Hi, how long will it take to master english language..?

Question

hi englishforum, "i believe such a platform like this will defenitely help many users like me., thanks for being"

my name is perk and i want to become a writer but the problem is i come from a non-english speaking nation where english is my second language. i want to know how much time will it take me to attain perfection in this language. perfection which is required for a writer.

i am presentimg a sample of my writing so you people can judge my skills. also rate my language so that i can see where i stand.. please highlight my mistakes, parts in which i am weak, how to prepare to overcome them..

it would be a great help to do so...thanks in advance...

Once when I was 11 years old I went to my uncle’s village for summer vacations. There were only few houses in the village and a dozen of fishermen huts on the beach. There was this one building which was very far away from the village and was in its ruins surrounded by banyan trees that make the place look dark even in a midday. Adults say stories, that the building is haunted by ghosts, to refrain their children from going there.

One night our cousins and I were sleeping outside (summer is very hot in these areas) and they started talking about ghosts. Though I get goose bumps when ever I hear such stories, I sounded like “fuck the ghosts” to make myself a hero. After an hour of all that tittle-tattle I challenged them that I would stay in the building, that too in the night.

The next day at around 11pm I slowly pedaled my way towards the old church. After 15 minutes of riding, there came a first banyan tree on my way. We all know how much imaginative one becomes by seeing a banyan tree in the dark when you are alone. I closed my eyes and crossed the tree with out even looking. The vegetation started to become thicker as I moved along, which was a bad sign for me and that freak me out. I gathered all my courage and went on, trying to sing songs, playing my favorite cartoons in my mind. After two songs and an episode of Tom & Jerry, I was only about a 30- 40 feet away from the old building. Seeing it, I forgot all the songs I’ve ever listened and remembered all the ghost stories that I have been hearing since an infant. I felt the urgency to take a leak but I have got no courage to do it. Every tree seemed to be some kind of weird creature in disguise. The sound of the nearby sea and the howling wind pissed me off. Now I don’t even have the courage to go back. At that moment all I wanted is half a dozen of my best pals (without any weird makeovers) around me and 1000W flood lights illuminating the whole area. My legs went weak with extreme fear and I slumped right down where I was standing and started crying. Tears rolled down my eyes and a viscous liquid started to seep from my nose.

After 15 minutes I heard some voices and saw some people coming towards the church holding torches. I was dying to see people of any kind, eventually they turned out to be my uncle and some neighbors searching for me. I was glad to see them and they took me home. My aunt was waiting eagerly for me and gave me a hug by seeing me. She gave me some milk to drink and I noticed my cousins peeping through the slit of the door while I drank it. My aunt stayed with me all night easing me when ever I woke up.

In the morning I came to know that last night I was woken up by my cousins because my aunt wanted me to drink some milk as I skipped my supper and they explained the whole story to uncle when I left with the cycle. I was embarrassed to face my cousins that morning but they acted normal. After breakfast I told them the whole story in my ‘version’. After lunch we went to that building. The whole place looked so beautiful in the daylight.

Ivanhr · Accepted Answer

Ok, here are some corrections regarding the first paragraph of your text. Sorry, I didn't have enough time to go through all that.

Once when I was 11 years old I went to my uncle’s village for summer vacations. There were only few houses in the village and a dozen of fishermen huts on the beach. There was this one building which was very far away from the village and was in ruins surrounded by banyan trees that made the place look dark even at midday. Adults tell stories that the building is haunted, to keep their children from going there.

"refrain" is intransitive so "refrain someone" doesn't work. Usually, it's "refrain from doing something". "midday" refers to 12'o clock (noon) so "at" is the appropriate preposition. "its" should be left out, it's just "in ruins". "haunted" already means "haunted by ghosts" so there's no need for explicitly stating that.

Welcome to EF, Perk!

Dimsumexpress · Answer

Hi Perk ,

Welcome to the forum. Your story is pretty good, but it a bit too long which will take some time to go through its entirety. But I'd make a few comments based on my observation. From reading your story, you seemed to have a pretty firm English fundamental. I am curious however as to why you didn't bother with capitalizing in your opening paragraph, but in your story, you were capitalizing and punctuating properly. On your first paragraph, how many vacations did you take to your uncle's village when you were 11. When we start writing, besides grammar, syntactical connection is a very important element in convincing the reader. The contents should flow with the storyline. Keep the tense consistent. "Once" seemed to have served no purpose, but only confuses the meaning in my opinion. If you don't mind, I'd take your first paragraph and revise it so that you can compare and see what I mean.

