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[Clark Gable]

You wonder what kind of books may be very useful for imporoving writing skills.
And, you also mentioned " Kim Young Ro" whom I have respected over years.
I totally agree to Mr Kim's idea that we should use whatever materials we read as texts for writing. It is a kind of BTE in itself.

His instruction is not original, I think, because the methodology can date back to Ahn's days(안현필).
I guess that Mr Eu also knows Ahn very well. He had a lot of influence on English scholars after his generation.

Anyway, Mr Kim's suggestion is not different from what Mr Eu suggests today.
It is a kind of BTE. To explain more easily, if you read an English book, you should do back translation and compare your English composition with the original.

What is the point of doing so?
It is very simple, much like doing dictation for improving listening ability.
To learn something, first of all, you must know what you don't know.
And afterwards, you must focus on what you don't know.
It is so with doing dictation. If you find you are missing some words, you can check what they are by comparing your dictated papers with the original script.

Through that process, you can grow more competent in listening.

Thus, basically, it is a good idea to do that kind of checking for writing.

But, at this moment, I'd like to add that there are three steps for writing for a Korean.

The first is BTE ; Read an English paragraph and do back translation and compare in order to find what you need to understand more to get closer to natural English.

- But, you must keep in mind that this is just a basic step and not a specific for writing.

- I think this process will take approximately 1 year before seeing effect.
Most people are satisfied with the result from doing BTE and they are going
seperate ways from about this time.

- In my case, 10 years ago, I could not speak or write English at all.
And everytime I had to speak English , the butterflies formed in the pit of my stomach. At that time, actually, my reading was not so bad. But I had much problem in speaking and writing. But after doing BTE for an year, I could manage to express myself in English, and I sustained the efforts years more.

- However, I still had a big problem. It was the fact that my English was gramatically no problem but not sounding-natural. I guess that most of Korean advanced English learners have this problem. Even with a glance, I can tell this writing is written by a Korean or a native.

- The reason was later found, that is, the words I used for writing were by no means mine, in a strict sense. That is because I could not use my imagination when writing, rather, just resorted to grammatical rules , so that unnatural.

- Think about a Korean who always says like a journalist or a novelist.
Is it natural?

The second step is therefore to do the paraphrasing of what you are reading.
It means, dislike simple BTE, after reading a material, you put down some key words whose roles are important to stay near the main ideas the author wants to deliver, and do a kind of BTE, but don't try to come back to the same words of the original, but try writing the same ideas with your own words with the help of some key words that you put down.

- It is a more developed stage for writing. You no longer stick to the original and better aware that a language is a tool for communication.
In consequence, you are able to focus on the communicative aspects of writing rather than on grammatical or collcational accuracy the same way the original presents.

- After doing this, you compare your worn words with the original and check if your own words are also Ok to deliver the ideas the author wants to give.
If so, you can be happy ortherwise, you do try more to bridge over the shortcomings of your writing.

- Through this process, you can get closer to natural English, and are able to be open to possibilities of a wide range of expressions every single individual is able to come up with at his discretion.

- This stage is , however, not on a level of a native in terms that you still make some grammartical errors and collocational ones, while writing.

The last step is just to read and not to write at all corresponding to what you are reading. In a nutshell, you are just writing on free subjects.
It is because if you write something in reference of an English text, it means that your mother tongue gets in the way of growth of your word instinct.
The most ideal stage is that you are free from your mother tongue's interference. How is it possible?

Think about a professional Baduk player. They can do "redisplay of his previous games". Do they have ability to memorize them? No....it is because they can understand the principles the game is managed.

- If you are beyond the second step, you also are able to do this job.
It means a glance at an English material enables you to immitate it ,almost to the same level. So, you np longer have to depend on key words or the tests.
You can do create not only your own words, but also whole writings on your own.

- I believe this last stage may upgrade the naturality of your writings dramatically.

- But, some of you may wonder if we do like that, how can we be assured of the correctness of our writings, grmmatically or collocationally?

Yes, probably, our writings may have some grammatical problems, which is not important at all, if look more closely.
We should understand fluency comes before accuracy.
In that sense, I'd like to say that fluency is muck like a stepping stone over to accuracy.

Fluency without accuracy is possible, but the reverse is not.

Thanks!

( I want to write more but I am at work. If any of you are willing to listen more, next time)

[denzel]

Then I think your stage is on second level, right? Cause you look you write very well compared to me. But you look also in the development stage of second level. It's just my opinion. ; )

[denzel]

Thanks for your tips, gable. : ) I enjoy your column about your thinking about english. Too long, though. ^__^;