Writing skills improvement in a foreign language

Writing is one of the four skills of language learning and out of the 4 skills such as listening and speaking people aren’t too sure how to practice this skill, especially at intermediate and advanced stages of language learning.

I thought I’d go over why I think this skill is important.

Why writing is important:

If you’re communicating long-distance:

Often, we communicate with people that are not in the same vicinity as us, and the main way we can do that is through writing whether that is through social media posts or text messages it remains a fact that writing is important. As such this will require writing skills.

This skill makes you a more well-rounded language learner:

It is often known that writing is one of the four skills of language learning. All four skills of language learning including writing affect each other so to become more well-rounded in this aspect is best to learn writing as well.

Often language proficiency tests test this ability:

Most language exams test the four components of languages such as listening, speaking, reading and writing (although some tests leave out the speaking component). For example, you cannot be C1 if you have A1 in this skill, but the other 3 being C1 (for example): The CEFR levels assume equal proficiency in all 4 skills.

How to improve your writing no matter your level:

Read in your target language:

Reading can profoundly impact our writing ability as reading is a way to gain new words and exposure to new vocabulary and grammar rules. In turn, we can use these new words to write new pieces of work.

As a result, you will gain a better understanding of how sentences, grammar and vocabulary work in the target language are you studying. This can be said to be an indirect way of practising your writing skills.

Get corrections:

Often when we write in a foreign language there will be grammatical mistakes and errors, so it is important to get someone more fluent in the language (or a native speaker) to correct your work. This way you will continuously improve and form good habits which we will all need to improve and build upon our writing.

The rest of this blog post will be split into the three stages of language learning which are beginner, intermediate and advanced learning of languages.

Beginner:

As a beginner, you won’t know many phases or words, so writing sentences and paragraphs may be more limited. However, one thing you can do from your time of study from either textbooks, self-learning or classroom study is to try to form sentences and phrases using your new-found vocabulary.

This way you can process the new words, vocabulary and grammar rules you have learnt by forming sentences.

Learn the basics of the writing system:

Often if you learn a Romance language it has the same alphabet as English and as such, there is no need to learn a separate writing system. However, there are certain things such as accents which are not in English but are in a language such as French. So these rules apply even if you’re learning a language of the Latin alphabet.

However, learning a language such as Arabic or Chinese which has a completely different written script you will need to learn it to learn how to write in the language.

If you’re learning Chinese I’d recommend learning the 214 radicals and the most common Chinese characters so that you’re able to grasp the fundamentals of this language.

Learn basic grammar:

Often; we neglect grammar in our language lessons and this is because we find it boring or not useful but this can be very useful indeed. Saying often is that grammar is the engine and vocabulary is the fuel; you cannot do one without the other.

As such it is recommended to start with basic grammar and build upon this so that you can form basic sentences and eventually more complex sentences.

Write by hand:

Often it can be easier to type than to write by hand; this is true, especially with writing Chinese as Chinese typing can be vastly easier than writing by hand. Especially as pinyin is very readily available and is quite easy to type.

So often we neglect writing longhand. However, to master writing, especially as beginners we must get used to writing by hand.

Intermediate:

Write longer and more complicated texts:

Often, we tend to stick to whatever feels comfortable to us and this includes this skill. Often, we choose to write the same vocabulary and grammar rules however to progress to the level we must choose to write longer texts on a range of different topics that we would like to choose from.

What can you do in this case? I’d recommend you start reading up whether it’s books or online different ideas or topics you can write about and then doing something such as a blog to practice your writing in a more long-form style.

Learn how to type in your target language:

Typing by hand is great in order to language well. However, being able to type in a foreign language opens a lot of options to practice your writing. Some of these include:

Being able to participate in social media: being able to type means that you will be able to participate and join different discussion groups. Being able to do so means that you have an invaluable way of improving your writing in your phone language

Being able to write more sophisticated texts such as those in creative writing and writing a blog: at this level, you will be able to start your own writing projects such as writing short stories or blogs. This gets even better at the advanced level.