Practice #13: Without dictionaries During writing my previous notebook entries, I looked up many uncertain words in dictionaries. It prevented me from making any embarrassing mistakes and made me conf

Masato Hatayama

Practice #13: Without dictionaries During writing my previous notebook entries, I looked up many uncertain words in dictionaries. It prevented me from making any embarrassing mistakes and made me confident to submit. Although it was time-consuming, I believe that checking words is necessary for any language learners. But I sometimes doubt about it, too. The reason of writing my entries on italki is just for practice, not for showing my works to my boss. I want to know how I can write in English on my own. I want helpful corrections by English experts. Why not ban any dictionaries? Is it OK to go public with entries I think it should be natural and well written? I can't decide whether this idea is good or not. I'll try to reduce the number of looking-up during my next writing.

Nov 29, 2015 9:28 AM

Corrections · 6

Practice #13: Without dictionaries

While During writing my previous notebook entries, I looked up many uncertain words I was uncertain about in dictionaries. It prevented me from making any embarrassing mistakes and made me confident to submit the entries. Although it was time-consuming, I believe that checking words is necessary for any language learners.

But I sometimes doubt about it, too. The reason for of writing my entries on italki is just for practice, not for showing my works to my boss. I want to know how I can write in English on my own. I want helpful corrections by English experts. Why not ban all any dictionaries? Is it OK to go public with entries I think are it should be natural and well written?

I can't decide whether this idea is good or not. I'll try to reduce the number of words I look up during my next writing practice.

You write very well and your learning strategies are effective. Even if you don't check a dictionary as much in the future, I still recommend checking your work before posting it here.

Words are not in themselves "certain" or "uncertain", but people can be "certain" or "uncertain" about words.

Always "the reason + for + noun / ing"

While + verb form / During + noun

Best wishes, Michael

November 29, 2015

Practice #13: Without dictionaries

During writing my previous notebook entries, I looked up many uncertain words in dictionaries. It prevented me from making any embarrassing mistakes and made me confident to submit them. Although it was time-consuming, I believe that checking words is necessary for any language learners.

But I sometimes have doubts about it, too. The reason I of writeing my entries on italki is just for practice, not for showing them my works to my boss. I want to know how well I can write in English on my own. I want helpful corrections by English experts. Why not ban any("all" might make more sense.) dictionaries? Is it OK to go public with entries I think it should be natural and well written? (I can't seem to make sense of this sentence. Sorry!)

I can't decide whether this idea is good or not. I'll try to reduce the number of words I look up (*OR*) times I look up wordslooking-up during my next writing.

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Great entry! Your english is really amazing! Most of my corrections are honestly just nitpicking to make the post sound more natural and to make it sound more like a native english speaker's post.

The reason the orange sentence is confusing is because "I think it should be natural and well written" is a statement but there is a "?" at the end of it. It sounds like you're making a statement and at the same time, questioning it.

November 29, 2015

Hello Guiherme. Thanks for reading my entry, and I'm glad you agree on my challenge!

November 30, 2015

Hi Masato. I guess there's a limit to what a dictionary can do to help a learner string sentences together. Usually there's an example sentence, which is great, but it may not be exactly the context where you intend to use the word or expression you looked up. But you said it yourself -reducing the number of times you look up a word (i.e. taking a few more risks) may be a happy compromise! From what I understand, Japanese students are not very keen on taking risks when it comes to language learning, but it's worth trying! がんばろう！

November 29, 2015

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