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I R Needs Halps Wit Gramer
Horus
Los AngelesRegistered User regular
Los AngelesRegistered User regular
Ok, joking about my problem but let me lay it out. Ever since high school I struggled to write clear essays. Making grammatical errors everywhere and always get "I know what your mean but its hard to understand what you say" I tried to get help with my essay and in college I struggled. I got a good English professor who recommended me an ESL tutor who helped me a lot and my professors who knew I struggled a lot in writing. One of my philosophy professors told me his kids have a disorder with brain sending the info to my hand that caused issues in writing. I do not think I have some writing disorder if I made it this far in my life.
Usually in college to get A papers I would write the paper 2 weeks before the deadline, get friends to proof it, and profs then revise it for the deadline.
Anyway I am tired that my writing is bad and I really want to improve it but how? I mean how can I learn something thats remedial? If it helps I am bilingual in Spanish, which many claim its the speaking Spanish first then English is the reason for being slow writer but I learned both languages at the same rate.
Another thing is I can proof read this over and over and I would read it out loud but still I cannot find any grammatical problems. Since I was told reading it out loud you'll catch errors, nope sounds clear. Done the proof read backyards, write short and simple sentences, and do outline to get the ideas organize, all approaches I done but my problem is still there.
I got books on grammar but honestly none have really helped me or connected on my concern.
tl;dr: I have shitty writing skills(mostly in grammar) how can I improve it or get help? Because I want to be the next JK Rowling (just kidding but at least write something creative that my grammar is making it clear)
Usually in college to get A papers I would write the paper 2 weeks before the deadline, get friends to proof it, and profs then revise it for the deadline.
Anyway I am tired that my writing is bad and I really want to improve it but how? I mean how can I learn something thats remedial? If it helps I am bilingual in Spanish, which many claim its the speaking Spanish first then English is the reason for being slow writer but I learned both languages at the same rate.
Another thing is I can proof read this over and over and I would read it out loud but still I cannot find any grammatical problems. Since I was told reading it out loud you'll catch errors, nope sounds clear. Done the proof read backyards, write short and simple sentences, and do outline to get the ideas organize, all approaches I done but my problem is still there.
I got books on grammar but honestly none have really helped me or connected on my concern.
tl;dr: I have shitty writing skills(mostly in grammar) how can I improve it or get help? Because I want to be the next JK Rowling (just kidding but at least write something creative that my grammar is making it clear)
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
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As for how to improve, you can get a grammar book that teaches you all the theory behind grammar (i.e. what the pluperfect is, the difference between active and passive voice, etc). If that sounds too dry and you just want to write more fluidly, then I would suggest reading lots of books. And don't read supermarket pulp novels like Tom Clancy or Stephen King. I don't think they even have an editor for those books. I think Jane Austen is best if you want to write eloquently. One of my lit profs remarked that student essays on Jane Austen always seemed to be better written than essays on other authors, as if her good writing was infectious in a way.
Try reading this one out loud:
"Anyway I am tired that my writing is bad and I really want to improve it but how?"
If you say it as you wrote it, you'll hear it going too fast, you'll sound like a SoCal girl who can't stop. It will be hard to do, and feel like a railway train building up speed. What you'll probably do is automatically insert the pauses you need for the sentence to read correctly. You must concentrate on reading what you wrote, not what you meant.
"Anyway, I am tired that my writing is bad. I really want to improve it, but how?"
That's a start. You can worry about whether beginning sentences with "anyway" is a good idea later
Edit: You have a good vocabulary, actually. Well done.
Some magazines are also good. I'd recommend the Atlantic Monthly. It's usually filled with well written articles.
Elements of Style by Strunk and White (if the link is broken).
you should be able to source it cheap at second hand bookstores. earlier editions will work fine (3rd edition can be had used on amazon for under 2 bucks). if you can follow those rules you will write better than 99.9% of english speakers/writers.
shorter sentences do help with clarity. also reading good literature (which is not the same as popular literature) should give you an eye/ear for proper grammar. people learn good writing from reading good writing.
