Tips on Writing in a Foreign Language

As an English major studying a foreign language, I get the unique experience of being assigned to write on an array of topics in different formats including research papers, essays, and creative fiction in both English and Spanish. Recently, I presented at the Michigan World Language Association Conference (MIWLA) with one of my Spanish professors. I spoke on observations I have made as a student studying a foreign language, observations I have made as a Spanish tutor, and gave some tips on how to help students struggling with writing in a different language. Below are three of these tips.

Continuously Write

From observations I have made when helping students with compositions during my tutoring sessions, as well as accounts relayed to me from professors, students are not performing at the level that they should be in terms of composition writing. I believe this is due in part to a decrease in exposure to writing in class. For teachers and professors, I would recommend getting students to write in class as soon as possible and to continue to have them write as they advance through their classes. This can be as simple as having them build sentences from new vocabulary words that they are learning in the current lesson, or you can have students write full research papers on a cultural tradition in a Latin American country or Spain to challenge them.

​Find Resources When You are Stuck

It’s easy to just erase an entire sentence when you can’t figure out how to say it in another language. However, giving up does nothing to improve your writing or language skills. Try to think of different ways to say the same thing using words that you do know. For example, I tutored a student that did not know how to say “I need to make a doctor’s appointment” in Spanish. I had him think of different ways to say the same thing, and we eventually came up with the sentence “I need to visit the doctor,” which he did know how to say in Spanish. The key is to incorporate what you have already learned with what you are currently working on.

In addition to that, I would suggest using websites like wordreference.com when looking up a word is necessary. On this website, you can type in a word in English and it will give you all the translations for that word, as well as synonyms and the context in which these synonyms are used so you know which word to use for the sentence you are trying to make (which makes it much better than using Google translate).

​Write Down and Conjugate Tenses

I’ve noticed that students struggle a lot when they must incorporate multiple tenses in a composition. Something that I always do with the students I tutor is to have them physically conjugate the endings for tenses that they have to use in the composition, as well as explain to me when those tenses would be used. That way, they have used kinetic, visual, and auditory learning to aide in their writing, and they have something to refer to when they’re writing so they don’t confuse the tenses.

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Do you have any tips for writing in a foreign language? Did you find any of these tips helpful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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The English Society