know the subject behind those mistakes, it turns harder to work on them. That's why I wrote my last post talking about revisiting the basics of a language. Maybe that's what is missing for me. Does it happen with you guys? If so (or "if does"? I never know for sure Ahah), how you deal with it?
What kind of mistakes are you making? Grammar? Spelling? Collocations? Or others? Don't worry about that. I believe it is quite common in learning anything. Your brain simply cannot juggle with so many things all together at the same time, even if you know about each of them well. Just like playing the piano, when you try to practice on a new piece, at the first you focus on hitting the right keys, and you unconsciously neglect the pace and rhythm. When you try to catch the pace, you may probably make other mistakes. You are using your logic instead of your instinct, which means you are analyzing language instead of speaking it. However, our brain has its limit on multi-task process. The solution is simple. You have to practice more in order to turn some aspects of the language into your instinct and reduce the "system usage rate". When you can do it without thinking of it, you will be able to handle other parts of the langauge more easily, and make fewer mistakes.
I think it's better to be aware of your mistakes and to know how to correct them, rather to have your tutor point it out and be completely unaware of it. It means you're developing a better intuition of your language.)) That being said, it might help to have those little mistakes you keep making, and to physically note down the exact correct phase in a notebook. Then, as a sort of small activity, you could review those sentences and phrases every morning. Say, for example, you pick 5 phrases and then think of situations where you would say them. Think of where to apply them in context, and then practice saying them. This way, you should be able to re-train the mistakes over time. Hope that helps. :))
Hi Ana! I'm actually taking a TEFL course right now to become an English teacher in Brazil! One of the things I'm learning in my course is that the process of self correction (rather than being explained the mistakes you are making) is the proper way to teach English. It may seem frustrating to you right now that you keep making these simple mistakes, but your tutor is doing the right thing to get you to correct yourself so that you can form good habits! Trust me, I still say dumb things in Portuguese like "ele falei" at times, even though I know it's "ele falou". You're not alone in this struggle, keep up your enthusiasm for learning English! It warms my heart to read that you're enjoying learning my native language (and if it's any comfort to you, Portuguese is my favourite language to learn).
Hi, Ana! Great job on this post! I also make simple mistakes on grammar points that are really basic when speaking with my tutor or sometimes when writing. I think it's like @ovaltine says: sometimes, your brain can only juggle so much information. For example, in my French, I will be so focused on choosing the right past tense, I will forget to match the genders of adjectives that I learned a long time ago! This happens a lot especially when I'm speaking because the extra cognitive effort of pronunciation comes in!
You guys are so freaking awesome! I do appreciate the effort that each one of you had made to answer my question! I read all of them. I do feel that, sometimes, I struggle because my brain is juggling so much information at once. Other times, I struggle because I'm so concerned about making a specific thing or structure right that I forget the rest. Like you all said, it takes time. For now, I'm trying to practice as much as I can. Besides that, I'm also reviewing the basics of the language to internalize them even more. Thanks a lot, one more time. :)