Do I Really Need to Write All That?

Daily—or, let's be realistic—near daily writing is incredibly important when learning a new language. It's an efficient way to organize your thoughts, reflect on what you’ve read (or listened to), look up new words, double check your grammar, and so much more. Daily writing should be practical! At least, I firmly believe it should have a strong practical component, otherwise, it’s too easy to never get around to it. 

As a ESL teacher I’ve helped guide my students in their writing practice in a number of ways. For elementary-level learners, I’ve encouraged journaling about daily activities, usually using simple tense verbs. And I like to reassure elementary-level learners that daily writing doesn't need to be hundreds and hundreds of words. A couple sentences every day will help establish a routine. And as you probably know, consistency is everything when learning a new language. 

For intermediate learners, I encourage to students to continue writing about their daily activities, building upon those foundational skills to discuss those activities in greater detail. I also push intermediate students to increase the complexity of the writing content. Make an effort to include verb tenses that are uncomfortable to use in speech; keep incorporating new those new vocab words; and mostly importantly, fight the urge to write perfectly. Of course strive to do well, but do not let the aspiration for perfection to impede your progress. Additionally, I've found that intermediate learners often benefit from writing down some common spoken phrases, including slang. For myself and many of my students, it's been helpful to write down some basic conversational phrases—something akin to passing notes in class—with a partner or by yourself.

Advanced learners. Advanced learners, advanced learners, advanced learners. I so enjoy guiding advanced learners in the refinement of their writing. This is the level that I've found students enjoy writing activities the most because they finally have the skills to express themselves with more ease, so writing can become enjoyable. Of course, it's always important to reinforce foundational skills like spelling. This is the level that I like to have students draw their attention to rhetorical choices, exploring how changes in word choice and sentence structure affect the overall message. Advanced learners can often benefit from writing about stories in their past or their hopes and goals for the future. Writing activities are also a fantastic way to further their industry-specific language skills, such as learning medical terms and procedures or common idioms used in business. 

Additionally, it's been my experience (and the experience of many of my students) that handwriting seems more efficient than typing when it comes to writing exercises. Of course for many people, when writing in your first language—at least, as an adult—typing is more efficient than handwriting, but I don't think the same is true when learning a second language because the goals are different. When writing in your first language the goal is often the message, whereas when writing in your second language your goal is often engaging in the process of learning. I think taking the time to handwrite helps the learner think more deeply about what they are communicating. And there is some neuroscientific evidence to support handwriting over typing. "Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index" discusses that words learned with handwriting were able to be recalled longer than words learned with typing. Though, there is certainly more research to be explored in this fascinating area. 

At the end of the day, for all levels of second language learners, I say: 

Typing is good, handwriting is better, and anything is better than nothing.