Writing texts in a foreign language – a guide (and some reasons why there’s no way around it)

This essay deals with some general questions concerning writing, first and foremost, why we should be motivated to learn it. Moreover, it is an attempt to give a comprehensive overview of some useful writing tips. If you are only interested in the latter, just skip the first section of this essay and immediately jump to “Writing tips or Please, do me a favour and stop doing that”. If, however, you want to find out why we should bother to master the skill, you are very welcome to read the first part of this essay in which I try to make a case for writing.

Why writing isn’t for losers

Text writing is a crucial aspect of learning a foreign language. Sure, there are also other aspects equally important, such as listening, reading and speaking skills. Moreover, for some people just one of these skills will play a more important role according to their interests, needs and professional aspirations. But I think we can all agree on the fact that writing is of paramount importance in language education. Why is that actually the case? Isn’t being able to communicate with people more important? Or doesn’t reading a book or listening to a song bring more pleasure? Yes and no. It might be true that the text types you are expected to master are not always those you might need in your future career. You might think that no Austrian ever writes an article in English or French or any other foreign language. What’s more, writing is not always the easiest skill. In language learning we distinguish between receptive skills, i.e. listening and reading comprehension, and productive skills, which are reading and speaking. For most students it seems that the productive skills are more difficult to apply. Nevertheless, writing in a foreign language indeed is important for several reasons.

First of all, any piece of writing is also a form of communication. Of course, in most cases you as students write for a teacher, but it is still a form of communication. Plus, we try to make things easier for you by inventing an imaginary, yet realistic situation, i.e. WHY are you writing? WHAT should you write? And WHO are you writing for? Always keep these aspects in mind as they are the first step to a good piece of writing.

Secondly, arguing about what is more fun, watching a movie in English or writing an English blog entry is not open to debate. Interests vary widely, for some people trying to compose the perfect piece of writing is their idea of having the time of their life. People’s favourite pastimes or learning preferences don’t count as arguments in a discussion about whether writing in school is needed or not.

Now to the more pressing issue: Why the heck do we need to learn how to write in the foreign language if the chances are high that we will never use it outside school? Well, first of all I’m very skeptical of the idea of finding a reason for everything we learn at school. It is a good thing to be critical and to question certain facts and skills we have to learn in the course of formal education. However, I also think that we are running the risk of confusing criticism with attaching a certain kind of value to knowledge. In the context of economic growth, i.e. the question “What do we need to acquire a certain kind of wealth in the hope of securing eternal happiness?”, some subjects at schools have suffered a lot of criticism. The reproach is that the things we learn at school don’t have anything to do with what we need in real life, or what the economy needs. Especially the humanities such as history, literature and philosophy, and the arts desperately try to bridge the gap between knowledge and applicability (for a more profound discussion of this issue see Liessmann’s Geisterstunde – Die Praxis der Unbildung). As a graduate of languages and social anthropology, I would argue that we should not only learn what we need (in a monetary sense) but what interests us. That which brings personal growth, understanding, sympathy, and cognitive enhancement. In short, the things that make us better people. I don’t want to imagine a world in which everybody is interested in doing things for the economy instead of doing things for humanity. It’s our curiosity and our wish to learn more, to know more, that make us human.

So what does that have to do with writing in a foreign language? Writing fortunately still is (and hopefully always will be) an integral part of language education because it does several things for our personal growth. First of all, there is the communicative aspect. To be able to express yourself in writing opens new doors to a whole new world of communication. By mastering different text types and registers, you can interact with people from a variety of countries and backgrounds. And the longer you learn, the more complex your texts and your language structures will become. The receptive skills alone won’t do here. Language input in the form of reading and listening are pivotal in our learning progress, but only output in the form of writing and speaking can secure long-term success (Swain 1985).

Another aspect is linguistics. Awareness of sentence structure, word choice, register and text type will help us navigate the world more easily. We need language to communicate and express ourselves. Thus, language is the key to understanding and further learning. Since we have to concentrate on the important features of language, we are able to gain insights into how we can use the language for our purposes and maybe even become aware of how language is used to manipulate us. This in turn is something that can come in handy in a social and political sense, too. And I think we can agree on the fact that any kind of learning is good for the brain.

