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The scientific reason why writing can be the secret to speaking fluently in a foreign language 🤯

Dr Languages

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Think writing is just about grammar drills and homework? Think again.

In this video, we discuss the brain science behind why writing is one of the most powerful tools for language learning - especially to develop fluent, confident speech.

Discover how to use writing to supercharge your vocabulary retention, and why skipping writing can stall your progress.

No matter which language you are learning, this video will show you how writing can transform your fluency faster than you think.

Chapters:
00:00 - Why writing is essential for learning to speak
00:56 - The hidden neurological benefits of writing by hand
01:30 - From writing to speaking: a step-by-step neuroscience-backed method to fluency
02:37 - Why speaking from day 1 can be counterproductive
03:17 - Why traditional writing tasks don’t work—and how to do it better

20 Comments

@dr_languages Creator 6 months ago (edited) Pinned

If you are stuck... 👇
📖 Understand why - in my second book, The Fluency Diagnosis: https://thefluencydiagnosis.substack.com (100% free)
📍 Get my help - at a Live Clinic: https://www.drlanguages.com/tfd-hub (also 100% free)
⁉ Not sure where to start? Message me HELP and I'll guide you: https://u.gy/i-need-esthers-help

@TheCompleteGuitarist 1 year ago

Output (writing and speaking) is only as good as what is already in your brain. Practising output is good for developing communication skills, and by that I mean become more convincing and confident, but you don't acquire a language through output, you only exercise what you already know.

@RobManser77 1 year ago

I've been a technical trainer and technical author for 22 years and agree completely. Writing and speaking well go together. If you get better at one, you get better at the other. It's not just small scale word and sentence structure that benefits, but a more macroscopic structure of how you present ideas and explain things.

@ytsangatsu 1 year ago

Totally in agreement with the premise of that video, but perhaps applied slightly differently. I started studying Japanese in the same way everybody else was: trying to memorize kanji, sorting and classifying them in every possible way, copying sentences, etc. But it was when I started copying complete stories, listening to an audio track while comparing stories with a translation and adding the pronunciation of unknown kanji in the original that I started to realize I was making real progress, and after a while, I surmised that the reason for that was that writing a story takes longer that just reading or listening to it. In other words, the fact of spending more time on each word was the secret to learning fast, just as is being claimed in this video.

@jtnachtlauf1961 1 year ago

Well, this way I had my education in German language in the 90's - at my high school. Now I'm a German teacher myself and I really like this method with my pupils at school.

@Handotr 1 year ago

I found this video this morning and after watching I immediately added writing to my practice. I asked AL to give me 5 prompts and used them for my self-guided language learning. I will try to write daily. I subscribed. Thanks.

@yvesroc9463 1 year ago

I don't know how people perceive writing. When I had to do a homework, telling a story, that was never fun, to me, because I knew that I had to write a story that could be approved by the teacher. Wonderful. So, if His, or Her, Majesty the teacher finds fault with the story I write, I'm doomed, as a potential writer. That's your story, Your Majesty. The school system lacks one tiny, bitty, thing, one insignificant element. Fun. To me, writing is fun. I don't care what Your Majesty thinks, I write for the fun of it. If one learns a language for anything other than the fun of it, then, good luck!

@solovvajulie5731 1 year ago

I agree with everything that was said about writing-speaking connection, BUT personally I would always choose typing over handwriting for my students. Frankly, I simply won’t accept handwritten essays. Not because I’m too lazy to decipher them, but because I know that in the vast majority of cases they are unedited. People are very understandably reluctant to make changes if it messes up their work. Typing not only offers enough time to think, but also gives unlimited opportunities to play with composition and style, and even to create several takes on the same idea.

@BrehmeAndreas 1 year ago

Thanks for this video! Grettings from Argentina

@daniel.城 1 year ago (edited)

Yes, I did this and it helped me. I learned grammar and vocabulary by writing, and when I felt more confident, I replaced it with talking to myself, which is basically the same thing but without using a pen.

@fabiobastos227 1 year ago

Wonderful advice!! I need to start doing it. Thanks.

