How to avoid the acceptance of wrong corrections? (for all languages)
Cerca tra vari insegnanti di Inglese...
Commenti · 8
4
I think this is a big issue. I myself have problems checking whether the correction in Slovak (my target language) is good or bad. I have to trust the corrector. The only thing I can rely on is to compare more than one correction. But often people do not take the effort to do a second review to a corrected text.
Sometimes corrections tend to be very useful, when there is some explanation added. That helps a lot!
In former times I was on a different website, where you HAD TO CORRECT other texts before you could post one of your own. This helps getting more information and a second glance at your texts. May that be a solution?
Thank you so much for your discussion!
2
Hi Fred!
You're right, this is a big issue, and I have always come across things on Italki I wouldn't have seen in my worst nightmares...
My answer is very simple but seem obvious to me: people should avoid correcting things if they don't master the language. I can hold a conversation in English but I would never afford to correct an entry because I don't speak it perfectly and I don't have that natural feeling native speakers have.
2
I wasn't really aware of this problem until recently, because in the old version of italki I usually only checked notebook entries without corrections. Occasionally I would open a corrected notebook entry. If it was corrected by another German user, whose corrections are in general good, I didn't read further. If it was corrected by a new German user, I would sometimes check the correction and add some corrections or comment, if the correction was sloppy. But I didn't see a lot of corrections by non-natives with low German level. But just these couple of days I found some really bad corrections. So now I downvote them, comment to the corrector that his correction is bad and upload a better correction.
1
Sure it is very good, if only native speakers correct your entries, but even they make mistakes.
Depending on where they come from they might not even know that this is only dialect or slang and not high qualitiy language. I do not want to exclude myself here. I sometimes get into problems explaining and finding the right solutions, when my husband - a Slovak - asks me things about German - my native language. Sometimes we check the internet or discuss with friends and family or look up the topic in books...
This is even worse when you learn a "difficult" language - like me doing Slovak. Mmy husband told me that half of the native speakers for Slovak are not sure about certain grammar and spelling rules themselves or make "mistakes", which only people realise, who have a diploma or phd etc. You may say that if they cant do it properly, I should not be concerned making the same mistakes, but I want to do it right, since I put a lot of effort in training and learning the language. Moreover I get confused when I get a correction that does not fit the rules I try to learn or implement. Is this just an exeption of the rule or didn`t I understand the rule properly?
I still recommend my initial thought of having more people correct the texts so you can compare, but I know that forcing people may lead to an even worse conclusion.
1
@Miriam That's exactly what I mean. Normally, people check the notes that are not corrected yet and ignore the others.
The conclusion would be that the correctors have to doublecheck all entries, to up- and downvote more intensively and to comment even the older notes if they are insufficiently corrected.
My sincerest thanks for all your answers! :)
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