[ColinWright]

Not to be "that guy", but you mean "loaner" as in "something on loan", rather than "loner", which is "someone that prefers to be alone."

Having just come back from a conference where I was humbled by the other delegates' ability to speak English, I was hesitating to offer corrections. However, I was told in no uncertain terms that they wanted to improve, so provided it didn't interrupt flow, I offered corrections. I hope you feel the same. I'm also happy to delete this comment once I know you've seen it, thus helping flow.

[Samuel_Michon]

Definately! More folks should loose there inhabitions and speak up. If noone points out grammer and spelling errors, than how will people ever learn? I think your a saint, its really grate that you took the time to right this down. Thanks alot.

Also: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

[ColinWright]

Translation: it doesn't matter how you spell, or how you write, it's the message that counts, so as long as people can make sense of it, you're OK. After all, there's no such thing as correct spelling or grammar, so feel free to do anything you like.

Obvservation: there are people - like myself - who don't read phonetically. Spelling such as in your (clearly ironic) reply just serve to slow my reading and make it less likely that I'll care about what you say. If it's your intention deliberately to alienate a portion of your possible audience, then by all means use whatever spelling you like.

This will degenerate into the usual pointless debate, so just let me assert that I'm not a grammar nazi, and I don't claim there is "one true language". I simply offer the point of view that some spellings will make your writing less effective for some of your possible audience.

[Samuel_Michon]

I was just poking fun, I completely agree with you. I work in publishing: editing is a major part of my job. My mom is an author, my dad is a literary agent. Friends used to joke that I was born with a red pencil in in my hand – that was before I learned not to correct their spelling without being asked to do so. You can be always right, believing you're very helpful, and end up with very few friends ;)

[auctiontheory]

Friends are are overrated.

[eru]

Unfortunately, corrections don't help people improve.

Consuming language (reading, listening) does. Producing and getting corrected doesn't.

I can dig out some sources for that, if you are interested.

[ColinWright]

That's interesting - the people I was talking with made a point of using the corrected version multiple times over a short space of time, and seemed to assimilate the change. Anedotes aren't data though - if you have evidence to contradict that observation I'd be interested to see it - yes.

Thanks.

Added in edit: you were downvoted - I don't know why, so I've upvoted you.

[eru]

Thanks for your interest. I mostly learned about this from a friend of mine, and haven't read the articles myself. His first language is English and he's using those insights to learn Mandarin, and even moved from England to Taiwan for that endeavour. I searched for a few keywoards I rememembered from our discussions and found that the Wikipedia page about the Comprehension approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach) looks like a good starting point. Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_period

If you decide to read through the research papers linked from the Wikipedia articles (or even if you just read the Wikipedia articles), please feel free to drop me a line for some discussion. My email-address is in my profile.

[slewis]

Yup thanks! Just a pre-coffee brain fart.

[ColinWright]

Cool - no problem, and thanks for the reply.