How To Improve Your French Writing Skills

Writing in French is one of the hardest parts of the language as there are a lot of areas you can trip up.

While it might be an area you don’t really want to focus on, you really need to. It will take time and effort, but the reward will be not only improving your writing, you will improve other areas of your French too. 

Writing In French Is Still Important

It’s easy to want to avoid learning to write in French as in general we barely actual write anymore.

Think about the last time you wrote anything with a pen, it probably was a while ago and it probably wasn’t a lot of writing, maybe even only signing your name. We very much live in a digital world now, but don’t forget, typing is a form of writing.

If you are texting or emailing someone, that is writing, which is exactly why we still need to make sure we focus on it when studying French. 

You will be surprised how much you need this skill, so do not neglect it. French writing is also very different to speaking, so it really is a skill you need to put time and effort in to.

(You can read more about – How Often Should You Study French?)

Practicing More Will Improve Your French Writing Skills

If you want the real secret to getting better at writing in French, you simply just need to write more in French. It really is that simple, writing is like any other skill, the more you practice, the stronger you will become.

The hardest part about practicing is that you really need someone to check that you are doing things correctly, as writing is very easy to mess up in many different ways.

French and English may look fairly similar when written, but there are so many little rules in French that you need to make sure are correct, such as most of the words being the same gender or plural or not.

Even just spelling the words can be tricky as they can be very similar to English words, but maybe a few letters different. I have lost count of how many times I’ve forgotten the extra E in passeport when I write it in French.

The more you practice, the more natural these little differences will become and the better you will get.

Write In French To A Real Human

As I just said above, the hardest part about practicing your French writing is making sure you are doing it properly. The best way to make sure this is happening is to have someone check what you are writing.

I know this is not the most ideal way to do things, but it by far the best.

Use A Language Exchange App

Language exchange apps are going to be the best way to get instant feedback for your writing.

You can find plenty of French natives on language apps and just have some friendly chats with them. You can usually send audios or have phone calls, but a lot of the communication can happen through a sort of email/instant messenger type situation, which of course is all written based.

This style of writing is actually pretty good as its short bursts of information and its is also going to allow you to talk about things based around your life and will force you to use words that you want and need to say, rather than talking about some obscure topic you have no interest in.

The best part of these apps is that the other person can correct any mistakes you make and tell you the correct way to write something.

I have found these apps really useful and you will also end up having a lot of similar conversations with people, which may sound boring, but is actually perfect as it means you are getting lots of repetition, which is exactly what we need to get better.

Every time we type the same words, we are becoming stronger in our brain and we are getting more comfortable with them.

(You can read more about – Language Exchange Partners)

Journal In French

If talking to a real person is not your thing, you can practice your writing by journaling. Of course the obvious issue is how do you know if you are doing it right? …easy, you do it online.

There is a great website called Langcorrect.com which is simply a website where you can write things and someone will read over it and correct anything wrong for you.

If you don’t know what to write about, doing a little journal entry about your day is the easiest option but really you can write about anything and there are even challenges on the site to give you some ideas and motivation.

I guess this is a sort of language exchange app as you can also read over other peoples work and correct them in the languages they are learning. So, if you are native in English you can help some people out by checking what they are writing in English. This isn’t required, but you should just do it as it’s all good karma, just try and help as many people that help you.  

Make Practice Sentences In French

An easy way to get better at writing is to challenge yourself with practice sentences. Basically you need to take a sentence, either one you’ve made up or one you’ve read somewhere and modify it.

You can take the sentence and change the verb, the pronouns, add adjectives add more details in general. Just play around with it and get practice writing different things.  

For example, just take a really basic sentence like “I like to eat” (J’aime manger) and then just play around with it. Try saying “He likes to eat” …”He likes to eat apples” …”I like to eat fish” “she doesn’t like to eat with her dad”

I often use Google translate to just double check things.  Not ideal, but if the sentences are simple its usually okay and if I’m not sure, I will message my French friends on language apps to double check things.

You can make small changes like this and make hundreds of different sentences. It is quite boring, but it can be good to play around with sentences like this. Simple stuff like this just gets you used to typing in French and also helps your general sentence creation which will help with your speaking skills too.

It is also good for your vocabulary and grammar skills as you will start to notice you don’t know how to say certain things, which you can then focus on.

Read More To Improve Your French Writing Skills

Reading and writing are of course very closely linked and so the more reading you do, the better you will get at writing.

Reading is going to expose you to a lot of words and grammar. You are basically showing your brain how sentences should be formed and also how words should be spelled.

You may not be making a conscious note of any of this when you are reading, but your subconscious will be noticing everything. The more you read the more you are going to get a better feel for how everything should actually be and this will translate over to your conscious efforts when you try and write something.

Reading will simply make your brain more comfortable with the language and then you will start to become more comfortable writing in it.  

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Writing In Your New Language)

Conclusion

Writing in French can be difficult, but just keep working on it and you will get better. The more you do, the more comfortable you are going to get with the spelling and grammar and the easier it will start to feel when you are writing.

It can take time and effort, but it will be very much worth it and improving your writing is going to improve your overall French. 

(You can read more about – Advice For Anyone Learning The French Language)