Good to hear that, Alex! I from time to time have people contacting me on You Tube and on Facebook to have their Dutch e-mails corrected by me. In Germany 95 % of the school language teachers are non-natives. Here on LingQ the makers of the Esperanto-podcasts are probably non-natives. I am strongly against the arrogant discrimination of all non-native language teachers. By the way at the VHS I have an excellent teacher of Danish and she is - Austrian!
Generally, I have a positive opinion about the exchange, because my post of an open request enabled me to find my Norwegian tutor! Otherwise I couldnât have found him.
Yes to non-native teachers ! Just remember that there is a difference between a teacher and a translator, or a voice artist. Questions of style addressed in many writing corrections would require a native speaker aswell.
I am not a language teacher, but I feel more Dutch than German. I have been speaking and writing Dutch on a daily basis for 30 years. My best friends are from the Netherlands. I always wanted to have the Dutch nationality. And yes, such a discussion hurts me personally.
Exactly! Non-native speakers are generally not as a good as native speakers (there are exceptions), which makes them less qualified for voice acting and translating (once again, there are exceptions) BUT some of them are amazing teachers because they have deliberately learned the language they´re teaching. Let´s try a soccer-analogyâŚ
Some legendary soccer players started working as a trainer after their career as player, but even though they were once world class soccer players, some of them were mediocre trainers.
Then again, there are coaches who didn´t have a big career as players, but they´re amazing coaches.
(edit: I don´t know if that analogy makes sense, but it´s always nice to act like I know stuff about soccer, anyway^^)
I think it´s important that people state their honest opinion, and yes, that might offend somebodyâŚbut I still think that it´d be even worse if people wouldn´t be honest because some people might be offended.
However, if it hurts you, I´ll at least remember to not mention your name in a discussion like that.
From my point of view the exchange is basically correct, although perhaps a few changes could be made. I know that open requests may not be the best option for all, but itâs a very interesting experience. Most of the time I choose âopen requestsâ when I make a request, because the feedback I receive is very interesting and useful for me, and because this is for me a community and I like to comment the questions with different people. In return I always answer all the open requests in Spanish that I find, regardless if I get more or less points, or even none. Of course I prefer my requests to be fulfilled by native speakers, but it doesnât bother me if non native speakers do. When I want a quick and accurate answer I just choose a private request. Regarding points, I think that you must have the option to increase o reduce the amount of points, and everyone is free to answer or not. Sometimes I increase the points if I consider that the task Iâm asking for is very time-consuming. If someone has few points and makes an open request I donât mind to answer it either. Furthermore, what I miss is more exchanges. The more exchanges, the more points go from one place to another and the more practice we have.
Seattle, eh? I thought San Francisco was the place for cool evening strolls.
@Paule
Yes, I think youâre right - I heard they donât allow foreigners to enjoy the breeze unless theyâve been living there for six months, or something crazy like that. But if you know the right folksâŚwellâŚ?
âI´ve seen people on iTalki who claim to be âa C1 in Germanâ even though, in reality, they make mistakes in every sentence they write or read and can hardly understand what I´m saying.â
To be fair, italki defines C1 as âupper-intermediateâ. There are many different versions of the A1-C2 scale. C2 on a forum like this seems to mean the level of a highly-talented native speaker with a PhD in poetry and a lifetime experience writing best selling novels and advanced technical textbooks, whereas on somewhere like Wikipedia, it is more like an advanced learner.
Yeah, it seems like there no universal, unquestionable, waterproof, 100% scientific, Christophe Clugston seal of approvalâŚdefinition of what âC1â actually means, you´re right about that.
A B2 on LingQ is a D1(âŚ) on iTalki, I guess.^^
I remember many months ago when, upon completing the Michel Thomas French audio course and reading a few blog posts by Benny about redefining fluency, I was convinced that I had a decent C1 level. Boy was I wrong!
When it comes to getting corrections, I would always prefer them from a native speaker. There are for sure non-native speakers who are good enough to do the corrections as well as native speakers, but most non native speakers are not at that level. I work in English almost entirely with non native speakers of English in Vienna and a lot of them have been working in English for 40 years or more and they cannot correct English as well as I can. (I hope that doesnât sound arrogant)
Of course, being a native speaker doesnât necessarily mean that one is a good corrector. Lots of native speakers also write their own language terribly.
âŚthough personally, I never make mistakes in English. Itâs unpossible!
âŚthinking about what I wrote in the last post, I have not actually done any systematic testing of my other colleaguesâ abilities to correct English, so I am not completely certain of this.
