- When you want to say or write something in that language (when you want to produce output), your brain can look for a sentence that you have heard or read before — a sentence that matches the meaning you want to express. Then, it imitates the sentence (produces the same sentence or a similar one) and you say your "own" sentence in the language. This process is unconscious: the brain does it automatically.
Collins co-build dictionary provides real example sentences:
I choose a word from it - let's take a word "fortunate"
a) He was extremely fortunate to survive.
b) Central london is fortunate in having so many large parks and open spaces.
c) It was fortunate that the water was shallow.
d) She is in the fortunate position of having plenty of choice.
I want to produce my own sentences but before doing that I need to see the examples of "fortunate" that I heard or read somewhere else.
Okay. I enforce my mind to think those sentences - After a while, my mind
gives me examples of "a", "b", "c" and "d"
I try to write my own sentence similar to those ones.
-I was extremely fortunate to survive from a heavy firing between the police and the criminals.
- English learners are fortunate to have so much guidance from Antimoon.
- It was fortunate that the lake did not contain poisonous reptiles.
- I'm in the fortunate position of having plenty of choice for learning
English effectively. for example, having a software in order to repeat words,
a cobuild dictionary for learning real example sentences and cable channels on Tv.
Would my sentences be called "real" or "own" ? Would this process be
considered an "intuition"? Will I always write sentences like that?
Can I write sentences with different kind of structures?
Would I think example sentences of a dictionary in order to write each and every word of English?
Hi Mohammed! Your sentences are definitely your own in the sense that you made them. Even if you basically copied a structure used by somebody else, your mind still had to go through the process of building a sentence using some kind of logic. Isn't such a process slightly different from intuition. You can rely on your intuition most of the time only when you have mastered English and can write accurately without having to go through a reasoning process or an immediately apparent system of logic. Whether or not you always write sentences the way you described above will probably depend on you and upon how thoroughly you learn your sentences and underlying sentence structures. We need to use a method to learn, but sooner or later we need to go beyond our method and rely on ourselves. I am not in any position to answer all of your questions, but it seems to me that you will be able to LEARN a lot of good English using such a method. Whether or not you can use the English you know in real-life situations depends on your ability to think on your feet and probably also on your teacher. It might pay to spend some time with either a native-speaker of English or a non-native speaker of native-speaker proficiency and get them to correct what you say and write. These days I try to study Korean using a method similar to yours, but I also spend a fair bit of time meeting teachers on a one to one basis and I get them to correct EVERY mistake that I make. Sometimes we just talk and I experiment with new sentences. When I can't express myself or I express myself in an awkward manner, I write down an appropriate sentence taught to me by my teacher. Later on I memorize it. I also try to avoid making the same mistakes. I would be interested in hearing what you and Tom have to say about this. It seems to me that Tom focusses on teaching students how to put good English into their heads when they are doing self-study. He also gives you a good way to produce a lot of correct sentences based on sentences written by other people. The advice he gives makes a lot of sense to me, but to me it almost seems necessary for adult learners of a foreign language to receive some correction and advice from a skillful user of that language. There might be some people who are extraordinarily gifted and who can avoid making mistakes altogether, but I think they are the exception rather than the rule. Tom advises us not to speak too much until we can speak and write with a minimum of mistakes. This also makes good sense. However, I find it almost impossible not to speak a lot of Korean when I am living in Korea and consequently I reinforce my mistakes. I wonder what the antimoon guys say about this. I thought of buying a digital voice-recorder and recording my conversations. Speaking with my teachers is different from speaking with the people I meet in my daily life, simply because we talk about different things. Many native-speakers also make absolutely no allowance for foreign learners, and Korean and Japanese people tend not to correct foreign learners of Korean or Japanese when they make mistakes. Maybe it would be a good idea to record some of your conversations in English and to analyse them with a teacher at a later date. I would love to hear whether the Antimoon guys think that a teacher is necessary at some stage in order to learn to use English well. Children can undoubtedly learn their mother tongue quite well with a minimal amount of correction, even if they do initially make a considerable amount of mistakes. Their method of learning obviously works well. The Antimoon method also seems to reduce the need for correction of an adult learner's English to a minimum. However, I would like to hear what the Antimoon guys suggest for advanced learners who are trying to go beyond the level of copying other peoples' writing and wish to use the English that they have learned in a creative and spontaneous way. Will this happen of its own accord if we just keep studying for long enough? Is a teacher necessary for adults and adolescents who are learning English or some other language as a foreign language? Are the Antimoon guys suggesting we use their method of study as something to complement the feedback and guidance we can receive from a good teacher, or are they suggesting that we can learn solely by listening, memorizing and copying good English?
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However, I would like to hear what the Antimoon guys suggest for advanced learners who are trying to go beyond the level of copying other peoples' writing and wish to use the English that they have learned in a creative and spontaneous way.
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Craig, copying other people's sentences is how the language unit in the brain operates. When you speak and a sentence appears in your mind spontaneously, that sentence is generated by the brain based on the sentences you've heard before.
So, in this sense, you CAN'T go beyond copying other people's sentences.
"Copying other people's sentences" can also be understood in another way -- the way Mohammed has demonstrated. Mohammed was looking for sentences in a dictionary as he was writing. The sentences weren't in his brain as he was writing. So HE -- not HIS BRAIN -- was copying other people's sentences. In other words, Mohammed was copying the sentences consciously.
However, the next time he writes a message in English, he might be able to use one of the sentence patterns with the word "fortunate" without looking it up. A correct sentence (or part of it) may just appear in his head. That would be intuitive usage, the kind we talk about in our introduction to input.
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Are the Antimoon guys suggesting we use their method of study as something to complement the feedback and guidance we can receive from a good teacher, or are they suggesting that we can learn solely by listening, memorizing and copying good English?
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What would be the purpose of a teacher?
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Would I think example sentences of a dictionary in order to write each and every word of English?
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It's okay to think of example sentences when writing. This ensures that you don't make mistakes. However, in time you will be able to write your own sentences without thinking about dictionary examples, and you will be sure of their correctness.
If you were to write "My name is Mohammed", I guess you wouldn't have to think about similar sentences from a dictionary. You've simply seen the "My name is" pattern so many times that you are absolutely certain it's correct. You can write it automatically without thinking about it too much.
The same will happen to any other pattern/word/grammar structure that you have seen enough times.
However, the next time he writes a message in English, he might be able to use one of the sentence patterns with the word "fortunate" without looking it up. A correct sentence (or part of it) may just appear in his head.
My mind creates a sentence without looking up example sentences of 'fortunate.'
I got 74.9% in my final exams, and one of my friend got 75%, and the merit position of getting admissions at the best university of my town is 75%, so my friend is nearly fortunate to get the admission.
Is it right or wrong?
I don't know. It sounds suspicious to my ears: "nearly fortunate". In addition, "one of my friendS", and I'm not sure about the usage of "merit position", I've never seen this before in my life.
Your have never seen/read such words in your life because they are spoken words. Our heads accumulate words not only from reading books but also from listening to other resources. All words go to the same memory.
Can we write spoken words into written English?
May be "nearly fortunate" and "merit position" could be spoken words.
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Your have never seen/read such words in your life because they are spoken words.
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I have never heard them either. ;-)
Hi Tom, Can you give me some your pice of advice to the below sentence:
Please be noticed or please note. What is correct ?
Thank in advance.
