How Do We Improve Our Writing in a New Language?

The idea that you're gonna do something that you're not used to doing, simply

to develop your writing skills, I don't think is that practical?

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here again, and today I want to talk

about writing, writing in the language that you are learning.

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So I sometimes get asked like, okay, Steve, you always talk

about input, reading, listening, building up your vocabulary.

Uh, and even you talk about the importance of speaking and speaking a lot, at

least once you have enough vocabulary.

But what about writing?

How do we improve our writing?

And I recognize that writing can be a way of improving your ability

in the language, a way of getting to more output in the language.

And for some people it's important to their academic aspirations,

professional aspirations.

So what do I have to say on the subject of writing?

Well, first of all, I would divide it into two sort of stages.

Okay.

On the one hand, if you are at an early stage in your, you

know, learning of a particular language, how do you use writing?

How do you get to writing?

And the second issue is if you are already fairly proficient in the language, how

do you improve your ability to write, you know, academic papers or professional

correspondence or things of that nature?

So first of all, with regard to using writing at an early stage in learning

the language, first of all, as I say about all output activities, you have

to have enough of the language in you.

So you have to do a lot of reading and listening.

And as I mentioned many times in the early stages, listen to what you read.

Read what you listen to.

Have the two of them sort of work with each other to build up your

familiarity with the language.

You have to have that within you so that you can then output.

So when you start to output in the language, writing actually has a number

of advantages compared to speaking.

First of all, when you are speaking, you tend to use words that you're

confident that you can use.

Uh, you're reluctant to use words where you're not sure what the word means.

You're reluctant to use structures that you're not very confident

that you can really control those structures, those patterns.

Whereas when you write you've got all the time in the world.

You can look up words, you can look up, you know, the conjugation.

You can look up different tenses, tenses, different structures.

So you can actually experiment using words and, and phrases that you

might not remember to use or feel confident using when you're speaking.

So writing is a great way to improve your ability to output in the language.

Another thing I would say is develop the habit of making your writing and speaking

as close to each other as possible.

What I mean by that is whenever I have learned the language, I try

not to have a very casual form of the language and then have some kind

of a more, uh, you know, stylized form of, of writing in the language.

When I go to write, it's a continuation of my speaking.

So I, I wanna have my speaking as logical and as neutral as possible

so that I can use that when I write.

Even though I know that in languages like Chinese, uh, French, there

is a stylized form of the written language, but I don't use that.

And I know that in every language there's a very slangy form of the language.

I don't use that.

I try to have a neutral form of the language, that way when I speak, and

as I develop my speaking ability, I'm also developing my writing ability,

and as I use my writing to improve my ability to express myself, I can

bring that back into my speaking.

So try to make your writing and speaking as closely connected as possible.

So all of these are ways to get to output.

What should we write about?

Obviously there are people who say, well, you should keep a diary, but I

have never kept a diary and therefore it would be very unnatural for me to keep

a diary in the language I'm learning.

I'm unlikely to do it.

I might start but I won't continue.

So the idea that you're gonna do something that you're not used to

doing, simply to develop your writing skills, I don't think is that practical.

So if you can develop a correspondence with someone where you're sending

emails back and forth, uh, but you're still trying to not use the

sort of, you know, Twitteries or "gonna" "wanna" type of English, Try

to keep it fairly neutral, fairly standard, and correspond with people.

Then those are writing exchanges that are meaningful.

If you like to keep a diary, by all means, keep a diary, but it's not

personally something that I would do.

Now, once we move to sort of developing an ability to write better for a professional

or academic purpose, you have to go after the model of, of what you want

to be able to do with your writing.

So you have to find a lot of material of the style that you want.

Of the vo, which has the vocabulary that you want to use and, and not just

the sort of technical vocabulary, but also the way thoughts are introduced.

You know, on the one hand, on the other hand, Uh, there are ways that our thoughts

are introduced in writing that can be a little more formal than in speaking.

So go find this kind of content, import it into LingQ.

I would even combine listening with reading because when you hear

the same content spoken, it helps to basically, you know, those

turns of phrases into your brain.

So as I said, uh, I'm not, I haven't been active writing in

the languages that I'm learning.

Uh, and that has been the case throughout, uh, including Persian right now.

However, uh, I was reminded that there is a feature at LingQ which

helps people who do want to write.

So I thought I would have a look at that.

And show you how that works.

So if I go to the community page, there is a thing called the writing exchange.

So if I click on the writing exchange, then I will see that people here

have submitted, um, writing, which the members are correct for them.

And, uh, so if we look at this, we can see that, uh, in the case here of this

French one, someone has replied and you'll see that someone has volunteered

to, uh, correct the writing in French.

In fact, there were two different ... So you can look at two different versions of,

of the correction, all of which I think for people who are interested in writing.

This is quite good.

Here's one in Polish, and here again, this person has corrected the Polish writing,

so I think that's a good thing to do.

You can correct other people's writing in your native language.

The biggest question for me is what am I gonna write about and, uh, I

think, uh, if, uh, there is sort of genuine correspondence, then

the writing becomes meaningful.

Otherwise, if you, uh, are prepared to, um, you know, keep, uh, a

diary, then that would be a way of, of, uh, getting you to write.

Just curious.

I haven't been here, but if I look at, um, you know, my statistics,

I hadn't realized this, but I can, I can look at how I compared to

taking a while to come up here.

How I compare.

So in terms of all time LingQs, I am the second most active

person in Persian on our website.

If I look at known words, I'm in third place.

Uh, that's for all time.

However, if I look at the last, uh, three months, then I'm well down the list.

Uh, other people have been more active than me.

I gotta be somewhere.

I'm number 10.

Anyway, one of the things I find interesting in LingQ is that I don't

use all the features, but one of the features that, uh, people could use who

are interested in writing and having the writing corrected, and it is free, I

believe maybe there's an exchange of coins and you just go to the writing exchange,

which can be found at the community.

So, uh, I hope that is useful and uh, if I do get going on writing in Persian, Uh,

I think I'll probably use the sort of, uh, scrambled sentence or, uh, you know,

integrated review functionality that is now available on, uh, on, uh, iOS and

will soon be available on all platforms as a way of starting to compose to some

extent in the language that I'm learning.

So lots of reading, lots of listening and then just, you know, try to, if you have

to write professionally, then you will have a real reason to write professionally

and, and when you write, the, the other issue that comes up beyond this question

of, you know, vocabulary and phrasing is, how do I structure my, you know,

essay or whatever it is I have to write?

And here again, what I would suggest is in every language there are sort

of manuals on how to write well, how to organize your thoughts, essays

for school or whatever it might be.

And I would go and find those, uh, manuals on how to write and how to

express yourself in the target language.

And then I would bring those into LingQ.

Then I would learn from these so that not only am I improving my language, but

I'm also learning the different forms of, you know, collecting your thoughts.

Uh, I studied in France.

In France, they have a very specific way of organizing thoughts at

Science Po, we had to have sort of introduction, part one, part two.

Part one had section A, B, part two had section A, B, then there was a conclusion.

So that was their format.

But there are many different formats and these formats can vary from

culture or from language to language.

So I would suggest that when you're at that sort of a more sophisticated level

and you wanna improve your writing, go and find these manuals in the target language.

Study them at lingQ, learn the words and phrases, and along the way you'll learn

how in those languages and cultures, they want you to organize your thoughts.

Okay, well, there you have it.

I wanna leave you with two videos that I did quite a few years ago also on the

subject of writing, and I think you might find that my views have changed a little

bit or maybe they haven't changed so much, but they might be useful reference.

Thank you for listening.