Sure, let's have a look, then!
For reference:
red is for mistakes,
green means that what you wrote could sound better / more natural, and
blue is for comments/clarification.
I also underlined a couple parts where I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Could you clarify those or try to phrase them a different way?
Sophia Ha hat geschrieben:
Hello everyone,
I think you can already tell what my problem is from my question. But to elaborate
it,
let me tell you a little about my journey with the English language:
I’ve been learning English since the
fifth grade
in school, and although I learned British English there
, I tend
to use American English for some reason. To be more specific, I had a level of A2 at the end of
high
school, which was after 13 grades. I didn’t learn
much there, and I hadn’t had any intrinsic motivation to do so.
This was the main problem that I’ve been neglected learning English so much. After
high school
, I went to university, and of course I need English there, especially because I’m studying a scientific major. I’m expected to speak English at B2 level
, as the Abitur indicates that. But the truth is that I don’t speak it nearly at this level. Currently, I
am on semester holidays, and I’
ve been lear
ning
a lot of English – gramm
ar, spelling, tenses, listening comprehension, reading, and even speaking (only to myself
, though). I
feel like I’ve already improved a lot when
I compare my command of English
now to
how my skills were three months ago. I guess I
have mastered the basics of English, even though I still forget to add a
n2 „s“
1 for he/she/it or mix up the tenses sometimes. For that, I think, practice makes perfect.
Though I
have noticed that I can’t
always understand sentences complet
ely,
even though I know all
of the words in them. Isn’t that strange? Words do have ambig
uous meanings, and
isn’t it utopical to know them all? I can’t even read a simple English book without looking up many words. Fu
rthermore, I
'd rather not mention what a tough time I have understanding them. I have to read really slowly
, which takes
the fun out of reading. Moreover, there are numerous phras
al verbs,
and I just can't memorize them all because they are very similar. I feel like
that I can’t improve my English
any further, like there is something
holding me back
from lea
rning new
vocabulary (or "new words"), idioms, and so on. Is
there anyone here who can relate? Currently
, I’m really
discouraged and have no idea how I can overcome this. Should I take a break
from learning English for a while, or just carry on? Do you guys have
any ideas how „to solve“
1 this
issue? Maybe I
am overlook
ing something. And
don't get me wrong, of course speaking a foreign language
as well as your native language is kind of impossible.
Exceptions confirm the rule, though.
But somehow this is my
goal, just speaking naturally without thinking much, especially in terms of tenses and phras
al verbs as well as idioms. Unfortunately, living in a
n2 English
-speaking country is currently not possible.
I’m looking forward
to any tips you guys have for me. You can
estimate my English level through this text, I guess. I didn’t look
anything up, but it took me some time to write it, and I guess I shouldn't mention how many times I’ve rephrased some sentences.
PS: this is my first "
post" in a forum
ever, so if I've done anything wrong
, please correct me!
Hello Schuyler,
thank
1 you very much. I didn't expect such a long answer! It'd be nice if you could correct my previous text. I just read it again, and I actually caught some mistakes
by myself.
Your tips are great, and I've
already been applying a couple of them for about two months.
About the reading problem: It's not that I can't follow the story as a whole,
it's more that I can't
grasp the nuances of some words. For instance, propose and suggest - what's the difference? I have a slight idea what they mean, but not really. I looked them up, read many definitions, and so forth. But still - I don't get them. So I can't use them in my active vocabulary. And if I do,
I think it happens quickly that I'll use them in the wrong context forever. Do you know what I mean?
3
I already
keep a sort of d
iary -
"to keep a diary" is a phrase, meaning that you regularly write in a diary. You could also say "I already write in a diary" or "I'm already writing a diary", and indeed, it helps a lot! Especially to maintain (or was it retain?
- correct!3) the vocabulary I've learned. Speaking is a whole another
4 story, though. I'm still not quite sure how I should handle this.
Speaking to a toy sounds hilarious, but if it helps
, I should give it a shot (is that too informal?
- this isn't a formal setting, so no, not at all! But "to give it a shot" is indeed an informal expression, so you don't want to use it in formal writing).
I've considered
attending a B2 course in university, but I'm still not sure. Not that I don't want to. It's just
the problem that you are forced to learn at a certain time, even if you don't want to. It reminds me of school, and I think I mentioned how
that ended.
