EDX Post 2

So, the second post is due today and I decided to share my story about proofreading. Publishing it here again just to prove it is my original work (if that ever comes up).

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As we move through the EDX course I am being reminded about information I learned long ago and am being challenged to improve my writing. Years of being asked for short summaries at work and writing for social media have hampered my creative writing abilities. I am going to try to write more after this course and see what I can create. 

That said, the most valuable thing about this class so far was reading blogs from the class. I do some freelance work and spend time proofreading papers for individuals for whom English is not their first language. I’ve read some really amazing pieces of work and am pleased when I can help turn a phrase or make their meaning clear.  

My favorite example of what I do for those clients came very shortly after I started that job. I was reading a paper from someone whose primary language was Asian.  They were describing some individuals and were trying to portray enthusiasm and exuberance in their account.  As I was reading along a phrase appeared just wasn’t right. They had written “it was above the wall.”

For the life of me I went blank. I knew that wasn’t right but I really struggled to determine the meaning. I ended up flagging the line, finished the chapter and then went back. Upon the second review it dawned on me that what they wanted to say was “it was over the top.”

I finished editing it and believe that I maintained the spirit they wanted to portray. It was an eye-opening experience of how sometimes terms just don’t translate well.  I hope it has made me a better editor and listener in that I want to hear what a person is trying to say even if the words come out jumbled.

EDX update

I scored 9/10 on the blog post. Got some decent feedback and now have to write another one. Debating my schwa story or my favorite example of how hard it is to translate idioms. That post is due Monday so I guess I'll stew about this for a while. Maybe I'll just write both :)

EDX courses

So the Marvel course got me sucked into EDX MOOC courses. I'm loving them. I've done three now.The Marvel course, one on coding and one on HTML5. I'll be honest, I'm mostly doing the homework and tests without watching all of the videos, but I'm learning and applying the skills to my job.  This time around I'm taking an editing course with a focus on grammar. This is the homework for this week. I decided to publish it so that I can claim it as mine in case of any plagiarism. Sad but true. 

As this week’s topic in my EDX class is about verbs, I’ve decided to focus on a news article for my blog post.  If the assignment was allowed about any grammar topic, I was going to write about the schwa, but with this change in topic, that will be a future post. 

According to The Guardian, a British newspaper, there is a new verb being used by German teens. The verb “merkln” appears to be based on the politician Angela Merkel. From the article, ““Merkeln’, which means being indecisive or failing to have an opinion, is topping a poll to choose Germany’s favourite new ‘youth words’” (read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/angela-merkels-influence-now-extends-to-german-slang-merkeln).

The most interesting thing to me about this topic is the evolution of words, how new words enter the lexicon and how quickly social media shares these new terms around the globe.  And while newspapers in the traditional sense are dying, they still manage to have a luster and authority with their online posts. I am willing to consider this discussion because it was published by them as an article and not just because I saw a tweet using it.

Also from the article “The competition has been held by Langenscheidt for the past seven years and aims to reflect the evolving nature of the German tongue. On 31 October, a jury will choose 10 winners – ranking the top five – which will be included in an ever-changing e-book.”  Langenscheidt is a publishing company and I love that they are getting people excited about language.  I think that many languages are open to new words, such as English and German, whereas some languages are protected (i.e., French) and others die from a lack of change (i.e. Latin). Every three months the Oxford Dictionary updates a list of new words (read more: http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/)