Discovering your Gaps
Gaps are your mistakes - the difference between what you know and what you want to know. This document will discuss:
1.Key Facts: About English 2.Key Facts: About your Brain 3.About Gaps |
This document will separate Gaps into several categories. First, you will separate input types and output types:
4.Reading & Listening 5.Writing & Speaking |
Next, you will divide up different types of grammar mistakes:
6.Cohesive 7.Sentences 8.Super-Useful Phrases 9.Need-to-Know Vocabulary 10.Conclusions |
1.Here are some key facts about English:
•The sentence is the smallest unit of logic in the English language and we use it to divide up all grammar. •Everything smaller than a sentence is called utterance grammar. •Everything larger than a sentence is called cohesive grammar. •90% of English sentences use 5 key verb patterns to express time. |
2.Here are some key facts about your brain:
•Our subconscious brain is like a big filter. It works best when we store information in big groups of patterns. •Vocabulary must be remembered as part of a sentence. •When we memorize information, we need to useful triggers-word association. Locations, faces, emotions, animals, and food will help us remember other things. |
Read more about English and Your Brain
Read more about Memorizing
3.About Gaps:
To get the right study material, you need to discover your gaps. A gap is the space between where you are now and where you want to be.
Remember, this is not all the English you don’t know. This is going to be specific to your English Goal: What do you need to learn to achieve your specific English goal?
So how can you find our Gap? Here’s an example for someone, Jim, who wants to make an English speech for work.
For example: Jim writes down his speech (20-30 sentences) in Chinese.
For example: Now Jim translates every sentence into English. If he gets stuck or even hesitates, he underlines the word or phrase in Chinese.
For example: Now for the hard part. Jim wants to discover some other English mistakes that he can’t see for himself. Jim can either contact a private English teacher to read his English speech or he can perform some online assessments to find his typical English mistakes.
Download our Gap Cheat Sheet to keep track of your Gaps
4.Reading & Listening
i.Find some reading material in English, but which has a Chinese translation (or Chinese and English subtitles). You can do this activity on your own or with a private teacher.
a.Useful Listening Activities b.Useful Reading Activities |
ii.Read or Listen to the English version. Try to write a translation into Chinese.
iii.Now read the Chinese version (or Chinese subtitles). Compare them to your work.
iv.Document all the differences. These are your Gaps. We’ll talk more about the specific types of grammar Gaps later.
5. Writing and Speaking
i.Write down what you want to do in Chinese. If you want to work on conversation, write down 5 questions and answers in Chinese.
ii.Translate your Chinese into English. As you translate, mark any problems that you experience.
iii.Re-read your English translation. Can you identify any more problems?
iv.Document all the differences. These are your Gaps. We’ll talk more about the specific types of grammar Gaps later.
6.Cohesion
Cohesion is anything bigger than a sentence. Examples include paragraphs, conversations, speeches, and essays.
Typically, cohesive problems take two forms: knowledge and structure. Both of these problems are language independent – if you have these problems in English, you also have them in Chinese.
Here’s an example: Jim wants to write an English essay about the pharmaceutical industry. However, Jim does not have any knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry. So first, he will need to study the pharmacy industry in Chinese.
In addition, Jim is not familiar with essay-writing. He doesn’t know how to properly structure an essay. He needs to develop his essay-writing skills.
In general, separate your Cohesive problems into structure and knowledge problems.
Click here to learn more about Essay Structure
Click here to learn more about making short answers
7.Sentences
There are two types of sentence problems. The first involve sentence adverbs and conjunctions. These are the words that connect sentences together. These Gaps are very similar to vocabulary problems. They can be solved by memorizing the meaning of these words.
Click here to read more about Sentence Adverbs and Conjunctions
The more complicated sentence problems involve the tense (time). English sentences contain a lot of time information, usually by modifying verbs. It is possible to discover these Gaps by labeling sentences based on time.
Generally, there are 5 major types of time which we can express. They are the same for Chinese and English. Before I translate a sentence, I give the Chinese sentence a time label. After I translate my sentence, I also label the English sentence. Do the labels match? If not, I have a Gap.
All sentences use one or more of these 5 times:
i.Now ii.Before iii.After iv.Before/Now v.Before/Now/After (Always) |
As was said before, 90% of English sentences use 5 key sentence patterns to express these 5 times. So we want to spend 90% of our time practicing these.
When we practice sentence patterns, we want to use subjects that we like. This will help our brains to focus and work hard. Since we are using space-time problem-solving when making sentences, it also helps to use certain classical music (i.e. Mozart) before practicing.
Click here to read more about Sentence Grammar here[Under Construction]
Click here to read more about Mozart’s effect on Space/Time Problem-solving
Download a Sentence Practice Cheat-Sheet[Under Construction]
8.Super-Useful Phrases
Super-Useful Phrases are phrases that contain the 100 most frequent English words. Examples include the, of, in, is, etc.
These are typically the most common English mistakes and the most difficult to detect. The simplest way to detect these problems is to hire a private teacher or consultant.
Click here top read about Hiring an English Teacher
However, there are ways to make an educated guess about these phrases. The best way is to use Google News to test different phrases. Simply put, we can search on different variations of the same phrase to see which produces the most results. We can then guess the most common phrase is the one we want.
For example “interested in” produces more results (over 45,000 hits) than “interested about” (only 52 hits) so we can infer that “interested in” is correct and definitely the most common usage.
Using Google News and Google N-Grams to Test Phrases
Another way to find Gaps involving Super-Useful Phrases is to use online activities to find your common mistakes.
Click here for Preposition Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Auxiliary Verb Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Article Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Pronoun Activities[Under Construction]
9.Need-to-Know Vocabulary
Vocabulary problems are very common but also easy to find and easy to fix.
When you are translating from English to Chinese, underline all the words you are unsure about. If you hesitate at all while translating, underline to word.
Once you are finished translating, use you favorite online dictionary to check the definition of the words you are unsure about.
Personally, I like to use Google Language Tools because you can translate a large number of words at the same time.
Google Translation English to Chinese
Google Translation Chinese to English
More Online Dictionaries and Translation Tools[Under Construction]
Another way to find vocabulary problems is to do some online activities.
Click here for Work Vocabulary Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Education Vocabulary Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Science and Technology Vocabulary Activities [Under Construction]
Click here for Environment Vocabulary Activities[Under Construction]
Click here for Personal Vocabulary Activities [Under Construction]
Click here for Entertainment Vocabulary Activities[Under Construction]
10. Conclusion
Our Gaps are the difference between what you can do and what you want to do. They are what you need to learn to achieve your English goal.
The method for finding gaps is slightly different for input skills and output skills. Listening & Reading is different from Writing & Speaking.
There are 4 types of Gaps you want to record: Cohesive, Sentence, Super-Useful Phrases, and Need-to-Know Vocabulary. You can record these all on a Gap Cheat Sheet.