Source
r/languagelearning•
FlippngProgrammer

Helping my GF improve her English (Almost advanced to advanced)

Studying

Hello, I am looking for a way to help my girlfriend improve her English. We've been language partners for about 6 months, she has been helping me learn Chinese but I have decided to invest more on helping her learn and improve her English to an advanced level. She is already very close and knows a lot of "native" terms and sayings and can communicate well. However, the problem comes when we have conversation and grammar errors start to pop up. I'll give a few examples what it's like.

Left (What she said) | Right (what she should've said)

It's already getting slowly starting. => It's already getting started slowly.
She's shake hands with me. => She shook hands with me.
This doesn't mean I really do a good job. => This doesn't mean I did a good job.
We can make her out system. => We can add her to our system.
You can't know problem is => You can't know what your problem is.

These are a few examples. These usually happen when she speaks "freely" and wants to get the idea across not thinking about the grammar and this is usually just in our conversation. During times I create English lessons for her and we study, she'll pay more attention to these grammar points and when she misspeaks she'll go back and try to rephrase it correctly. A lot of the time she's aware of the mistake and I won't have to tell her or if I do point it out she'll correct it herself and continue.

The main thing I find difficult about this is that when she tries to think about these grammar points and trying to say it correctly, the conversation/ what she's saying becomes less fluent. She's able to express herself very well most of the time. How can I help her fix these errors in her speech? Any suggestions are appreciated. I'm putting a good amount of effort into this because I enjoy it and it's fun helping her learn English.

Posted Jul 7, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

05
intricate_thing•

Does she read much in English? Fiction, non-fiction or just what you see when browsing the internet?

I picked a lot of correct patterns like these through extensive reading of mainly fiction. At some point they just start to feel right, and you no longer need to question yourself or revert to your native language patterns.

2
violon7•

I think her sentences sometimes use the grammar in Chinese and she just applies it to English sentences. Probably she can write with less grammatical errors, and if this is the case, I’d say try and encourage her to speak English more often while correcting errors along the way.

2
vyhexe•

How about you assess her abilities doing a CEFR test online? This way you'll both know her weak points on which to work during your lessons.

You say she expresses herself very well, but I get the feeling the sentences you wrote were not of an intermediate level? Based on those only, I would not say she is "almost advanced". I'm not saying this in a negative way, just to point out that she might have gaps in her grammar knowledge. Most probably she's better at reading and writing than she is at speaking, which is common, for obvious reasons.

In any case, she would benefit greatly from more exposure and of course more practice. Maybe like we do in English class in high school? Choose any topic, give her 5 minutes to prepare a brief presentation by writing out bullets points (but not a written out speech), then let her speak. Don't interrupt her, write down her mistakes while she's talking and correct her once she's done. You can also do this in a written form. Make her read level appropriate texts, then write a summary of the main points, etc.

She's lucky to have you!

1
FlippngProgrammerOP•

Thanks for this suggestion. We've been working on things like this on a regular basis. The lessons I make for her consist of mostly picture description and her telling a story and then I give time to tell the story to me and I make and note her mistakes and then go over the corrections with her. Anything else you could recommend? She is a very good speaker, I could call her bilingual. I just highlight these areas because they are what I'm trying to solve. Initially I found it really hard to help her because her English was good but once I got to know her better I started to pick up on where these English mistakes are and how to fix them.

1
vyhexe•

Ooh, I see! Maybe you could try out speed exercises for her, asking her to answer the fastest possible to a series of questions. This way she doesn't have the time to think, she just has to blurt out the answer. Then if she gets it wrong, have her correct herself and repeat the correct sentence form over and over. It sounds cruel but it's effective, because she has all the knowledge, but she needs to make it become automatic (and that only comes with repetition).

If you've actually narrowed down the type of mistakes she makes, it could be as simple as you saying a sentence and her repeating it by putting it in the past tense (or any other tense); by adding an adverb; by making it negative; by changing the pronouns, etc.

1