[Essay] Postcard to a friend (academical purposes)

Hi everybody! I'd like if someone pretty good on grammar could help me. If I made any mistake on this postcard, I 'd like to know. Thank's in advance!


Dear Catherine,

I'm in Paris with my sister. There are a lot of great hotels here, but most of them are really expensive. We are in a intermediate one. It's not that luxuous, but it's a little more cheaper. The weather here is great: it's cool and windy. We arrived yesterdayat 10:30pm. It was a little late, so we decided go to the hotel and get some sleep.Tonight, we are going to visit the Louvre museum,one of the most famous museums in the world.I called your early, you were not in home. Your mother said that you will take vacations next week. You can come to Paris if you want, we will be here for the next months.

See you soon,

Love,

Rick and Patricia

Hi Marco, welcome to the forum. I'm not a teacher, but I could see a few errors.

Marco Moreira said:

Hi everybody! I'd like if someone pretty good on grammar could help me. If I made any mistake on this postcard, I 'd like to know. Thank's in advance!


Dear Catherine,

I'm in Paris with my sister. There are a lot of great hotels here, but most of them are really expensive. We are in an intermediate one. It's not that luxuous, but it's a little [STRIKE]more[/STRIKE] cheaper. The weather here is great: it's cool and windy. We arrived yesterdayat 10:30pm. It was a little late, so we decided to go to the hotel and get some sleep.Tonight, we are going to visit the Louvre museum,one of the most famous museums in the world.I called your earlier, but you were not [STRIKE]in[/STRIKE] home. Your mother said that you will take vacations next week. You can come to Paris if you want, we will be here for the next months.

See you soon,

Love,

Rick and Patricia

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Marco Moreira said:

Dear Catherine,

I'm in Paris with my sister. There are a lot of great hotels here, but most of them are really expensive. We are in an intermediate one. It's not that [STRIKE]luxuous[/STRIKE]luxurious, but it's a little [STRIKE]more[/STRIKE] cheaper. The weather here is great. It's cool and windy. We arrived yesterday at 10:30(space)pm. It was a little late, so we decided to go to the hotel and get some sleep.Tonight, we are going to visit the Louvre Museum,(space)one of the most famous museums in the world.(space)I called your earlier, but you were not home. Your mother said that you will take a vacation[STRIKE]s[/STRIKE] next week. You can come to Paris if you want, we will be here for [STRIKE]the next months[/STRIKE]the next few months? (the next months is not correct, but I cannot correct it properly because I do not know what you meant by it).

See you soon.

Love(no comma)

Rick and Patricia

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NOT A TEACHER

Here is an additional correction to what Bruna did not see. (space) means that there should be a space where I wrote it. Is it supposed to be a formal letter? I do not know what you mean by "academical purposes".

Did your thread title mean that you are not actually sending a postcard with your message on it to a friend, but that you have written a hypothetical postcard to a hypothetical friend purely for the purposes of this language exercise?

BrunaBC said:

Hi Marco, welcome to the forum. I'm not a teacher, but I could see a few errors.

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Thank's a lot. Any help is welcome.

CarloSsS said:

NOT A TEACHER

Here is an additional correction to what Bruna did not see. (space) means that there should be a space where I wrote it. Is it supposed to be a formal letter? I do not know what you mean by "academical purposes".

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Thank's. I like when you guys have focus on details. That's exactly the kind of help I 've been looking for and I found it in this forum.

emsr2d2 said:

Did your thread title mean that you are not actually sending a postcard with your message on it to a friend, but that you have written a hypothetical postcard to a hypothetical friend purely for the purposes of this language exercise?

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Actually, I wrote this postcard because it's an exercise from my english course here in Brazil. That's why I wrote "academical purposes". If you are asking me this, I think it's because my postcard is really close to reality, in other words, I 'll have a good grade.

Hi Marco, and as the others have said, welcome to the forums.

You were asked by emsr2d2 about the academic purpose because we aren't supposed to help you with your assignments before you turn them in. Your teacher needs to see what you know and what you can do without help, so that he or she can make sure you get the instrutcion you need. It's also simply not fair to others in your class to have a bunch of English speakers fixing your work before you turn it in.

HOWEVER - when you get your assignmens back and are confused about anything, or (and this happens a lot) you want to argue a point your teacher made, we are very happy to help you then.

