Just to explain the current aim of this blog which is the mastery of Croatian writing...

I will include a translation of this in Croatian, but for that I really want to have a corrected version. (See below the following text for images of the work-in-progress based on the current strategy.) Since it's easier for now to lay things out in English, here goes:

Where I started from:

I have been studying Croatian for just over four years, but my production is still poor. By production, I mean the application of theory which refers to the recognition of grammar function, as well as being able to name its grammatical constituents.

Obviously, I still have a lot to learn with regard to theory. Production, however, requires not only an intuitive grasp of grammar (especially with a language like Croatian where context is central and, as my tutor Borna K. recently explained, when sentence structure "favors complexity"), but also coherence (also thanks to my tutor Borna K.) which is the ability to think like a native speaker which means knowing their idioms, manner of articulation and so on.

Where I am:
While Croatians can, in general, understand what I'm saying in Croatian - and I can often follow and participate in conversations - being understood and actually communicating are different things (just as grammar for writing and conversational grammar are different but related skill sets). What I really need to learn, however, are reading and writing strategies from the earliest levels - and that means learning Croatian like children in terms of understanding how to read a text and what you're thinking about when you write; that's actually how I started to improve my reading, by working with children's books until I became comfortable with the more basic grammar forms.

However, as my most recent experiences with Sretna Meštrović (2015)'s children's book Dnevnik mrava Radoslava, there are still some things at the lower levels that throw me off in terms of structure or chunks (technically referred to as collocation, thanks to Borna K.). I am really not one of those people who can just easily pick up a language and use it correctly, but, more, it's not enough for me to just get by in Croatian; I want to be fluent which requires understanding the language at the level of a native speaker even if I can never master it fully.

My still steady aim:
Ambition alone doesn't get you anywhere; you have to work for it. For this reason I'm always looking for another way to strategize my Croatian learning. My hope is that one day I will find something that clicks or, better yet, I will meet the right Croatian at the right time and place that everything comes together and I forget when I stopped making so many mistakes.

And, yes, it's also important that I learn to speak as well or nearly as well as a native. It's a thing called melody; and sound, whether you're aware of it or not, plays a role in good writing.

The current strategy:
There are are four or five levels depending on whether or not you count the base level; and, yes, the process is very slow but necessary. So the base level is writing a Croatian text (production), then Borna K. marks the printout for errors (expert), after which I listen to his corrections and write the corrected text by hand (social learning, ear training and repetition), rewrite the errors and their correct forms and explain the mistakes (repetition and metacognitive drill), edit the original text (cognitive drill), and finally rewrite the corrected text by hand (physical drill).

Theoretically, then, there should be significant improvement in my production over time. The idea is that as I become more aware of the mistakes I'm making with my own writing, I should begin to intuitively recognize proper forms. Then, once I've mastered the grammar well enough that I'm writing with few to no mistakes, the next step is coherence which requires training to think along the lines of a native speaker - but one step at a time!

Sample page from original text "Dječak u šumi." Step 1: Borna K. marks problems, but doesn't correct them for me. Sometimes I write something, but the checks are how I keep track of where we are in the strategy work (each check means a completed para.).

Strategy work from para. 4 of "Rupa." Borna K. tells me step by step what to correct and I write the corrected version of the text. Then I rewrite the errors and the corrections of those errors, and he tells me why they're errors or confirms them and I write the explanations.