When we start learning a second or foreign language, we are encouraged to buy books and complete numerous exercises…in the written form. Why is this?
As young children, when we start to learn our first language, the first skill that we develop is that of listening. The next step is for us to speak. It is much later, when we are of school age, that we start to read and finally write. So why are we, as learners of a second/other language, obsessed with writing before we have mastered the other skills?
The answer seems very simple to me. Writing is safe. We can review our work a hundred times, check it against numerous online tools and read it to death, until we are convinced it is error-free and comprehensible.
This does not mean that learning to write in the foreign language is not important – far from it! Writing is the way we communicate via email, Skype chat, SMS, a shopping list, a letter, a status update on a social networking site, a tweet, a blogpost. Thus we must know how to write properly, especially nowadays when writing is no longer personal, but people from all around the globe can read what we are writing instantaneously.
However we must put all learning into perspective. We should ask ourselves: what will I be writing in this language? Your trainer can guide you to the type of grammar, tone, punctuation, vocabulary you will need to carry out those tasks, and then focus on them. This helps put the humongous task of learning how to write effectively into perspective.
Learning another language, especially a language as important to world communication as English, can be a very daunting task if we do not seek the help of trained professionals to break down our needs into doable tasks. At Elite Learning we help to put learning into perspective – you cannot learn everything at once, so you should learn what you need most first. Mastering the art of writing well in English can be a lengthy process, but with the help of Elite Learning’s trainers, you will be writing, SMSing, tweeting and even blogging in English in no time.