An idea for writing

Open Forum
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Many of our learners here are advanced enough that they would really benefit from more output activities.We are going to be looking at how to encourage and support more output activities at LingQ.

One idea that I had this morning is to build in a questionnaire to every lesson along the lines of: (This would be written in the target language"

“I consider that an important theme from the above was” (Introductory paragraph)

“On the one hand, I largely agree/disagree that…”

“On the other hand I am opposed to/in favour of the idea that…”

" In conclusion, I feel that…"

I hope that this free style might be conducive to developing language skills, without having to remember what happened in a story or article. Of course any words already in the text would not be counted in the writing correction.

Any thoughts?

We are also looking at other ideas both for writing and speaking. Any suggestions on this theme are welcome.

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Check out my recent thread “An idea from Krashen”.

Sure, I often clown around, but on this occasion I was actually being 100% serious! I really do think it could be a good thing to get folks here actively using their foreign languages in a fun way - and then correcting some of this creative output and reusing it as input for new beginners.

(I myself wouldn’t mind having a bash at writing some blood-soaked horror stories. I wouldn’t mind betting that some of the future square-one beginners would prefer this to the standard civilized fare!)

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How about enforcing strict language policy in the language-specific forums? People will have to write in their target languages.

It may seem a bit harsh for the beginners, but it is actually not as bad given all the translation tools we have available today.

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@edwin - That is the idea now. I believe most correspondence in those forums is in the target language. Are you referring to the Open Forum in French etc…?

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I like Steve’s idea of a questionnaire. I think it will definitely help in formulating learner’s thoughts. Quite often when I write, I can think of anything to write about.

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@Mark, yes, I am referring to the Open Forum in different languages.

I am sure they are supposed to be in the target languages. But I see English being used quite often. E.g., look at the Chinese and Japanese forums, where the English easily stands out.

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That’s why I said “enforcing strict language policy” in those forums.

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The forums specifically state that they are to be conducted in the target language. Feel free to “enforce” this policy yourself by mentioning it on those English threads. We can try to do the same when we notice it but for the most part we try not to moderate forum posts.

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