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Oops-Sys­tem

Your ul­ti­ma­te “Oops!” – Sys­tem –

or how to avoid mis­ta­kes fo­re­ver…

 

Sim­ply go through your “Oops”-Sys­tem and keep it up­dated!

 

1. You need:

  • Index cards and a box
  • 4 sec­tions di­vi­ded by tabs (Kar­tei­kar­ten­rei­ter)
  • Co­lou­red pen­cils, a ruler
  • School book, gram­mar book, dic­tio­na­ries (E-E; E-G/G_E), PC (re­com­men­ded but not ob­li­ga­to­ry)

 

2. Pre­pa­re four sec­tions:

  • L = Lan­gua­ge/Vo­ca­bu­la­ry → here you will store words with “die­hard” spel­ling mis­ta­kes.
  • G = Gram­mar → here you will collect sen­ten­ces and phra­ses with gram­mar mis­ta­kes, e.g. if-clau­ses; ten­ses; word order; ne­ga­ti­on;…
  • S = Style → here you will file cards which help you to im­pro­ve your style, e.g. to use a va­ried (ab­wechs­lungs­reich) vo­ca­bu­la­ry. You will crea­te a collec­tion of “bet­ter ex­pres­si­ons”, for­mal as­pects (struc­tu­re in pa­ra­graphs,…), the right re­gis­ter and more.
  • I = Idio­ma­cy → this is a so­mew­hat mixed sec­tion, main­ly for prac­tising idi­oms and chunks that are ty­pi­cal of Eng­lish, often dif­fe­rent from Ger­man or false fri­ends (e.g. Ger­man “ins Kino gehen” – E : no “in” but : “to go to the ci­ne­ma”.)

 

3. The Sys­tem:

  • What is an “oops”-mis­ta­ke? It is a mis­ta­ke that is re­al­ly hard on you. Eit­her you have made that mis­ta­ke be­cau­se you were ab­so­lu­tely sure to be right – but weren’t. Or your teacher makes you aware of a struc­tu­re, spel­ling, etc. that he/she thinks might have be­co­me a per­ma­nent mis­ta­ke and should be era­sed from your “brain” as soon and tho­rough­ly as pos­si­ble. Or both J.
  • You will add any mis­ta­kes that your teacher has mar­ked with the “oops-signs” in your writ­ten pro­ducts.
  • You will also add mis­ta­kes from your oral per­for­mance eit­her when your teacher tells you to (after ha­ving cor­rec­ted you du­ring les­sons) or on your own ac­count (e.g. you feel like there was an “oops” – mis­ta­ke in what you have just said to the teacher or in a peer ac­tivi­ty you have rea­li­zed that you got so­me­thing wrong.)
  • The sys­tem is meant for more and more fle­xi­ble self-study, self-or­ga­ni­sa­ti­on and self-mo­ni­to­ring. It is your trust­wor­thy com­pa­ni­on for your fu­ture Eng­lish-learning ca­re­er if you keep it alive, up-to-date and use it ac­tive­ly.

 

4. How to use the sys­tem:

You will prac­tise in dif­fe­rent ways. This is the clas­si­cal way of doing so:

  1.  Find the “enemy” (look at what your teacher has mar­ked as in­cor­rect, re­co­gni­ze what is wrong) and pin it down on the card1.
  2. Cross out the mis­ta­ke and prac­tise the cor­rect ver­si­on. Use any mark-up sys­tem to vi­sua­li­ze what is right and what is wrong (dif­fe­rent size of let­ters, co­lours…)
  3. Write down the cor­rect ver­si­on.
  4. Prac­tise the cor­rect ver­si­on. Here it is up to you to find the me­thod that helps you most.

 

Here are some re­com­men­da­ti­ons:

Mar­king signs

What to do about:

O2L/ OR3

Lan­gua­ge

Wrong word (OL) / wrong spel­ling (OR) Write down the sen­tence with the cor­rect word. Add the ex­pla­na­ti­on or some kind of crib/mne­mo­nic (Esels­brü­cke) or Ger­man might help:

e.g. “Par­ents *edu­ca­te their child­ren to good ci­ti­zens”
“Par­ents raise their child­ren to be good ci­ti­zens”

to edu­ca­te → only at school! (Bil­dung)
to raise child­ren/ to bring up (el­ter­li­che Er­zie­hung)

Spel­ling mis­ta­kes:

Do “drill” trai­ning. Use the cor­rect word in 2 -3 sen­ten­ces that you can keep in mind as a “crib”/”mne­mo­nic”, e.g.

*pro­o­ve
“I’ll prove that my Eng­lish is get­ting bet­ter in the next text. 
The next test will be the proof”.
Verb = One” o”
Noun = Two “oo” dou­ble “o” /the word “noun” has an “o” so “the proof” is the one with the ad­di­tio­nal “o”….

OG
Gram­mar

Find the rule(s) in your gram­mar skill files (back of your book) or an extra gram­mar book.

You might use more than one card for dea­ling with gram­mar pro­blems and “dril­ling” the right struc­tu­re. In “bad cases” you might also do more ex­er­ci­ses in a spe­cial fol­der.

OS
Style

For bo­ring sen­ten­ces like “I think…”, “he said…” collect a va­rie­ty of other terms or – so­me­ti­mes even bet­ter - leave them out.

If your re­gis­ter was wrong: find dif­fe­rent ways of ex­pres­sing your opi­ni­on, at­ti­tu­de etc.

OI
Idio­ma­cy

There can be many dif­fe­rent sour­ces of mis­ta­kes in idio­ma­cy (the way the Eng­lish peop­le ex­press them­sel­ves).

First check:  Have you learnt the le­xi­cal item as a chunk with its ac­com­pany­ing pre­po­si­ti­on or the col­lo­ca­ti­on? (e.g.  to rely + on s.o./sth...)

So­me­ti­mes Ger­man in­flu­en­ces us and we have to be aware of tri­cky col­lo­ca­ti­ons like:

G: “Auf dem Bild kann ich einen Baum sehen”. →
E : “In the pic­tu­re I can see a tree”.

Prac­tise the idio­ma­tic phra­se by sim­ple re-wri­ting eit­her the same sen­tence or sen­ten­ces you find easy to re­mem­ber.

Say­ings, pro­verbs :

Look up the cor­rect ver­si­on – and in fu­ture be ca­re­ful: if you want to use a Ger­man pro­verb it might not be the same (or not EX­ACT­LY the same) in Eng­lish-or it might not exist at all, make sure be­fo­re you use it.

 

1 Only wri­ting down the cor­rect ver­si­on is of cour­se a good way. But it might not have the ef­fect of to­tal­ly er­asing a mis­ta­ke and in the ac­tu­al si­tua­ti­on be ready at the tip of your brain to re­mind you of doing the right thing. So in this sys­tem you had bet­ter copy your mis­ta­ke in a way that makes it very clear to you that it is wrong. And in a much big­ger, or more co­lour­ful or im­pres­si­ve way stress the right ver­si­on to make it me­mo­r­able.

2 The ’O’ stands for ’oops’.

3 OR – R from Ger­man „Recht­schrei­bung“ (OO looks odd, and OS is al­re­a­dy taken for Style…

 

 

Oops-Sys­tem: Her­un­ter­la­den [docx][33 KB]

Oops-Sys­tem: Her­un­ter­la­den [pdf][322 KB]

 

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