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Reasons to write in your target language? | ||
Tags: Writing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6406 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 13 29 August 2013 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you're shadowing in order to develop fluency/speed, I'd say you can use a transcript (from GLOSS, maybe?) and just speak along with the recording, especially if you've listened to it a few times already. Don't worry that you stop listening and paying attention to individual sounds. Your pronunciation is okay, you just need to practise actually speaking. Edited by Serpent on 29 August 2013 at 3:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4637 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 10 of 13 29 August 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't say that I have done the following myself, but if your speaking is a lot better than your writing, you might try: Imagine you are dictating a piece of writing (be it a letter, or an essay, an article, or a report, or whatever), to your "secretary" (ha!), and try to speak as though it were actually going to be transcribed into writing. And actually record yourself doing it. Hopefully this will encourage you to speak in a more formal and grammatical style that will work in writing. Now whether you actually listen and transcribe what you recorded is up to you (listening to at least some of it is probably useful for a variety of reasons). You might find that a bit tedious - depends on your patience levels or whatever. But hopefully it will help your writing style. Not sure if it would help me as much, since my speaking is almost always not as good as my writing........but that's another problem: I need to encourage myself to speak a lot more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5914 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 13 29 August 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the idea!
I think there are a number of angles here. If I just want to practise accuracy, then writing short sentences of the more descriptive kind would help. Such as "the cat sat on the mat until the dog arrived" etc. But if I want to practice communication of a more colloquial kind, then writing dialogues, posing questions and responses would be better. Such as "yeah, I know what you mean. My dog does the same. What vet do you reccommend?" etc. My speaking isn't great either. On the one hand, speaking is more comfortable because I get prompts, hints and feedback from my conversation partner which draws the speech forth. On the other hand, I'm getting away with murder when it comes to the grammar. I also have the added pressure of listening, composing and delivering speech virtually simultaneously. My point is, that if I have regularly practised composing written dialogue and thoughts then hopefully my speech will flow better (in terms of speed, accuracy, style and appropriateness). And I can take as much time as I want to practise these written compostions and streams of consciousness. We're all different though. I'm definitely a visual learner, I like to read and see the written word. So when listening or speaking, I tend to visualise the word in my mind first. But as Amorey Gethin (co-author of "The Art and Science of Learning Languages") points out: "The majority of the humans who have existed have probably been illiterate, and so cannot have 'seen' any words they heard" [and spoke - my addition]. If you have the number of that "secretary", let me know. I need all the help I can get! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BlaBla Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 3938 days ago 45 posts - 72 votes Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Nepali, Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin | Message 12 of 13 30 August 2013 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I not only enjoy writing, I really love it. Over the years it has become an essential part of
what I do for a living; I'm currently working on 3 books. The best part: I can do it just about everywhere like my other job, so I keep moving. Regarding learning languages I guess writing short pieces and imaginary dialogues is the single most efficient activation technique next to self talk that I know of before I actually start to get on peoples nerves somewhere out there. I usually start writing those pieces, when I'm around A2 or have finished a basic Assimil course. Usually the new words I have to look up here and there as well as all the grammar just stick and stay active for a while to come.Producing meaningful contents in L2 just becomes more and more automatic - way to go. Of course it's even more fun with languages that come with their own alphabet, Nepali in my case (I ditched Japanese years ago, but that's a different story). Besides, I've been a huge fan of the A6 format for many years, so I keep collecting those pieces, notes, tables, etc... in little folders of that size, Moleskine-style. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4253 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 13 of 13 30 August 2013 at 10:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Nowadays writing should include any texting & E-mail in foreign languages as well. Most people no
longer write letters in the sense of using pen and paper. Even letters are typed and printed on computer with proper spell-check when possible. In my younger days when I was learning Chinese, my parents never encouraged me to write using the language very much. Back then writing a letter was a formal affair. It is not you expressing what you want to say but there is a certain "proper" content style people follow like in the first and last paragraphs you would always write certain things. Kind of deterrent for writing seriously. Also my parents were really the know-all type. None of my siblings could argue with them on anything. When it comes to writing in Chinese not only that they had more formal education in the language but somehow my siblings and myself tend to associate Chinese with tough parenting so we would stay away from it... nothing to do with the language being easy or hard. Sometime ago met someone from the US while travelling in Asia. He wanted to keep up with his Chinese so we started exchanging letters a few times a year. About 10 years ago I stopped writing and started using all sorts of Chinese input software. He recently started to type his letters as well. Spending time on online blogs you find people tend to be much more informal about their typed messages. You feel more comfortable expressing yourself. Recently got into translating work for web-pages already online from English to Chinese. Started with Google translate. Found some pages more acceptable than others and ended up doing 40% of the work over to make the text more readable. Relied a lot on online dictionaries to look-up characters. It is a work related issue. In today's job market you don't want to turned down a job request or someone else would get it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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