We all face difficulties when trying to learn something new, especially a new language. My friend Marvin has had several troubles with the writing skill, he has fought against this problem almost the whole major, and he is tired of making simple mistakes all the times. This is common problem when you are a Spanish native speaker since you tend to write words the way your Spanish ear decodes them. For instance box as bax, or schedule as esqueyul. There are several techniques to overcome this situation, Marvin has tried some of them like reading more than usual, or copying long texts, but he still has trouble.
It is really good to know he is not giving up. He is still working to improve and to overcome this situation. He is conscious that one can never manage a language to the hundred percent; however, he still fights to be better every day. He answered me that he is eager to try new techniques and I suggest this two:
I. Podcasts and Newsstands: Listening to a podcast and watching the text can improve you’re writing because you hear a standardized English and you see the right written form; then, your brain saves subconsciously the right pattern and you can remember it easily when you have to write it.
II. The magic 21 times: Whenever you miswrite a word, it’s a good idea to write twenty one times the right form because that will help you remember it your whole life. Psychologists say that twenty one times are necessary to create a habit, so it can magically make you write correctly the most problematic words.
It's true, we all face that problem at the beginning because we do not possess an extended vocabulary to help us at the time of writing. What we normally do is guessing and writing the word in the way we think it is right, but you can improve the skill by the practice of writing the words you find complicated as much as you can in order not to make the same mistakes all the time. Also you can look for different techniques as the ones Julio mentions.
ReplyDeleteThank you for yout support Matrita. Let me add that I have personally tried writing the word 21 times and it actually works. Have you tried it????
DeleteI consider that writing skill is one of the most difficult skills to improve because there are many words that are similar in writing. But there is another problem because there are words that are similar in their spelling, but there are others that are similar in their pronunciation and that cause confusion.
ReplyDelete