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
It could be anything, I write well because I read a lot as a child. What matters now is having the determination to get better, which you seem to have
I hear it works with creative writing too.
For example, even some of the grammar Nazis here will find no problems with the following two sentences:
"Oh, I wish I was homeward bound." --Paul Somon
"This is a thread which talks about grammar.
However, they're both incorrect. Or, well, they used to be.
But as IreneDAdler said, make sure its the type of book that can actually help you.
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
The internet is where people decided "lol ur a noob" is something besides pure gibberish. Do not, under any circumstances, learn grammar from the intrawebz :P
In all seriousness though, even on these forums where people at least try to write comprehensibly, grammatical slips and errors are rampant. I'd imagine the vast majority of people (myself included) write their posts as thoughts come into their head. Sure you can read it and understand what the poster is saying, but it's conversational English that often times isn't the clearest way to say something.
I would suggest in addition to reading more print sources, pick up Elements of Style or another such grammar/writing book and just skim its topics. That way you will have an idea of what good writing entails and can look for those things in your readings.
EDIT:
Don't just rely on a book being a classic as a ways of validating that it's a source of good writing. I remember The Scarlet Letter had a paragraph long sentence (there were so many commas...). I personally can't stand the style of Victorian literature. Austen, Bronte, ugh. Read a wide variety of stuff, you'll figure out quickly which books are well written and which aren't.
Like other people have said, read novels. The reading out loud thing might not be working, because you may be reading what you think you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote. Have you tried having someone else read it out loud to you?
* argh I don't even know where to start with the final sentence
okay, the purple bits are changes, the red bits are bits that need deletion. my grammar changes didn't make your post perfect, but they did improve readability a whole lot.
Seems to me like you're trying to get the thoughts out of your head and on to paper so fast that you're skipping over important details, like whole words and a lot of punctuation. It gets worse as your frustration level rises, as the final sentence in your post shows. You also change tenses a lot, and shift from third to first person in strange places. These things really should be very obvious if you read them out loud, so I think the problem is that you don't have a good mental model of what's right. And really, the only way to develop that model is to read a whole lot. Newspapers and well-written blogs, as well as the aforementioned novels, are the way to go. Its something that will take time and effort.
It's not something that just happens. You have to make it a habit until it's just second nature.
I think you'd benefit from reading almost anything. Like Lewisham, I read alot as a child. Almost always fictional novels, really just anything that took my fancy. I've been making an effort to get back into the habit of always being partway through something, just because I really enjoy reading fantasy.
Do you read novels at all? Have you before (I'm not taking the piss, I know some people just don't like reading)? Try and find a genre which you think will interest you, and have a look around for some renowned authors that deal with that particular genre. If you're unsure which author to start with, I'd suggest asking someone at your local library for pointers.
www.pandagon.net - lefty politics in general plus a dash of feminist and GLBT issues
www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula - science and snarky atheism, and lots of squid
www.larvatusprodeo.net (bit of a niche one, Aussie politics)
www.faultline.org - fantastic poetical nature writing, and actually the top recommendation. Chris Clarke is amazing, although he's been a little hard to read emotionally speaking since his dog died a few months back
http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/ - and they're pissed. a look at the current (oft woeful) state of comic writing and art. She really puts the boot into Frank Miller :P
for the more informal end of things,
gofugyourself.typepad.com - makes fun of bad celebrity fashion. lot of run-on sentence randomness, but entertaining
http://blogs.brisbanetimes.com.au/bluntinstrument/ John Birmingham's Blunt Instrument. The man writes newspaper columns about the coming zombie apocalypse, and also wrote a couple of great books about sharehouse living in 1980's Brisbane. funny stuff.
Eh, that's most of what I read these days, actually. you'll find a lot of good sites linked through the first few on that list.