Moreover, like reading, writing opens us up to the world. We are forced to reflect, to consider and to adapt our opinions and attitudes. We have to express reasons for them and thereby might feel compelled to revise them. It is both reasoning and empathy that are learned in writing. The last, but not the least important factor, is the artistic one. I concede that this aspect is not always the most important one in school. But look at it this way: every piece of writing, no matter if it’s a business letter or a story, stimulates our creativity and our ability to play with the language. And I think this playful aspect of language learning shouldn’t be underestimated since it will make you a more self-confident writer. It eventually boosts our self-esteem when we can stare in awe at something we wrote. It might be a small accomplishment, but it makes us proud nevertheless.

To sum up, writing might be a very difficult skill to learn, but it certainly is neither a supreme human being’s nor evil teachers’ revenge on poor students: It’s a gift and a powerful weapon in the fight against illiteracy, social isolation and the forces of evil 😉

Writing tips or Please, do me a favour and stop doing that

So if writing were that easy, we wouldn’t have to bother with education at all and just start being enlightened right away. But since no one is born with such a gift (or not that I would know of), or because not everyone has the brains of William Shakespeare, let’s just assume that writing is something that can be learned and perfected. And I’m sure even Will had to learn some things the hard way. Hence the good news: writing can be practised. The bad news: it MUST be practised. And I don’t want to hear any more excuses about some people being more gifted than others. Yeah, might be true, but complaining doesn’t help passing exams, so stop whining.

The ministry of education has come up with standardised testing methods and an accompanying  assessment scale. It even has become a dogma, and those who know me, also know how skeptical I am of ideas proclaimed to be dogmas. But essentially this framework is useful and it is something we need to apply, both teachers and students. Plus, this scheme isn’t something that has been devised by idiots but is based on research into language learning and pedagogy.

Task achievement

The first element of text writing is the purpose or the question “Why the heck do I have to write this?” We normally have a reason for writing e.g. we want to make enquiries, or we want to inform others, or get advice, or convince our readership. You would normally find the purpose of the task in the short introduction. There you would also find the medium that helps you express this purpose, i.e. the text type, for example, an email, an article or a business letter. As mentioned above, we write to communicate and unless we write a diary, we want to communicate with someone other than ourselves. So the question is “Who am I writing to?”, i.e. who is the addressee. In short, always remember: WHAT? WHY? WHO? Furthermore, pay attention to the bullet points. There normally should be three to four bullet points telling you what will be expected of you in the task. These bullet points also hint at the structure and the language. If you stick to the structure laid out in those bullet points, nothing much can go wrong. Plus, pay attention to the linguistic skills you should apply e.g. “describe”, “explain”, “compare”, “justify”, ….

So knowing what the task comprises is the first step. The second is its application. What you should never do, is start writing without having a plan. Draw a mind-map or a paragraph plan in which you structure your main ideas and arguments. That takes about five minutes, but it will be speed up your writing process and will prevent a jumbled or incoherent structure. That way you can avoid cryptical footnotes like * or ° or ^ or any other hieroglyphs that should help your teacher to find all the pieces of the puzzle that is your text. So stop writing into the blue and start thinking before you write.

Only after this step you should start writing. And the last step is equally important: revise your text. I know this will be difficult when sitting an exam, but do every teacher a favour, and please proofread any assignment before you hand it in. Seriously, it makes perfect sense to correct your own texts before I do.

Structure

If you already have a paragraph plan, this aspect of text writing should be a walk in the park. It is really easy as the assessment scale also says that you even get points for making paragraphs. So in the name of all language teachers and everything that is holy: MAKE PARAGRAPHS! And again, no signs I have to decode, but a blank line between paragraphs.

The trickier issue is linking words. Please study linking words, they make your texts more sophisticated. However, (see that use of an all-time favourite linking word?), also bear in mind that the random use of linking devices is counterproductive if your text lacks structure on the content level or is illogical. Some people manage to write surprisingly coherent texts without using those linking words, so again, it’s not a dogma to use them. Nevertheless, studying them can’t hurt and some text types demand them.

