Disinterested Cow

Having people proofread your work usually costs money. I made another thread about joining content mills as a way to get free, professional critique of your work but you usually need a decent level of ability to be accepted in the first place. Textbroker used to be excellent for it but there's not as much work now, especially for more obscure languages. Somewhere that provides free feedback on written work would be very useful indeed, if anyone knows of such a site.

Sat would be the past tense. "He sat in the corner" Also keep in mind at/in/on change depending on the location, some crossover is acceptable but often using the wrong will sound unnatural. Examples: He sat in the corner of the room. He sat at the corner of the table. He sat on the corner of the street.

I've started a language and then given up after a couple of months. Sometimes life just gets busier. It shows the importance of having genuine enthusiasm or motivation for learning a particular language, so you stay with it even when changes to your life/free time inevitably happen that make it difficult or inconvenient.

You can also use it with a comma or nothing at all, it just depends on the message you want to convey. For example: We sometimes make typos in our posts on linguaholic; however, we try hard to avoid doing so. We sometimes make typos in our posts on linguaholic however hard we try to avoid doing so. Or with a comma to show a contradiction to the previous point: I always assumed people resented having to learn English as a second language. The posts on linguaholic, however, show that this isn't true at all.

Is there anybody who's learned language has taken over their native in proficiency and now thinks using the new language almost exclusively? Most here seem to have their native as their most proficient. It's interesting to me that people who are fluent in multiple languages will also think in multiple languages depending on the situation, that's something few can relate with.

Yeah, I think they can be useful for helping you along when in the process of learning, makes catching the phonetic pronunciations easier.

You must have spent a huge amount of time on that site if it was equivalent to a full/part-time job. One thing I like about that site is the range of different levels of difficulty it has, the highest being really quite obscure.

A lot of small errors in grammar are common because they just don't matter as much anymore. Using the context it's easy to see what the writer means, and our increased ability to communicate means most writing now is of casual unimportance. It used to be if you were writing out a letter it had a direct purpose and any errors could reflect badly on you, possibly with dire consequences. Now it's everyday Facebook status updates or random forum posts, comments quickly made and forgotten.

I'll type things out before I write them down. I try to avoid writing as much as possible, it's much slower (for me) and I'm used to being able to instantly correct little things.

LASER is probably the best example that I know of, though MODEM is up there.

iWriter is the lowest-tier content mill and I'd be hesitant to recommend it to anybody, it also lacks a proper feedback system making it comparatively useless for improving your written ability.

He doesn't have to, if he doesn't want to. Assuming he actually understands the benefits of improving his English but chooses not to, he's allowed to make an informed decision.

It's a common mistake because it's an uncommon exception to the rule. Rather than have billions of different characters to remember, we gave some characters multiple purposes. The apostrophe, for example, can be used to indicate possession or to replace letters in a contraction. Example contractions They'd - They had/they would Isn't - Is not You've - You have Who'll - Who will/who shall Example possessives Car's radio Jennifer's handbag Boat's anchor Cat's tail The problem is it needs both, 's to indicate possession and 's to replace is or has, so one of them has to give way. The possessive form lost and becomes the exception to the common rule. It's is always a contraction, so if you aren't saying it is or it has then don't use the apostrophe.

Yeah, there are different language/location requirements for different content mills. Textbroker has different sites for different locations but many are more international and judge only on your written ability. Again, it depends on the mill. Textbroker for example has a lot of flexibility due to its rating system, it's very easy to get in at 2* and I imagine many here would be rated at 3*. Four stars a harder as it requires a more thorough understanding of grammar that isn't generally developed naturally (IE native speakers). Keep in mind with your comment regarding native speakers, most don't actually take any further education in their native language beyond what's compulsory. They often make little grammatical errors that will immediately stand out to an editor, even if they sound very natural and otherwise communicate well. It's not that uncommon for foreign learners to overtake them on strict adherence to the rules. I know of someone who moved to Germany and joined the German Textbroker as a way to improve their writing. They were initially graded at 2* but slowly climbed up and ended up earning a nice income on the side, in addition to becoming proficient in written German. Due to Google recently upgrading its algorithms 2* level articles are a bit less desirable than they used to be, though.

Yeah, i think it'd actually be quite difficult to learn a language and not gain a greater understanding of its culture in the process. I grew a fondness for French cinema, amongst other things.