Writing in a New Language: Language Learning Goal 6
Writing is powerful.
Hi there Steve Kaufmann here, and today I want to talk about the sixth
of my, the sixth, number six of my, uh, personal priority in language
learning goals and that is writing.
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All right.
So, remember that these goals are, this is my own priority of goals.
So this is not necessarily what I would recommend as a priority of
goals for everyone in every situation.
But it's my situation.
All right.
For me, writing comes at the end of my, or near the end of my um, language
learning goals, even though all of these goals are somewhat interchangeable.
But remember that I say my first goal is to increase my vocabulary, acquire
words, largely passive vocabulary that enables me then to start reading.
And once I read, then I can be in to understand what I'm listening to.
So then listening comes after reading as number three, and then once I've
been doing a lot of listening, I start to feel I can start saying
something to start speaking.
And when I started speaking, then I realize that I need to improve the
accuracy of my use of the language.
In other words, to focus in a little bit on grammar.
So that's number five.
Now...therefore then comes writing.
Now writing, I personally don't do a lot of writing now in the languages
that I'm learning, but some of the languages that I speak quite well,
like French and Chinese, when I learned those languages, I did a lot of writing.
And there's no question that writing is a powerful way to
improve our language skills.
Uh, and it has a number...
it's kind of, it's a form of output, just like speaking is a form of output, but
it has a big advantage over speaking and that is that when you write, you have
the chance to look things up uh, check the conjugation table or the declension
tables, or look up a word, uh, or maybe look at some of the phrases that you
saved on LingQ and try to use them.
In other words, you aren't forced, as in speaking, to just use
whatever comes to mind, you can actually do a little more research.
You can actually improve the accuracy of your output and your ability to
express yourself in the more sort of relaxed atmosphere of writing.
So it's definitely something that I recommend.
Now, one of the difficulties is, so when I was learning Chinese, I
was assigned writing assignments.
I had to write.
Uh, in French I was a, first of all, I had French at school and then
in France, I had essays to write.
I had things to write.
So you have to find a meaningful things to write about, um, because
you don't want to just write stuff.
So, so what can you do?
Well you can keep a diary, if you're that way inclined.
Uh, you can, uh, you know, there's so many opportunities to, through
email or uh, different, uh, chat rooms or, uh, maintaining a blog.
I mean, the, the sky's the limit, uh, communicating with people or just keeping
track of your own activities or what you're doing in the target language.
There are many opportunities, probably more than, uh, when I was
learning 50 years ago of having meaningful occasions where you
can write and writing is powerful.
You will improve your grasp of vocabulary, you will improve
your grasp of grammar by writing.
Now, obviously there are difficulties if you're learning a language with a
different writing system, um, which has been the case for me, and certainly
in Greek and Ukrainian and Russian and Persian and Arabic, but there again,
because we now have the ability to type it's, it's a lot easier to type
the language uh, to write online and as you're writing online to look up
words and look up grammar points, it's more difficult to write by hand.
Uh, writing by hand is something that I have not done a lot of, but I, I
think there's some evidence that when you write by hand, you improve your
ability to retain what you're learning.
Again, because I am a dilettante learner I'm not under any
obligation to learn anything.
So I do whatever is easiest and writing online is easier.
I can go even further.
Uh, I can dictate on my iPad.
And so I get away from the idea of writing whatsoever, but I still have
some of the advantages of writing because I see what I dictated.
I can go in and correct it, or change some words or, or, uh, somehow, um,
you know, still have that advantage of writing and that is that you have more
time to express yourself, but I don't have to remember how to form the letters.
Uh, so these are different ways that you can engage in writing as a means
of developing your output, uh, ability.
The other thing is when we write some people maybe think that
they have to write, uh, in a more formal way than they speak.
And perhaps in some situations you do.
There's formal communications, business letters and so forth,
less and less the case today.
My approach to writing has always been to write the way I speak.
So I tend to, you know, develop a somewhat neutral way of speaking.
So I'm not too informal, not too much slang.
And then my writing is just an extension of my speaking.
So I write the way I speak.
So if you have a neutral, fairly, not formal, but sort of standard
way of expressing yourself when you speak, then that kind of becomes the
way you express yourself in writing.
And I personally find that it's easier to do that, to make your
writing an extension of your speaking.
Also, when it comes to writing people say, well, you know, there's business
English and there's medical English, and there's this English or other languages.
There's a sort of special English.
Here again, you're only going to be able to write as well as you read.
So if you need a special academic English or French or whatever the language
may be, or business English or medical English, you have to consume a lot
of content, you know, in that domain.
Uh, if you want to write in a more literary way, then you have
to consume a lot of literature.
The best way...
the best thing you can do to write better is to read more because that
way, sort of a correct expression, a somewhat more sophisticated expression.
More elegant, more eloquent more, accurate expression will become second nature
because you've done so much listening and reading of that kind of material.
Of course you can have your writing corrected, but my experience is
that corrections aren't as effective as a means of improving in the
language as more and more exposure.
So people who want to improve their ability to write still have
to focus in on the previous goals.
In other words, acquiring a large vocabulary.
Uh, do a lot of reading, do a lot of listening.
Even your speaking activity is going to improve your ability to write.
And of course, to the extent that you spend time on grammar, it's also going
to improve your ability to write.
So you have to do all of these things in order to become better at writing.
Don't rely on having your writing corrected.
It's probably the least, uh, important activity in terms of
improving your ability to write.
So there are my thoughts on writing my fifth, sixth goal.
Uh, I did a couple of videos on the subject of writing a while
back, one is called Write More to Improve Your Language Accuracy.
The other one is called The Importance of Writing in Language Learning.
You might want to have a look at those to see some more discussion of this subject.
So thank you for listening.
Bye for now.