Your words motivated me very much, even though I'm still
wondering how I will ever
learn to use the tenses or the vocabulary properly. By the way, I appreciate
the effort you made writing all of those tips
for me. I'll see which I can apply, and which
I can't.
1These aren't actually mistakes, so I didn't change anything, but just note that quotation marks in English are different than in German. In English, both quotation marks are at the top, like "this". Quotation marks that start at the bottom like „this“ are never used and look very strange to an English speaker. When you're writing in a letter format in English, the first line after the greeting is also considered the start of a new sentence and is written with a capital letter. This isn't a big deal and of course, nobody is going to care what kind of quotation marks you use in a forum like this, but you'll want to use the "proper" formatting if you ever have to write something in a more formal context.
2Remember that whether you use
a or
an depends on the first sound of the following word (no matter what that word is): if the sound is a vowel, you use
an; if the sound is a consonant, you use
a. I say "sound" and not letter because pronunciation is all that matters. Usually when the first letter is a vowel (a/e/i/o/u), the sound will also start with a vowel and the same with consonants, but that is not always the case, so you should only consider what the word sounds like.
For example, "a S" is incorrect because although the letter "S" is a consonant, it is pronounced like "
ess", so it needs to be "an S". Be careful with words that start with a silent H as well (hour, honour, honest - these would be preceded by
an) or a U that is pronounced like the word
you (uniform, university, united - these would be preceded by
a).
3Ah yes, the English language has a
huge vocabulary and a lot of words that have the same or a very similar meaning to others but may not always be used in exactly the same way, which can make things particularly frustrating for learners.
I know it's not very helpful to hear, but a lot of the time, grasping the nuances between words is unfortunately one of those things in language learning that just have to be "felt" through observation.
That's one of the reasons why, like I said, you actually shouldn't look up every word when you read, because dictionaries will define the word, but they often don't say anything about how the meaning and usage differs from similar words, and of course the meaning of words can also change in different contexts. So it's really important to try to learn new words by looking at the rest of the sentence/paragraph without consulting a dictionary unless nothing else is helping. And then if the author uses either the same word or a different one that seems like it means the same thing later in the text, pay close attention to the context again and compare it to when the word was used before -- do you notice anything at all that has changed and might be relevant to the word choice? Is it a different character who is speaking or being spoken to? Has the mood gotten more or less formal? How about anything that's the same as before?
In the sense of "to put forward an idea for consideration", there isn't actually a significant difference between
to suggest and
to propose.
Propose sounds somewhat more stiff and formal than
suggest, I would say; you aren't as likely to hear it in a casual conversation between friends, but meaning-wise, the two words are pretty much interchangeable.
However, both words also have additional meanings and in these cases cannot be swapped for the other.
Propose without a direct object, as in "He proposed (to her)," means "to ask someone to marry you" -- in other words, "to propose marriage". "He suggested," on the other hand, makes no sense as a complete sentence, although "He suggested marriage" would.
And
suggest can also mean "to imply" or "to indicate", for example: "Are you suggesting (= implying) that I don't know what I'm doing?" or "This evidence suggests (= indicates) that John did eat the cookies after all." You could not replace
suggest with
propose in these sentences.
With
to maintain vs.
to retain, there is a difference, though subtle.
Maintain is similar to
sustain and means "to keep in good condition or at the same level, to keep something running smoothly", while
retain means "to hold on to, to keep possession of", or in this case "to keep in memory". For
retain, I imagine a fist holding onto something tightly and not letting go, and for
maintain, I think of a custodian
maintaining a building, working hard to keep everything clean and in order.
4Another is a combination of "an" + "other". Therefore, you don't say "an another", because the "an" is already there in
another. Keeping that in mind, there are a couple ways you could write this sentence:
- ... is another story.
- ... is a whole other story. (Here you are essentially still saying "another", but the "whole" splits it up into "a" and "other".)
- ... is a (whole) different story.
- ... is a whole nother story. (The phrase "a whole nother" is colloquial and fairly common in speech, but it is practically never used in writing.
Note: I only know of the word "nother" as part of this phrase, and not everyone recognizes it as an actual word.)
Just having something to speak to can do a lot to build your confidence, and once you learn to speak with confidence, even if you make mistakes, you are a huge step closer to becoming fluent!
)