Learning English? Find Out Why Writing is Cool and Important When Learning English

- Hi, Bob the Canadian here.

Welcome to part three of what I am calling

the Why Series for English Learners.

If you remember, in part one I talked about

why reading was an important thing to do

when you're learning the English language.

In part two, I talked about why listening

is a good thing to do

when you're learning the English language.

This is part three and it's called Why Write.

In this portion of this series I'll talk about

why it's important to do writing practice

as you're learning the English language.

I'll talk about some cool things you can do,

I'll talk about ways you can practice your writing,

and I'll talk about why writing is important

when you're learning this fun and cool language

we call English.

(upbeat music)

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson

where I'm going to talk about why writing

is an important thing to do

when you're learning the English language.

Before we get started though,

if this is your first time here

don't forget to click that red subscribe button

and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn

just a little bit more English.

So writing, it's not always the most exciting thing to do

when you're learning a language like English,

it can be kind of hard, but it's super important.

The first reason I think that writing is really important

is that it's one of the few things you do that connects

a whole bunch of different things

in your body and your mind.

When you are writing, especially if you're using a pen,

you are physically using your hand,

you are thinking about what you want to write,

and you are seeing what you're writing with your eyes.

This is very powerful when you are learning something.

You don't often get to connect your mind, your vision,

and your physical ability to write at the same time.

And I think that connection

helps you remember things better.

I think that writing, especially with a pen,

I know writing on a computer is fun as well,

but I do think writing things out by hand

with a pen or pencil is just really cool

because of all of the things that it connects

and because all the things that you will be doing at once

when you're doing it.

I think we can all agree that repetition is a great way

to memorize things.

If you read something more than once,

it's easier to remember what you read.

If you say something over and over again,

it's easier to remember what you've said.

If you listen to something repeatedly,

it's easier to remember it.

But I think writing and repetition when you are writing

is the most powerful way to memorize things.

I know for myself when I was a kid,

when I was in elementary school, we had memory work,

we had to memorize things every week.

And if I wrote out my memory work 10 times or 20 times,

I would then remember it, I would have it memorized.

So I do think repetition works with reading

and with speaking and with listening,

but I think with writing it is exceptionally powerful.

If you learn a new word and you write it out 10 times,

you will probably remember the meaning of the word,

you'll remember how to spell the word,

and if you can even add in there

writing it out in a sentence,

you'll even remember how to use it.

So the second thing that I think is awesome about writing

is that it is a powerful tool to memorize new things

by writing them out more than once.

The third thing that I think is awesome about writing

is that it's a precursor to speaking,

a precursor is something that comes before something else.

Speaking in another language like English

can be challenging.

Writing is similar to speaking

except that it is much slower

and you can think for longer periods of time

before you express yourself.

So the third thing that I think is really cool about writing

is that it's a way to express yourself in English.

But it's a much more relaxing and comfortable

and maybe easier way to do it because there's less stress.

So the third cool thing about writing,

it's an awesome precursor

to learning how to speak in English.

The fourth thing that's really cool about writing is that

you can stop and you can go back and read over

what you've written.

This is similar to number three,

I know where I said writing was a precursor to speaking,

but there's something incredibly powerful and cool

about the fact that you can express an idea

and then you can stop when you're writing,

you can go back and read over what you've written,

and then you can form new ideas

based on what you already wrote.

That's very hard to do in a conversation.

You can't record your conversation

and then say to someone, "Just a minute,

"let's pause the conversation

"while I listen to what I just said

"so I can form my next thought."

So there's something really cool about writing

in the fact that you can stop,

you can read over what you've written,

and then you can form more ideas or new ideas

to continue your writing.

It's just a really cool aspect of writing.

One of the things that's unique to writing

as opposed to speaking is that

you can go back and correct things.

Usually when you're writing something,

you work on it until it's perfect

before anyone else will read it.

So when you're writing an email to someone

or when you're writing a letter, you can always go back,

read over things and make corrections.

You can look up words in the dictionary,

you can learn how to form better phrases or sentences.

You can look at whether you made any spelling mistakes.

There's something really cool about the fact that

it lets you reflect on what you've written,

it lets you find errors in what you've written,

and it lets you correct all of those errors

before anyone else is going to read it.

I know when I write an email in French,

I love the fact that I can go back and read over my email

and make some corrections before I send it

to my French speaking friend.

That's something that's really cool about writing.

Again, that's very hard to do in a conversation.

The sixth thing that's really cool about writing

and it's kind of unique to writing is that

you can get feedback on what you've written

from another person or a computer

or a piece of software or a web page.

What I mean by that is this,

you can write something in English

and then you can have someone who is a proficient

English speaker, someone who speaks English really well,

you can have them read it over for you

and give you some suggestions and corrections.

You could do this with speaking as well,

you could speak and record yourself

and then have someone listen to it

and give you some feedback.

But writing is certainly something where it's very easy

to quickly write something, make some corrections yourself,

and then send it to someone else to get some feedback

or put it into some sort of piece of computer software

that will show you if you've made any spelling mistakes

or grammar mistakes.

So the sixth thing that's really cool and important

about writing is it's one of the easiest ways

to get feedback on how you're expressing yourself

in English.

The seventh thing that's really awesome about writing is

it allows you to start small and then end up with something

that's really big.

What I mean by that is this,

when you want to write something in English,

you can just put some ideas down on a piece of paper,

then you can write what we call an outline.

You can kind of organize your ideas.

Then you can write a first draft

so you can get your thoughts into written form

in sentences and paragraphs.

Then you can get some feedback like we mentioned before,

and then eventually you will have something that's just

really well-written and really big.

So it's cool that you can start small with writing

and then eventually end up with something

that you've written well

and that's very, very big or very, very long.

Hard to do that again in a conversation, isn't it?

You can't say to someone,

"Let's start the conversation by expressing some ideas

"and then let me organize those ideas

"and then we'll slowly create a larger conversation."

But one of the cool things about writing,

you can start small and eventually end up with something

you're just really proud of.

I love the fact that writing is permanent.

When you write something on a post-it note

and you stick it on a wall, it's there for a very long time.

When you write something on a piece of paper

and maybe you tape it on the dash of your car,

it's there for you to see for a very long time.

So something really cool about writing

is that it's fairly permanent.

That's different than speaking again,

I mean, you can record yourself,

but when you write something,

you physically put it in your world,

it's physically there for you to see.

So if you've ever done this,

if you've ever bought a pack of post-it notes

and put English words on every post-it note

and put them up all over your house,

you've done some writing that is now permanent

and it ties into the fact that you can now read

all those post-it notes as you walk by them.

So another thing that's just awesome about writing

is it's permanent, it becomes part of your world,

it's something that you can see

whenever you walk by it during your day.

Writing has beauty.

There's something beautiful about a poem,

there's something beautiful about the lyrics to a song,

there's something beautiful about writing down a good idea

on a piece of paper so that you can see it again later.

There's something beautiful about putting a reminder

of something like you should smile every day

on a piece of paper.

So writing has beauty, I think this is just awesome.

It's one of the things where when you express yourself

in writing, you can kind of express some of your emotions,

you can kind of express yourself in your own way,

and in that you are showing your own beauty in the writing.

So it's just an awesome way to express yourself and to show

your own beauty and the beauty of the language.

Anyways, thank you so much for watching this

small English lesson on why writing is important.

I'm Bob the Canadian, if you are new here,

please click that red subscribe button below

and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn

just a little bit more English,

and share this video with a friend

if you have a friend who is learning English,

and if you have a little bit more time,

why don't you stick around and watch another video.