I remember when I was 11 years old, I went to my uncle’s village to spend the summer. There were only a few houses in the village and maybe a dozen of fishermen huts on the beach. A little distance away from the village was this one building lying there in ruin, completely overshawdowed by the overgrown banyan trees which made the whole surrounding uncomfortably dark even in midday. Adults told children that the building was haunted to keep them from going in the building to play.

In the revision, I've used reduced relative clause and adverbial phrases to enhence the fluidity. You may want to try it and see how it works for you.

Regards · Answer

perkhi englishforum, "i believe such a platform like this will defenitely help many users like me., thanks for being"
my name is perk and i want to become a writer but the problem is i come from a non-english speaking nation where english is my second language. i want to know how much time will it take me to attain perfection in this language. perfection which is required for a writer.
i am presentimg a sample of my writing so you people can judge my skills. also rate my language so that i can see where i stand.. please highlight my mistakes, parts in which i am weak, how to prepare to overcome them..
it would be a great help to do so...thanks in advance...

Hi,

I am not going to lie. It's difficult for me to assess your project while I see no capitalization or correct punctuation in your request. You even didn't capitalize the word "I" or your name (Perk, not perk), which I'm more than sure that you know it should always be capitalized. If you want us to take the time and evaluate what you've been working on, then I believe you should make a little more effort to get your request grammatical at least. Let's be fair!

Regards

Perk · Answer

Thank you Ivanhr and Dimsumexpress for going through my '****' and caring to highlight my mistakes, now I get them.

With so many mistakes pointed out, I see a long road ahead in my journey of becoming a writer.

I din't care to capitalize and punctualize my message because, I didn't take it too serious as I was supplying you with an essay to assess me. Also, it is the sentence formation on which I'm concentrating to improve.

Regards · Answer

perkI din't care to capitalize and punctualize my message because, I didn't take it too serious as I was supplying you with an essay to assess me. Also, it is the sentence formation on which I'm concentrating to improve.

Hi,

If you didn't care about all that stuff (capitalizing and punctuating), why would you think we do?

If you didn't take it too serious, why would you think we take the time and assess your work seriously?

You wish to become an expert in English, but you don't care about the basics of the language.

You should realize that you are writing on an English grammar forum. The volunteers who answer the

questions here do care about those things you don't. The first thing we see is your request. If it has

grammar errors, we can't ignore them and answer your question directly.

Do you wish to improve your writing skills? Do you wish to become a proficient speaker, or rather a writer?

I don't think it's the right attitude to start with.

You know, Oscar Wilde said: "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a
comma. In the afternoon I put it back again". Wilde was so pedantic that he put the comma back again.

You probably wonder why he did it. It was just a comma, wasn't it? Let me keep you informed - it was not just

a comma. A single comma can truly change the entire meaning of a sentence. So, I'm not saying you have to be as pedantic as Wilde was, but at least take care of your "little" errors, even if you think they are unimportant and trivial. At the end of the day, I believe it's unpleasant to read a book titled "and to my nephew albert I leave the island what I won off fatty hagan in a poker game (a book by David Forrest)".

Regards

Dimsumexpress · Answer

perkThank you Ivanhr and Dimsumexpress for going through my '****' and caring to highlight my mistakes, now I get them.
With so many mistakes pointed out, I see a long road ahead in my journey of becoming a writer.
I din't care to capitalize and punctualize my message because, I didn't take it too serious as I was supplying you with an essay to assess me. Also, it is the sentence formation on which I'm concentrating to improve.

Perk,

I know nothing about you except what I've observed from you posts. You seemed to be able to verbalize quite well in my opinion. Having said that, I have this philosophy toward learning in general. If we intentionally ignore something because of our false interpretation as insignificant, then it's like building a car with subpar components. The end result will be a product or a structure of inferior quality. Learning English, in my opinion, is exactly that. I personally take learning very seriously, particularly English, because of my own experience. Every English word under my ability to command came from years of relentless hard work. Without a long story, I think you have a better frame of English than most others who have come to the forum for advice. You are already ahead of the game. All you need to do is to pay a little more attention to how professionals write and speak, and emulate their speech patterns. You will be surprised how much improvement you can gain from just doing that. Small details, like how long the nails and how far apart the struts must be are specified, just like capitalization and punctunation which are specified in the grammar rules. Hope my philosphy didn't bore you to tears.

Hi, how long will it take to master english language..?

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