This isn’t meant to be a criticism of you or your comment specifically, but it was incongruous to see “congrats” right next to “Avoid slang, abbreviations, unusual collocations.” It brings up the question of, is it a good idea to avoid literally all “slang, abbreviations” or does it make sense to still use some common ones? And what count as unusual collocations? Does “make sense” count or is it sufficiently usual?
True, some common abreviations are standard. But my remarks, and probably Dobroslawa’s, concern mostly oral conversations—that’s the context where non-native speakers are in a huge disadvantage, even if they are proficient.
I kind of enjoy reading unusual expressions or slang, because it gives me new data and time enough to update on—so if someone uses it in a conversation later on, I may have a better chance of understanding it. Perhaps that’s precisely the problem for skilled non-native speakers: we’re usually much better “trained” in the written language than in the spoken one, so that we’re often ignorant about some of their differences. Thus, writing “slang, abbreviations, unusual collocations” may actually have a net positive effect.
This isn’t meant to be a criticism of you or your comment specifically, but it was incongruous to see “congrats” right next to “Avoid slang, abbreviations, unusual collocations.” It brings up the question of, is it a good idea to avoid literally all “slang, abbreviations” or does it make sense to still use some common ones? And what count as unusual collocations? Does “make sense” count or is it sufficiently usual?
True, some common abreviations are standard. But my remarks, and probably Dobroslawa’s, concern mostly oral conversations—that’s the context where non-native speakers are in a huge disadvantage, even if they are proficient.
I kind of enjoy reading unusual expressions or slang, because it gives me new data and time enough to update on—so if someone uses it in a conversation later on, I may have a better chance of understanding it. Perhaps that’s precisely the problem for skilled non-native speakers: we’re usually much better “trained” in the written language than in the spoken one, so that we’re often ignorant about some of their differences. Thus, writing “slang, abbreviations, unusual collocations” may actually have a net positive effect.