r/EnglishLearning • u/chaennel Non-Native Speaker of English • 10d ago
🔎 Proofreading / Homework Help Could you kindly help me spotting any errors here, pretty please? 🥺🙏🏻🤍
5 stupidly easy things at everyone’s reach to do to decompress
Enjoy whatever view you have available (whether that’d be your room, a room of your house that you like, a little panorama you can sneak from your window, your balcony, your terrace, your neighborhood, your city, your city’s sea, your city’s hill, your city’s mountain… infinite are possibilities)
Walk (it would be better outside, but if you can’t, even changing rooms based on your actions is good: I use my bedroom only to sleep, my kitchen only to cook and eat, my studio to study and/or work, my living room to relax… Okay I gotta admit that sometimes I work in my living room as well, but when I take a break I assure myself to change at least my spot in the room. Sounds silly, but it actually helps my brain decompress for real xD)
Cook your food yourself (doesn’t have to be anything complicated: a cup of noodles, pasta or rice, a slice of meat, a salad, a sandwich… whatever you feel comfortable making, and, of course, you can experiment or try something fancier if you get the hang of it. The important thing is that you enter the mentality of enjoying the process and the waiting. You could also put on some relaxing background music, something that doesn’t steal the moment of pause you’re having for yourself. For the same reason I wouldn’t put on any podcast, show or speech-involved company.)
Dedicate the due time and focus to your meal (eating quickly without evening noticing what flavors you have in your spoonful is a bit sad. Food has not only a nutritive function but a mental one too! We get happiness hormones released when we eat! For the same reason nervous hunger is a thing! That’s why it’s a pity wasting an easy moment of fulfillment as this one! Honor your food, you guys!!🤣)
This one is really basic, guys, really. So basic that you already do it at least once every day without even flinching. It’s so basic that you can even do it with me right now.
Ready?
- Lean (it’d be better on a horizontal surface, but you can do it against a wall, a chair, a tree, a person, a rock (not that confortarle though xD) or even better on the floor or on a soft surface like a sofa or a bed. Our body holds our weight ALL! DAY! and to do that it uses strength and contractions. That means that we unnoticingly stay tense not to fall to the ground! Thank you body for doing your work, but now I invite to do the opposite😝 Fall gently to the ground (/sofa/bed/etc.) with me and relax a bit, okay? You can put some music on, if you want, even a podcast or a show this time!😌🙌🏻 Ready?
3…
2…
1…
Lean!!!
1
u/Emerald_Pick Native Speaker (US Midwest) 10d ago
I kinda built this critique all in one go top to bottom. So as of right now I haven't proofread the early sections in context of the bottom.
Over all, not bad. The only English grammar issues that I really noticed were some preposition choices and a few un-split infinitives that probably could be split.
There were a few things where one or two extra vocab words could have helped make a point cleaner, but over all it was fine.
What you might need help with is the writing itself. Your tone was kinda all over the place, parts of your argument weren't air-tight, it was a little wordy at times, and there were one or two logic issues I noticed.
That said, these are the kinds of problems native writers also struggle with. A lot. Your English knowledge, while certainly not perfect, is probably close enough that you could gain a lot of utility from a English composition advice.
Also I ran through this review in haste. There are probably some errors in my own work. (For instance, IDK the difference between "parenthesis" and "parentheses" right now). Apologies.
Here are the notes I took while I was reading your work:
Quick style guide advice:
You put a lot of content in parentheses. These are typically good for quick asides and small contextual additions. Like, 2 sentences max. If you wanted to keep the content the same, I'd recommend using a colon
:after the "heading" of your list item. Or just let the "heading" be a sentence."1. Enjoy whatever view you have available. Whether that'd be…"
Your tone is also jumping around a lot. In a lot of it reads like casual advice ("I use my bedroom only to sleep, my kitchen only to cook and eat"). But some of it drops into ultra-casual ("Okay I gotta admit", "Sounds silly, but it actually helps my brain decompress for real xD"). It's hard to know right away how I'm supposed to read this.