@RiumEqua 1 year ago

Writing not only is the most effective way to learn a language, it is (one) of the most effective things to learn anything. If you write about what you are learning, you have to make connections by yourself, reinforce already known concepts and uncover gaps you might have. Couple your writing with actual real world events, as simple as writing out your complete day from start to finish, or writing about a news article or video you have just seen (doesn't even need to be in your target language) and you add some more connections to the new vocabulary you inevitably will encounter.
And then, only then should AI come into play. If you have summarized a article or video, using AI to discover gaps in understanding or point out grammatical mistakes is a helpful tool to accelerate your learning even further.

@ernstkrudl4895 1 year ago

As in our modern times we use our hands less and less, I find it very important to keep the handwriting up. Also I am such an old guy, in the old times computer time was so expensive, that we did our programming on paper 1st, pencil and rubber. And also simple checks on paper , too like passing 0, negative numbers and very high numbers through the program . I always loved writing, many diaries from travels around the world. So Handwriting is a treasure in many ways.

@jamesasmith2494 1 year ago

Very good video. I needed to hear this. I usually skip writting and do very little speaking. I now understand better that this is not good. Thanks for excellent content. Have a great day.

@someone330 1 year ago

i learn french and it helps, i did it before watching the vidéo and i think writing on the phone doesn't have the same effect, on papers It'd be better

@rabukan5842 1 year ago

Exactly, I am a published writer/poet/playwright/professor of writing and I couldn't agree with you more. Writing is the key to critical and creative thinking. Writing enables us to form complex sentences through our own development in sentence construction; editing these sentences in our own time stimulates our brains to think deeper. There is a reason why most of our best thinkers are also great writers. I am now trying to learn Portuguese, and I have started writing daily journal entries in Portuguese. This helps me to remember words much more rapidly than if I just try to memorize from word lists. It is also forcing me to try to think grammatically in Portuguese as I will check my sentences in Google Translate which allows me to see grammatical patterns rather than trying to memorize rules. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experiences with language learning.

@yvesroc9463 1 year ago

It's like learning anything. What it pleases one to learn, one doesn't need what have you that's rigorously imposed by a teacher, who seems to be telling you : "I'm the one who can make you learn this. If you don't do what I tell you, you'll never learn it!". Go and say that to a child. The child can learn anything much faster and much more easily than you can. If you were to say, to a child :" If you want to learn this, or that, you must do exactly what I tell you to do! ", you would be kidding yourself. The child will learn, if it's fun, to him or her. Idem, for adults. In my Respiratory Therapy Technology class, in College, in Manhattan, New York, there was a gal from my country, Haiti, who confessed, to me, that she was there, in that class, only because her husband wanted her to be. Which was intolerable, to me. I told her, point blank, that, in that case, she was guaranteed to fail. At the next exam, ten minutes, or so, into that exam, she got up, from her seat, and turned in her empty sheet, and left. "Way to go!", I thought. She had found the courage to do what she wanted to do : leave that class, against her husband's wishes. I don't know the husband, I forgot the gal's name. I only remember that she was pretty and nice, and had a pleasant first name I forgot.

@maxvoroshilov3207 1 year ago

I am looking forward to seeing your other videos. I finally see a person who is approaching the language study in a way I missed. In fact, I have always been slightly put off by how many teachers are apparently unaware of the processes that happen in our brain when we learn a language. Worse, they are not even interested in knowing more...

@bhutchin1996 1 year ago

Grammat/translation vs comprehensible input. I use both. I'll start out with Assimil and get used to the sounds of the language and train my ears, as well as read and practice speaking the language. Then I'll throw in a traditional textbook with vocabulary, grammar, and translation exercises (writing them out by hand). And I use Anki for spaced repetition practice. This combo works the best for me.

@Osinho 1 year ago

Hi from Chile! voy en unos dias a Francia y se me ocurrio aprender su idioma en marzo. Lo mas importante que he aprendido en el proceso fue el aprender cómo aprender(i saw a lot of neuroscience related videos about this and i could see why i could learn english , while many of my partners didn't 25 years ago. I wrote a lot translating songs. There was no internet around so none of this info was available. J'ai trouve cette chaîne trop tard, mais il a été trés utile. Je continuerai á te rendre visite car je pense faire le test pour devenir proeficient niveau B1 en francais dans quelque mois.
Saludos!!