You cannot learn English without making mistakes

Michal Ryszard Wojcik   Monday, December 03, 2001, 10:10 GMT
The Antimoon article:
http://www.antimoon.com/other/writingdamage.htm
provoked many readers to write to us and many of them wrote:
YOU CANNOT LEARN WITHOUT MAKING MISTAKES.

They think that they have to make mistakes if they want to learn English.

This phrase sounds almost like a proverb.
I want to discuss it further because I believe that it is false and misleading.

I started learning another foreign language in order to see if I could learn without mistakes. I wanted to show people that it is possible to learn a language without making mistakes.

I have learned Norwegian for about half a year now. And I believe that I haven't made a single mistake. You can read about my Norwegian experiment:
http://www.antimoon.com/norsk
Tom   Thursday, December 06, 2001, 23:41 GMT
I would agree with the statement "you cannot invent without mistakes". For example, when Thomas Edison was trying to make a working light bulb, he made thousands of non-working light bulbs. He invented the light bulb through thousands of experiments.

But learning a language is not invention. You're not supposed to invent new ways of saying things. You're supposed to copy the ways of people who speak the language (native speakers). Therefore you don't have to experiment; and you don't have to make mistakes.

Sure you can learn without mistakes. Just imitate people who can do something well.
Jackson   Friday, December 07, 2001, 02:48 GMT
no mistakes no new things, after all "to err is human". i quie agree with the captioned topic.