Learners make mistakes and
reinforce them because they
produce sentences (1) too
carelessly or (2) too early. You
will avoid mistakes if you follow a
couple of rules: Rules of error-free
speaking and writing 1. Use simple language. Some beginners try to
build very complicated
sentences with things like
the present perfect tense
or conditionals. They make
horrible mistakes. Don’t do this! If you’ve just
started to speak or write
in English, you should say
what you can say (simple
sentences that you have
seen many times) — not what you want to say
(complicated sentences).
You may feel you’re
talking like a child or that
you are not expressing
your thoughts, but don’t worry about that. Right
now, your goal is not to
express your thoughts
freely; your goal is to
learn the language. 2. Be slow and careful. In the beginning, you should
write very slowly. If you
need 2 hours to write an
e-mail message with 10
correct sentences, that’s
okay. That’s how long it should take if you’re just
starting to write. Why should it take so
long? Because you should
read your sentences many
times, looking for
mistakes. You should
correct your own sentences frequently. You
should check if your
sentences are correct by
using a dictionary and the
Web. And you should look
for example sentences to imitate. When you’re speaking,
it’s okay to build a
sentence for some time in
your head before you
open your mouth. 3. If you’re not sure
how to say something,
don’t say it. (This applies to both grammar
and pronunciation.) If you
can’t say something
correctly, it’s almost
always better not to say
it. You don’t want to teach yourself the wrong
way to say it. You can try
to look for the correct
sentence in a dictionary
or on the Web (see next
point), but when speaking, usually you don’t have
time for that. So it’s a
good idea to say
something else —
something that you know
is correct. It can even be something on a different
subject. 4. When writing, always
look things up. Whenever you’re not
sure how to use a word,
look it up in a good
dictionary to find example
sentences with it. When
you’ve written something, and you are
not sure if it’s correct,
search for it on the Web
with Google. If the phrase
is found on many pages,
then it is probably correct. Dictionaries and
Google should be your
everyday tools, and you
should use them even
many times in one
sentence (especially if you’ve just begun writing
in English). More information on using
Google when writing 5. Know where you can screw up. Sometimes learners don’t even
realize how different
English is from their native
language. When speaking,
they translate word for word from their native language, and they think
their sentences are okay. When reading or listening
to English, use the “pause and think” technique: Pay close attention to things
like word order, articles,
prepositions, and tenses.
Compare sentences in
English with equivalent
sentences in your native language. Notice the
differences in words and
in word order. This will
make you more careful
when speaking in English,
because you will realize which parts of your
sentences can be wrong
and should be double-
checked. “Will I ever be fluent if I
speak so slowly and
carefully?” Don’t worry about fluency.
Fluency is easy to achieve by
simply talking. If you practice
speaking, you will be able to
speak faster and faster. In high
school, I achieved pretty good fluency in a month by talking to
my English teacher (a native
speaker) about two hours a
week. That’s only 8 hours of
talking. It is much better to beslow and correct thanbe fluent and make a lot of mistakes. Why? Because if you are slow
and correct, you can easily
improve your speed and become
fluent and correct. But if you
are fluent and make a lot of
mistakes, it is much harder to fix your mistakes and become fluent
and correct. My experience with error-
free writing When I was in college, I started
learning German with the
Antimoon Method. I wanted to
start writing e-mails in German
as soon as possible, but I didn’t
want to make mistakes and teach myself bad habits. I wrote
my first e-mails in German after
reading just one short (40-page)
book for learners written in
simple German, a few e-mail
messages from a German friend, and after using my very small SuperMemo collection for a few months. And guess what?My e- mails in German had almost
no mistakes. How was that possible — writing
correct sentences after getting
so little input? First, my e-mails
contained very simple sentences.
But the most important thing
was my research: I looked for example sentences on the Web
and in dictionaries. For example, I knew that the
German word for use was
benutzen, but I didn’t know
how to use it in a sentence like
“Which program do you use to
copy CDs?”. Often, I had an idea how something might be done in
German, but I wasn’t sure if my
idea was correct. In such
situations, I looked for the
answer on the Web or in my
dictionaries. I spent a lot of time on each
sentence. It took me more than
an hour to write my first
message, which contained only a
few German sentences. The writing process was long
and it took a lot of effort, but it
was fun. The experience was
very motivating and it made me
even more interested in German.
Perhaps one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable was that I
knew I was building correct
sentences. Don’t speak or write too
early If you follow the above rules and
still make a lot of mistakes when
speaking (= more than 1 mistake
every 3 sentences), you should
probablyswitch to writing for a while.It is easier to produce correct sentences
when writing because: you don’t need to have
good pronunciation you can write very slowly
and nobody will mind you can use dictionaries, the
Web, etc. to look things up If you make a lot of mistakes
when writing, consider a “silent period”: stop speaking and writing, and spend a month or
two getting input only. Remember that you should first
get lots of English sentences into
your head, then build your own
sentences. Your main activity
should be reading and listening
to English — and the reason is that you need good examples to
follow before you can build your
own sentences. The more
sentences your brain absorbs,
the more you can express in
English. If you don’t see/hear enough correct, natural English
sentences, you will not know
how to say things in English. So
you will be inventing your own
language. And you will be making
mistakes. What happens in English
classes The recommended order in the
Antimoon learning method is: Pronunciation - Input (reading and listening) - Writing -
Speaking. Unfortunately,
something completely different
happens in English classes. Almost
no courses teach you
pronunciation at the beginning. Few teachers give you enough
input. Instead, they force you to
speak and write — asking you
questions, telling you to do
grammar exercises or writing
assignments. In a way, they force you to make mistakes and
create bad habits

thank God I quickly scrolled down and I saw the long epistle,

learners pls read through, its a step by step manual to improving your writing and speaking skills.


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very helpful information as i want to start a course in German language.