How To Improve Your Writing Skills In A Foreign Language

Writing is a very important part of language learning. It is one of the best ways to really solidify your knowledge and master what you have learned.

There are a number of things you can focus on to improve, which I will go through below, but really the answer is that you need to practice more.

The more effort you put in to your writing, the more improvement you will see, which in turn should help your overall language skills increase.

Write More

I know it sounds too simple, but it’s true. If you want to get better at writing in your new language, then you need to just write more.

The old saying “practice will make perfect” is very true and this shouldn’t really come as a surprise, the only way to get better at anything is just do more of it, and writing is no different.

The main reason to write more in your new language is that you will get used to the process and so you will become comfortable with writing.

We mostly find writing difficult as we are not used to it. We can trick ourselves and say we are good in our own language, but that doesn’t matter. It is the same as speaking, we may be great at this in our native tongue, but you will find you are dreadful at this in our new language and the only way to improve is through practice.

Activities like writing may seem similar to our native language, but the fact we struggle shows we are not comfortable with them at all.

If you sit down every day and practice, you will see your skills improve. You will slowly get comfortable with the process and you will get better. 

 (You can read more about – How To Practice Writing In A Language)

Ask Natives To Correct Your Writing

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to know exactly where your mistakes are. You can work this out on your own, but it is much easier to ask a native to check your work.

They are going to be able to point out any glaring mistakes which you can focus on in the future.

However, they can also help to edit your work slightly, they can show you how to write things more naturally or how to phrase things in a slightly different way to make it read easier, they can also make sure you are not just using the same words over and over again and can help introduce you to some synonyms.

It can be hard to ask someone to check your work, but it really is going to benefit you a lot and so long as you take on board their criticism then you will make progress.  

Focus On Spelling

An easy win is to focus on your spelling. This is something you will not want to admit to, but you have to accept that spelling mistakes will happen in a new language.

The words are new to you and you may not be used to the pattern of the letters. I am forever doing this in French. I know the word, but I get a few letters jumbled up. I am just not fully comfortable with the word in the written form and if I take my time to focus on this, I do see improvements.

It’s usually small mistakes like this that give it away that you are not a native speaker, so by making sure you really know the spelling of basic words is always going to make it look like you are decent at the language.

Focus On Grammar

Grammar is everything when it comes to writing as you can’t hide it, so it needs to be perfect. You can get away with a lot when you are speaking, but with writing it’s all there in black and white to see.

The only way to really deal with this is to just keep things simple and make sure you have a good understanding of the basic rules. Once you have this down you just need to practice a lot and really get comfortable with the grammar.

There are of course going to be those small annoying rules that will try and trip you up, but this is why we practice, so that we can get used to their ticks and make sure we don’t make simple mistakes.

It will take time to iron out all your grammatical errors, but it is possible.   

Focus On The Alphabet

If you are learning a language that has a different script, such as Arabic, Japanese or Korean then you really need to focus on the alphabet.

You need to practice the new lettering until it is second nature to you. Take the Japanese letters さ and ち, they look very similar, they are almost just mirror opposite of each other, but of course are very different letters and if you get these muddled up the words you write will be totally different and very wrong.

It would be similar to me showing you p and q, which are very similar looking and also mirror opposites. Imagine how bad your writing would be if you mixed these two letters up …qeter qiper qicked a qeck of qickled qeqqers.

To make sure this doesn’t happen you need to be extremely comfortable with the alphabet. Make sure you can recognise everything and then write or type everything perfectly.

Learning a new alphabet is quite challenging, but you can get very efficient very quickly and if you want to write (or read) in the language, you need this level of skill.

Focus On Punctuation

Punctuation may not seem like the biggest deal, but it can make the difference and you will also find that it is not exactly the same in each language. 

It is usually not that complicated and is easily implemented into your writing. It is better to do this early on and get into good habits, but more importantly it will make your writing look better.

Having your punctuation follow the English style of rules will make sense to you, but when you show your work to a native it is going to look a little off and it is really going to make you stand out as a learner, rather than someone who knows the language well.

A little focus on this will tweak things enough to improve your writing.  

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

Focus On Your Mistakes

If you want to get better at anything in life, you first of all need to know what you are doing wrong and this is very true for writing. 

You either need to go through your own work and find the mistakes, or preferably ask a native to check what you wrote and point out your errors.

Once you know your mistakes you can try and avoid them next time, or revisit a particular topic to re-study whatever you where struggling with.

(You can read more about – How Can Writing In a Second Language Improve Your Overall Language Skills?)

Try And Think In The Language

Thinking in the language is going to make your writing more fluid and you will generally improve much faster if you can do this.

If you are translating back and forth it can really interrupt your flow and can also make your writing sound more like how it would be in English, rather than in the language you are trying to write in.

It is basically going to read more like something that has been translated, because that is exactly what it is.

The sooner you can start thinking in your new language the sooner your writing will be more natural.

(You can read more about – How To Think In Another Language)

Keep It Simple

Sometimes we struggle with writing as we try and push ourselves too far out of our comfort zone and end up making mistakes.

If you want to improve it can be a good idea to just keep things simple for a while. Don’t get ahead of yourself until you have really mastered the basics.

Once you have this sorted you can then start trying more advanced things and hopefully your strong foundation will help support your progress.

(You can read more about – Writing Resources For Language Learning)

Learn More Words

A very easy way to improve your writing is of course to just learn more words. If you are able to say the same thing in three different ways it is always going to read more elegantly than repeating the same handful of words over and over again.

This is exactly how we got better in our own language. We got a broader depth of knowledge and can therefore write better, the exact same is true for any language you are learning. 

(You can read more about – How Does Writing In A Second Language Differ From Writing In Your Native Language?)

Read More

Reading is the key to getting better at writing. Reading shows you how things should be done, so it basically gives your mind a blueprint for what good writing should look like.  

The more you do this, the more comfortable you brain will become with the language and will ultimately be able to improve your writing skills from reading.

It is also going to be how you expand your knowledge and help you learn more words, like I mentioned above.

Conclusion

As you can see there are many ways to improve your writing, even if you focus on a few of the points above you will see improvements, however, the most important thing you should be doing is simply writing more.

You will always get better at what you put effort in to, so if you want to improve your writing skills, just start writing more, you will see the results. 

(You can read more about – Writing Resources For Language Learning)