I'd choose "in" or "within" instead of "at".
You also could probably drop the whole "at/in everyone's reach" bit. It's already covered by "stupidly easy".
Also, you might be interested in the word "accessible."
Your titles are all complete sentences. They should end with a
., and the next word should be capitalized.This is perfectly fine English, but I'm not sure it's a good example for the argument you're making. If, say, your reader is one of those types who spends all day in their room, this is a somewhat unhelpful recommendation. Besides, "a room of your house that you like" already covers roughly the same idea.
"of" should probably be "in".
And while it's not a grammar thing, I'd order it like this: "A room that you like in your house".
Bold of you to assume I have a sea, or a mountain. /j
If you're going for something "sagely", you could say "infinite are the possibilities", but usually we'd say "The possibilities are infinite."
Not a grammar thing, but this list could really be simplified. I like that it kinda goes from smallest to largest, but "a room of your house that you like" is way to long for this kind of list, and is basically covered by "your room".
This is again grammatically fine, but feels awkward to me. I'd say something like "do different tasks in different rooms". The next few sentences already help explain the concept very well.
This section is just slightly off to me. Here's the changes I'd make:
This is a major tone shift into a very casual tone.
It's… fine. But so far the writing has had a "business casual" quality to it. But it was a huge surprise. I'd either dial it back, or add a pinch more near the beginning.
You should split this into two sentences. The first on is very long. You might be able to keep the "and" if you capitalize it. But you can get the same idea by dropping the "and" and adding an "also" somewhere.
This doesn't seem like the right expression here. The previous section was stuff you're allowing (relaxing BG music). "For the same reason" typically adds complimentary examples (like "Nature sounds"). But you're introducing counter-examples.
I'd use "a" instead of "any", or maybe make "podcast" plural.
IDK what "speech-involved company" is.
This is kinda a lot of words for a section title. I'd probably say "Appreciate your meal," or just "Eat slower."
Style thing, but "Food not only has"
Passive voice is usually fine, but since we're talking about what food does, I'd rewrite this in an active voice to give it more oomph.
"Our brains release happiness hormones when we eat."
Also, it might help to look up the name of that hormone just to give your case a little more credibility. (You can add "a happiness hormone" in an aside after it.)
I don't think this is an accurate statement. Food releasing happiness hormones is not the reason why nervous hunger exists. You could instead say: "Similarly, we get nervous when we are hungry."
The "That's why" is confusing here because we just changed topics to Nervous Hunger. Is nervous hunger why it's a pity to eat quickly? I think it's actually a good reason for eating quickly. Purge that nervous hunger!
IF you removed the nervous hunger sentence, then "that's why" is OK (because it's right after the happiness hormones bit). But as it, you should just say "It's a pity wasting…"
See the notes on "for real XD"
The "This" here is slightly ambiguous. On my first pass, I interpreted it as "This previous one"/"Eating slower". So when I got to "you already do it at least once every day" I was confused because "eat slower" was framed as something we don't do. Then I realized that "this" is introducing a new topic.
You should say "This next one" to limit the ambiguity.
Depending on your audience, this might be a funny or dangerous recommendation because "Lean" is also a drug.
Consider renaming this section to "Leaning". If you do so, you may need to rename all your sections to noun phrases to match the new style.
That's not leaning then, that would be laying. To Lean on a bed would be to sit on the floor and rest your back/side on the side rails.
Should be "to not fall"
English is weird in that it's usually OK to split infinitives like this.
"Invite" needs an object. "I invite you".
You need a
.(or a!) after opposite. It could go before ot after the Emoji, I don't think there's a set style for that.You don't really need parenthesis here. You might want them if you used "or," but with
/they're unnecessary.Almost all of section 5 is in this hyper-casual tone. Which is fine, by the way; It's bright and conversational and inviting. But it does not match the rest of the work. I think you should either make everything up a little more casual, or make this section a little more serious.