Teacher Discussion Forums

Dear all,

I very recently discovered that I have a problem.I am 31 year old doing my Ph.D in Physics.My primary language is not English.

There are two problems.

1.Most of the times when I type I type ......for example..to write garden..
I write gadren...And many times I immediately notice my mistake and correct it..but even when I try to correct it I do it(gadren)again for another couple of times.

2. Though at a later reading I come to know that there are many typing errors I don't notice it for the first time.( I have even done some proffesional proof reading !)

3. Sometimes when I read my own writing (even several times) I dont recognise the errors. ( mainly errors like....wakling..for walking)

4. To know the spelling errors I will have to read it purely from proofreading point of view ( just the spelling part, without trying to understand the story)


Are these disabilities, if yes how do I correct them ?

regards
Satyajit

Try proofreading freshmen essays. It will make you feel better.

I (a native speaker) do the same thing all the time with certain words, and my spelling is considered pretty darn good. I always screw up:
accommodation (forget the 2nd "m")
perfect (mix the r and e)
etc.

What I found, to improve my spelling, is a conscious effort to type it correctly. Often, I find that if I ignore it as something that will go away by itself, it never does. I have to make a conscious effort to change it.

Imho, spellcheck is the cause of this type of spelling laziness.

I get same problem all the time with from and form.

There are some words that I always spell incorrectly.

Personally I found spell check improved my spelling, because it provided instant feedback with the red underline.

It looks like these kind of mistakes are quite common. Also later I realised that writing in a hurry could be one of the reasons.

If you are studying I can recommend you get some mindmapping software.

It will help you organise your study and your research finding. It will also cut writng up times in half.

I use mindmanager, by Mindjet. It is available at hugely discounted prices for students.

You can creat mindmaps, add icons and notes. Then it can be exported to MSWord, Excell, linked to MSProject and and outlook.

So any structuring of the written work can be reorganised by drag and drop on the mindmap. Same for restructuring. Export to Word for the final edit. And when you master it (easy) I do mean final edit.

There is a free trial version here http://www.mindjet.com/us/
It is intuitive and easy.

It is new to me I will try it, thanks a lot for sharing.