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Speaking vs Writing / Equal Difficulty? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 17 of 21 17 May 2011 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
We also easily get used to the way a person speaks, but we don't usually read them often enough to get to used to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 21 17 May 2011 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
There's a key observation here. How can you judge your own writing skills? Sure, you can feel comfortable writing in a foreign language, and many of us write more than we speak for lack of speaking opportunities. But how well are we writing? Recently, I had the occasion to look at a friend's e-mail in English. There were a few grammatical mistakes and some typos. Basically, it was okay. But then I said, Let's see how a native English-language speaker would write this. There were two sets of changes. The first was use of idiomatic language. Depending on the desired tone of the e-mail there are certain word combinations and collocations that make the text sound right. The second area of improvement was what I call flow, The original text was made up of a series of basically correct but isolated sentences. What was lacking was a sense of movement or flow of ideas and words that comes with the use of the right connecting devices. The final result was quite an improvement over the original. Both were correct. The second just had the right stylistic feel about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 19 of 21 18 May 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
I know I can say, or write, pretty much anything in a number of ways, some of them interchangeable, most of them slightly different, and thus fit for slightly different purposes, like conveying emotions, humor, or simply sounding righter. As for connecting sentences rather than stitching them together, how to do it..., well, that's even more obvious, or it should be for anyone that takes his/her languages seriously. I mean, to me it's painfully obvious when I can output something in a very limited number of, or maybe just one way, so it might not be fit for every occasion, or even the one at hand, and it's even worse if I realize that I can't effectively connect any two given sentences because I don't know the words for because, or anyway, or but, etc. And because I'm very aware of that, I take trips to the dictionary when I don't know precisely how to put what I want to convey, or I ask others about it, and I pay attention to how natives word their stuff, and I take notes when I realize that making the alligator sandwich snappy is somehow punchier than making it quick. You can compare what you write before and after learning; you can compare what you would write and what knowledgeable people actually wrote, and you can get a pretty good idea of how bad your writing is. Edited by mrwarper on 18 May 2011 at 12:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 20 of 21 18 May 2011 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that it is quite evident that one can produce good texts in one's native language and be unable to spontaneously produce the equivalent in a target language. This can change, of course, as one gets better until one is completely at ease in both languages. I'm only suggesting that it takes times to develop the necessary skills. Part of the problem is often not having someone who will give helpful criticism. I think one of the best ways to improve one's writing is to work with a native who can bring the perspective of a true native reader. This is something that is difficult to do alone because it is not easy to feel and know what sounds good. Edited by s_allard on 18 May 2011 at 6:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 21 of 21 18 May 2011 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course it takes time every time, but every time it should take less time to produce texts comparable to those you can produce in your own language, because you don't need to develop a new skill, you just need to acquire enough vocabulary to do the same thing you already know how to do :)
[Rant: this is something I really hate about the foreign language teaching industry, the communicative approach, and the foolishness that keeps these kinds of things going (I'm not regarding you as foolish, BTW) because people will believe everything that's thrown at them -- if learners are mature enough, there's little chance that they need to be taught 'skills' like summarizing a text, skim it, look for information, etc.: they just need to learn the language, and they'll be as capable of doing it as they are when using any other. /rant] Again, working alone, it can be done, but it is obviously better if you get a native to help you out. The hardest part about that is perhaps getting helpful criticisms, as you say. One thing I do with my language exchange partners when I feel they correct me less than they should is to throw in a couple of deliberate, unmistakable errors to see if they'll correct me, so I know if I'm really as good as it seems or they're just being <whatever>. If working with a native fails, well, you're not really alone. You can take books from different epochs and draw pretty accurate conclusions about the texts from what you know about the authors. As a rule of thumb, renowned authors tend to have 'good style' (although some are known for their abstruseness), so you pretty much know who to copy, and structures that appear unchanged in texts separated 50 years tend to be 'good style' as well -- so, if you start there, you're probably off to a good start. If you copy from faithful editions of 200 year old texts, you'll probably sound archaic, etc. Edited by mrwarper on 18 May 2011 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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