How to Improve Your Writing Skills in a Foreign Language
What I’ve learned from writing in 3 foreign languages
“A different language is a different vision of life.”
— Federico Fellini
One Sunday afternoon several years ago, I thought it would be fun to try to write a poem in Spanish. I think I must have been reading too much Pablo Neruda.
I hadn’t written a line of poetry since high school, and I’d only been studying Spanish for about five years (my native language is English). Needless to say, the poem ended up being much more difficult to write than I’d originally thought.
Despite the nagging worry that a native speaker would laugh at anything I put on paper, I finally managed to finish the poem. (You can read it here.) It didn’t come close to Neruda’s poetry, of course, but to me it felt like a monumental achievement just to have written it.
You’ve probably had a similar experience if you’ve ever written in a foreign language (maybe English is that foreign language for you). It’s discouraging when you keep making mistakes, and it can be a struggle to figure out which words to use to express yourself correctly.