Moreover, the layout is part of the structure, too. Therefore, you should have a look at the requirements of each text type and adhere to those rules. Yes, I know that sometimes it seems to be ridiculous as some of these rules were invented by people a bit remote from writing, but rules are rules, so let’s just obey them. For example, if you write an email, make sure that you have a To:, From:, and a subject line. If you write a blog, write a username and a date (which is something every blog has. If you don’t believe me, check out all the posts of this blog ;-). In reports you should have subtitles, letters should have a date and an addressee. For further details, check out the attachment.

Range

The linguistic range might be the most difficult part. It entails vocabulary and grammar skills and it is what distinguishes the good from the poor writer. For you it means studying vocabulary as much as you can and not only translations but word families and synonyms. For example, when you learn a new word, let’s say to achieve, also study the noun that can be built from it, achievement; there is even an adjective, achievable. This way you avoid repetition and can form more complex sentences. In most cases using a noun instead of a verb clause is more formal and elegant. For instance, you can say: “For most students it is important to achieve a lot in school”. However, writing “Educational achievement is important for the majority of students” sounds way more intelligent. What have I done here? I have changed the structure of the sentence, replaced some words with their synonyms, but tried to maintain the meaning of the original clause. Another example for synonyms would be the word achievable. It is a word I personally don’t like. I don’t know why, it just sounds odd to me and I hardly ever read it anywhere. So what can I do? I try to look for a another word with the same meaning, for example attainable. And where do I find it? In a thesaurus. A thesaurus doesn’t provide translations, but only synonyms and antonyms (words with the opposite meaning). Check out the page thesaurus.com, I use it a lot. Of course, working with synonyms can be tricky since there are rarely words with exactly the same meaning. But getting familiar with a thesaurus and dictionaries in general is something you won’t regret.

However, vocabulary is not the only aspect that counts here. Also, grammar structures are important, and the more complex the structures, the more points you score. A complex structure would be e.g. if-clauses, relative clauses, passive clauses or participle clauses (“Knowing that nobody would read this, she started to cry.” “Looking out of the window, he noticed, for the first time, the vastness of the landscape.”

Another piece of advice is reconsidering your studying techniques. Instead of learning translations by heart, draw mind-maps of a certain topic and collect all the words you need to successfully write/talk about it. You can also make a game out of it  or a competition and try to find out who can think of most words in two minutes. You can be very creative in vocabulary learning, you can sing new words, dance to them or use sticky notes spread in your room. Try out different methods and see what works best for you.

Accuracy

Fortunately, this is not the only category that counts, not anymore. When I was at school, the teachers just used to count our mistakes and it didn’t matter how creative the content was or how many new words you applied. When you learn a language, you can’t avoid making mistakes, but you should get used to learning from them so you can reduce the likeliness of them happening again. Thus, correct every mistake, and if you are not sure what the mistake was or why your choice of words was wrong, ask your teacher or tutor, we are happy to give you feedback.

Of course, everybody wants to avoid making mistakes. So what you could also do is have a look at how words are used in texts, and get a lot of language input (reading, watching movies or video clips,…). Sometimes also grammar drills help, at least for a short time, i.e. doing some exercises in grammar books. But, to be honest, sometimes structures need time until they are internalised by the brain. On the other hand, some mistakes could be avoided if you just proofread your texts!!!

I hope this clarifies some issues concerning writing, or at least it explains what is expected from students nowadays and what the magical T O R A on your exam papers and assignments means. In short, writing can be difficult and some sort of imperial affliction, but it is totally worth it when you read a text you wrote and found a piece of yourself in it.

---

Sources:

Click to access srdp_lfs_textsortencharakteristika_2015-09-15.pdf

Liessman, Konrad P. 2014. Geisterstunde. Die Praxis der Unbildung. Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag.

Swain, Merril. 1985. „Communicative Competence. Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development“. In: Gass, Susan; Madden, Carolyn (eds.). Input in second language acquisition. Cambridge (Mass.): Newbury House Publ., 235.253.

Please note that this text has been written with the help of several dictionaries and a thesaurus. Although it has been proofread and edited, mistakes might still occur.