First of all, there are a number of handbooks that are quite good for both the writing process and grammar itself:
Strunk and White's Elements of Style
The Little, Brown Handbook
Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers
Just look for any style guides or writer's handbooks and you'll probably find something useful, on Amazon or in a bookstore or whatever.
Secondly I have a document on sentence structure that you might find helpful, although the part highlighted in yellow is incorrect and should be ignored: http://travis.facette.googlepages.com/SentenceStructure.doc
In order to improve your writing you'll have to slow down and think about your sentences when you write them. Spanish sentence structure is fairly similar to English sentence structure, and you're making errors that would be problematic in both languages, so I'm not sure that's the problem.
So, slow down. Leave yourself time to revise; a lot of good writers have poor grammar until they revise. Revision is also much, much more effective if you leave yourself a day or two between the writing of the paper and the revision, since it won't be as fresh in your mind and you won't skip over things.
If you just can't grasp the way sentences are supposed to go together, you'll need to study the rules of English sentence construction (in one of those handbooks, for example) and apply them every time you write a sentence. If you can do that properly it will eventually become second nature.
Thank you everyone
(I wrote this post with think the sentence first then wrote it approach.)
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Oh God that was terrible grammar
should I tell him
:P
Good luck!
Good prose writers:
Jane Austen -- Persuasion; her last novel and her shortest work. Some consider it to be her best. I would recommend you read it to at least sample her work. If you find her style to your liking, try the more famous ones, like "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice." I would stay away from Northanger Abby and Mansfield Park.
Charles Dickens -- Pickwick Papers; the work that made Dickens famous. Yes, he got paid by the word, but I still like all his words. Don't commit yourself to reading the whole thing, because it's a bajillion pages; it was originally published as a series of stories, which means you don't have to read the whole thing any more than you have to see all episodes of Friends.
Steve Martin -- Yes, as in the actor. I've read his two novellas "Shopgirl" and "The Pleasure of My Company," and I was really surprised at his skills as a writer. He uses very simple, clear prose, but portrays very complex and subtle characters and emotions. If you don't like the flowery writing of Austen and Dickens, I would suggest you read some of Steve Martin's stuff.
Dave Barry -- Another American writer/humorist. He is probably most widely known for his old newspaper columns, but he's published several books as well. "Big Trouble" got made into a movie, and there's a sequel-ish book "Risky Business." I've only read some of his columns and "Risky Business," but he's another of my favorite living writers. He writes very idiomatically and conversationally, but manages to always sound intelligent. His writing is always fun to read, because he's got a great sense of humor.
Kurt Vonnegut -- If you like SciFi, he's a good one to read. Very polished prose.
Lloyd Alexander -- He's more known as a children's author, probably most famous for The Prydain Chronicles (Book of Three, Black Cauldron, etc). Light, entertaining, and well-written.
C. S. Lewis -- Chronicles of Narnia.
Orson Scott Card -- Even though he seems to have become a little cuckoo in recent years, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are still probably two of the best SciFi works I've ever read. Not perhaps a shining example of prose, but still well-written. I haven't delved into the rest of the Ender's Game series, but I've read the other 3 books of the Ender's Shadow series, and I would recommend you skip those unless you have a huge hard-on for Bean and the rest of Ender's team.
Authors to avoid:
William Faulkner -- no, just... no
James Joyce -- not as much of a brainfuck as Faulkner, but still pretty bad.
Joseph Conrad -- English is actually his third language. He writes with very proper grammar, but with a very dry feeling.
Manga may not be the best place to start, since some of that is probably pretty poorly translated.
"It is of you that I wish to speak."
Um... yeah.
Doesn't make his writing anything more than banal.
I'm just curious, because a lot of your posts seem to have fair English grammar, but a lot of it is constructed as though it were written in Spanish (i.e. nouns followed by adjectives).
When you write, do you tend to write things quickly, in one sitting? You said you have revisions done, but I would recommend trying to polish the paper yourself, instead of relying on others completely (I mean, in addition to expanding your reading repertoire).