In the future, please don't ask us to correct work before you turn it in. You're not helping youself learn -- you're just helping youself get a better grade. We're ready for you after you get it back, though!

In addition, please note that "thanks" does not require an apostrophe.

emsr2d2 said:

In addition, please note that "thanks" does not require an apostrophe.

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Thanks emsr2d2!

Barb_D said:

Hi Marco, and as the others have said, welcome to the forums.

You were asked by emsr2d2 about the academic purpose because we aren't supposed to help you with your assignments before you turn them in. Your teacher needs to see what you know and what you can do without help, so that he or she can make sure you get the instrutcion you need. It's also simply not fair to others in your class to have a bunch of English speakers fixing your work before you turn it in.

HOWEVER - when you get your assignmens back and are confused about anything, or (and this happens a lot) you want to argue a point your teacher made, we are very happy to help you then.

In the future, please don't ask us to correct work before you turn it in. You're not helping youself learn -- you're just helping youself get a better grade. We're ready for you after you get it back, though!

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Hi Barb_D! thanks.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that you people can't help students to improve grammar on a exercise. My teacher give me this exercise to do at home. He knows that we can search on google, ask native speakers, ask other teachers, etc.(that's his intention, I guess). I'm not asking anyone to do my exercise. I asked to know if I made some mistake in the post card that I wrote. When he wants to know what we can do without help, he give us an exam to do on class. (My last two grades on exams were 9,9 and 9,3 by the way).

HOWEVER - when I got an exercise like this, I always ask my teacher, but he needs to teach to other students too (I don't have a private teacher). I don't see anything wrong when you guys help people to correct some mistakes. My knowledge in english is limited and I searched a lot how to write a postcard and spended a few hours doing the work. After this, I posted it here.

If I wanted to take advantage, I wouldn't say that my questions are about exercises from school, and you guys would always help me, but I'm not this kind of person, I'm not a lier. I think I took good grades on exams because I always ask for help on exercises out of school. I uploaded an image contenting my grades on exams, just to prove what I said. (If anyone wants to see it, just send me an e-mail.)


If I did a bad thing asking for help, I'm so sorry, it wasn't my intention. Thank you for your understanding. (If I made some mistake on text of this reply, I 'd like to know =D). Thank you in advance.

The rules of this forum say:

We do not do homework or assignments for people. If we suspect that a question is an assignment, we will not answer it.

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Now, I must admit that what Marco did by asking us to correct his essay does not IMO violate the rule quoted above. Why do I think that? His or her homework assignment was to compose a postcard. If (s)he asked us to write to postcard for him/her, it would clearly be against the rules. However, (s)he wanted use to proofread it, which is not (again IMO) what the rules prohibit. They say, "do not do homework for other people" -- we did not, we just corrected it.

That being said, my interpretation of that rule might be wrong and probably is based on what Barb wrote a few posts above.

The problem with even proofreading/correcting assignments is that the learner then hands in the corrected work to their teacher as if it were their own. It is not a true reflection of their ability and the teacher will not truly know where the student's strengths and weaknesses lie.

emsr2d2 said:

The problem with even proofreading/correcting assignments is that the learner then hands in the corrected work to their teacher as if it were their own. It is not a true reflection of their ability and the teacher will not truly know where the student's strengths and weaknesses lie.

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As I said, when my teacher wants to know what we can do without help, he give us a exam, or an exercise to do on class. On school site, it's possible to download, on the students area, all the answers of the workbook (I can prove that, if you want to see the image, just send me an e-mail.) If a teacher wants to see what a student can do without help, it doesn't make sense to give him/her an exercise to do at home.

Marco Moreira said:

As I said, when my teacher wants to know what we can do without help, he give us a exam, or an exercise to do on class. On school site, it's possible to download, on the students area, all the answers of the workbook (I can prove that, if you want to see the image, just send me an e-mail.) If a teacher wants to see what a student can do without help, it doesn't make sense to give him/her an exercise to do at home.

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We understand that this is the case for you, but it is not necessarily the case for all the learners on this site. Many teachers give their students homework but expect them to do it only with the aid of a dictionary and their textbook. I think that is probably the situation for the majority of learners so the forum guidelines have to reflect what happens most often.

I was not suggesting that you personally were doing anything underhand with your assignment, I was simply trying to explain the thinking behind the forum guidelines.