How To Overcome The Fear Of Writing In A New Language

When it comes to writing in a new language we often do not feel comfortable with it at all and usually try and avoid it. It can be very common for there to be a lot of anxiety and fear around writing and many language learners will put it off or convince themselves that it’s not important.

This is not ideal as writing can really help us make progress in the language, so I will be looking at why this fear occurs and more importantly, how it overcome it, which of course is going to involving us facing our fears and actually practicing more.

Why Do We Get Scared Of Writing In New Language

Writing is a form of output and it forces us to produce the language ourselves. The problem is that this means we may make a mistake, and nobody wants this to happen.

We all hate making mistakes and we want to be perfect, the problem is that we are only learning the language, so the chances of messing up are extremely high. This causes us to get anxious about writing as we kind of know we are going to mess up and we are terrified we will be judged for making a mistake.

We would rather avoid the whole process as we can then tell ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, when really the lack of writing only means we are actually terrible at it as we do not practice it. 

Accept That You Are Learning

The first thing you need to do is accept that you are learning. Understand that mistakes are normal at your level and that they will happen.  

Being able to accept that you are going to mess up can take some of the fear away, but you also need to realise that no else one cares.

Native speakers have accepted that you are learning, they are not expecting you to be perfect and if you make some mistakes they will just navigate around that and try and to work out what you where trying to do. 

We Make Mistakes In Our Own Language

You should also stop and look at your own language, and realise you have probably made a lot of mistakes in the past when writing, even though you are “an expert” at the language since you are a native speaker. 

How many times have you written something or sent a text and it didn’t quite make sense. You made a spelling mistake or a grammar mistake …and you didn’t care …and neither did the person reading it.

You don’t care about mistakes in your own language as you know you can normally do it “perfectly” and you just brush it off. We struggle to do this in a language we are learning, which is crazy as we should know that this is the language we are not “perfect” in.

If we can treat a language we are learning more like our native language, we will get less worried about writing.

Of course the difference is comfort; we are comfortable with our own language and very uncomfortable with the new one. However, with practice we can get comfortable with the new language too, it just takes time and practice. 

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

Keep It Simple

One of the best ways to overcome the fear of writing is to just keep things simple. If you try and over complicate things you are of course going to be lost, confused and frustrated.

Just take a step back and think about how you can get your message across in the simplest way. Just think about how young children communicate, it’s very basic, but it does the job. They don’t have the ability to form elegant and sophisticated sentences …They also don’t have the ability to write, but that’s not the point.

Basically the simpler you keep your writing, the less intimidating the whole experience will be.

As you gain confidence and experience you can increase the level and get more complex, but there really is nothing wrong with you just keeping it very basic. If you can get your message across, then will be doing great and that is all that matters at this time.

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

Keep Your Writing To Yourself

A large part of the reason why people find writing difficult is because they have a fear that they will be judged.

No one likes to be judged or laughed at, so if you don’t write anything down, this can’t happen …right. Well, yes this is true, but it also means you make no progress so you are only doing yourself as disservice.

If you have this fear, then just keep your work to yourself. You can fill notebooks by yourself and check your work alone. While it is better to show some one your work to correct it, you can do it all by yourself.

There is no rush with writing, so you can take you time to check things and go over what you have written over and over again checking what was right or wrong.

You could also write something and make a few different drafts of it until you are happy enough to show it to someone to correct, or only show them a small section that you may not be sure about.

Basically don’t let your fear get in the way of your progress; don’t make things difficult for yourself. 

Practice More

Really the only way to overcome the fear is to just face it head on and start writing more.

The more you practice the more you will realise that it’s not actually something you should be worrying about and you will start to feel comfortable.

The more you practice the better you will become and your general language level will increase. You are going to be forcing yourself to use the language and this is only going to strengthen your ability.

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

Conclusion

The fear of writing in your new language can be very real, but it is extremely important that you do not allow this to happen. Writing is an important part of the learning process. It is going to really strengthen your knowledge as it forces you to use the language.

You just need to face your fear and practice. The more effort you can put into writing the less you will be worried about it, but more importantly the better you will become at your new language.

(You can read more about – How To Improve Your Writing Skills In A Foreign Language)