Oh, and if you want a great writer with equally great prose, check out John Irving. My recommendations are The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. All hilarious and awesome in their own ways -- will keep you entertained, and will help you learn what proper grammar sounds like.
She gets a lot of shit. I think she writes easily read prose, and I think that she does very well at writing dialogue; breaking rules in order to fit in with "real life".
She is not an author you should look to to write better, but she does a very good job of communicating what she wants to, which is the whole point. She doesn't deserve what she gets from the "serious" crowd.
Almost any reading is good, and better to start with books he's more likely to enjoy
I used to do that when my mom proof-read my papers in middle school and my freshmen year of high school. I would say, "No one else has to put up with their parents butchering their papers! It was good enough for an A before you touched it!"
The papers were indeed good enough to get an A more times than not, but her corrections and my asking "Why?" and "How do I do this next time?" helped me become the writer I am today. That's not to say I'm the writer of writers. What I am, however, is a much better writer because of this experience.
I have to go - my mom is asking me to go proof her e-mail!
Did you mean at the same time, or just over the same period of time?
As I can remember I learned both languages the same time, because my parents only spoke Spanish and my siblings only English.
When you write, do you tend to write things quickly, in one sitting?
Basically when I write a paper; research, outline, and then start writing away. Yes I do write things quickly but thats because I have the outline to help me. Also for large papers I would break them up in large chunks. The thing is in my head, if I did not do an outline I get flooded with ideas, sources and information that I rush to write it all down.
To Black Ice:
In addition to the reading you're going to do, have you ever sat down with a friend and asked why they make the corrections they do?
I did that a lot during High School, but honestly I would stay after school but my teachers sucked so bad they didn't want to put the effort to help me. One teacher helped me but it was limited due to health issues. In college, honestly people would be like "WTF you don't know why!" Until I meet my tutor in writing as I mention before, she said from freshman year to senior year I improved.
To everyone: Thank you very much for the help. I got Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes unabridged as starters and it was a package deal when I bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. I am getting a Style of Writing book to relearn everything but there are so many versions so still looking at a format I can work with. At least the having writing disorder is out of the question since people have similar or understand my situation.
Brief history why I suck at grammar:
I had the worst background in education, seriously if it wasn't for my dedication to learn I would have been a looser. I had teachers who never taught me writing and grammar during elementary, everything was just do pages 1-20 in the activity book. Then middle school, well those years sucked for me I hate it because the school sucked. While in high school teachers never brought it to my attention that I had major writing problems. Until late into my HS, where i took AP courses and that teacher I mention earlier told me. I feel my education in writing was not developed compared to science and math where I was in honors, where English honors was my senior year. College I feel actually cared about me, I got tutors, prof who did not mind helping me and actually gave me advise all the time and resources where open for me to use. They even kept in touch after the class asking me how I was progressing.
tl;dr I think the lack in background education, I never really understood the anatomy of writing.
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Perhaps the OP wants to post a writing sample, as carefully "debugged" as he can make it, and let us see where the problems lie? Unfortunately, most people treat Internet posting and e-mail as media where grammar and spelling are unimportant or otherwise ignorable, and thus come to believe that "internet writing" and normal, everyday, "academic" writing are somehow distinct activities. They are not, or at least, they shouldn't be.
1) Examine your speech. Obviously this isn't something that we can really help you with, but I think the reason that you might have difficulty with proof-reading (and the "proof-read out loud" method) is a disconnect between the way you speak and the way you read. Over time, your speech will improve thanks to your increasing knowledge of grammar.
2) Read out loud. This is similar to the above, but most people I know with a poor educational background (almost all of them incredibly intelligent) have had difficulty with reading out loud smoothly and confidently. They overcame this with practice. By doing this, you will reinforce your interpretation grammatical cues (punctuation, etc). If some of your previous posts sounded perfect to you, most likely these are de-emphasized in how you read.
