Tuesday 21 May 2013

Relax - It's okay to make mistakes

I find that when reading or speaking in a foreign language it is easy to get hung up on the meaning of every word and end up going far to slowly. When speaking this might mean speaking more correctly but it also might make you sound unnaturally slow. It can often be better to just let your tongue run away with you and make the odd mistake in grammar or pronunciation. The person you are speaking to can always ask you to repeat something if they did not understand first time. This might depend a little bit on the circumstances and you probably do not want to talk to friends in the same way you might speak at a business meeting.

Similarly, when reading it can be slow and tedious if you pause to consider the meaning of every word. This is even more true if you overuse the dictionary. If you can learn to 'gist read' the text to get the meaning of it without every single word you will find that books become much more enjoyable.

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