3) Diagram sentences. This may be the single most useful thing for you. At more complex levels of sentence structure, it will require quite a bit of effort, so start small. Many of the people I know with poor knowledge of grammar had never even heard of diagramming. This will definitely help you with things like run-ons, subject-verb agreement, conjuctions, etc. It can actually be quite fascinating (at least for me) to see how a sentence breaks down. Once you can correctly deconstruct a sentence, you will be able to correctly construct them.
I hope those things help you. I might have been short on information, so I'll look for some more in-depth resources you could use.
Here is a quick breakdown of part of your previous post (ala Cat). If you have any questions, I'd be happy to explain (also don't take my corrections as fully complete. I'm sure there are others that are much more skilled at proof-reading than I). Lime = additions; Orange = rearrangements; Red = spelling
There is actually much more that should be changed (eg, using the word "sucks," correcting shifts in tense, using parallelism, etc), but that would bring about a complete rewrite, and would not help in illustrating the more basic issues. Besides, you weren't exactly writing a paper there, and I'm sure I've even made a few errors in this post. In any case, I find it admirable that you are actively pursuing this on your own.
- Gary Busey
A Glass, Darkly
When I was first learning to drop my accent, I chose to copy a light British one. I knew a few people that had them, and I would simply imagine myself sounding like them. It's quite different than American, enough to hear the differences in tone and pacing from what I used to sound like to what I wanted to sound like. Granted, I'd be the first to say what I sound like now isn't entirely Amerikanner, but for the most part people understand what I'm trying to say far more clearly than they used to.
So my advice, is try to use a different voice when you write, instead of your own. Try writing a page like Patrick Stewart for example. Use his voice, imagine what he would say and how he would say it. From what I can tell, your natural tone has a very rapid undulation, a sort of rhythmic musical quality to it.
The words people choose and the order in which they say them has more to do with what will fit to the tones going through their heads, than the meaning and placement of the words themselves. It is human nature to approximate meaning in language, and to bend the rules of context, style and placement (grammar). The words one chooses are chosen because they fit into a set tone and rhythm structure that has already been built in ones head before the sentence itself is even made.
These structures take on different shapes, and they are part of the culture that surrounds us. Tone and pacing is a huge part of verbal and written communication, and it is the nature of language to share the same ideas of tone (angry tones, or gentle ones for example) with those around us. If you want to change your ideas about what structures to use, you have to look outside of your root culture (the neutral ground from which your current thoughts already flow) and be able to bend your mind to another, foreign, way of thinking and speaking.
Imitation is the first step - learn to imitate a foreign accent. Old English Chestpuffer worked for me ("I say old chap, what's this nonsense all about then, eh?") But everybody's different. You'll want to pick someone you know with an accent you can pick out easily. (You mentioned Harry Potter - theres enough material there to get down Rowling's voice for sure) Something different enough so that it sounds obvious when you try different words in that accent, and can tell whether or not your doing them right. Once you have it down pat, experiment with putting different words into that way of speaking. Once you get the hang of it, you can start to mimic just about anything (maybe you already can, for example) provided you have a starting example.
When you write (and this is a favourite trick of mine) put the professor's accent into your head, and lol it around for a while. It may take a few minutes to get all the sounds down. Then, write your paper as if you were them. Using their voice, their words, to say what you want to say. Break down points like they would, stop sentences like they would - pick up on the things they would normally do. When you read it over, don't think of your voice, think of theirs instead.
The errors will seem pretty glaring. You've now removed yourself from that voice, and can look at the words objectively instead of naturally. Your brain wont smooth over the inconsistencies like it would if you were reading your own voice. The 'bumps' will stand out more, because they will contrast with what that person would normally say. People are usually better at observing other people than themselves - the blind spot is a lot smaller.
Hopefully you can then smooth those word choices out to fit closer to what they would say, and eventually, you'll have polished a nice piece. Written in a very easy to digest form that will seem comfortable and familiar to your prof.
Anyways, just a method I found helpful once upon a time. Best of luck, keep at it. Everything comes round eventually.
Because she has absolutely no idea how to use that particular grammatical device.