I think that my strongest skill is writing, because writing gives me the chance to express my opinions without being worried of making mistakes. Whenever I write I normally read the idea and I correct the mistakes that I can notice in my sentence, topic, or essay.
The kind of visual intelligence I have developed, helps me to remember the expressions that usually go together.I often read a question and I don't have problems to write about any topic when I have the knowledge to paraphrase or repeat the most important ideas.
Using the information you sent us with the picture we can see the importance of reading to improve your skill of writing . The more you read, the better your writing skills will become.
On the other hand, the weakest skill I have is speaking because the ideas I have in my mind are not easily converted into oral language.I usually use less language to express my ideas than I have in my mind and when I read something it`s incredible the amount of things I am able to understand but when I have to speak about this it´s more difficult.It happens to me even in Spanish . In my case I can improve my weakest skill by trying to speak more and finding moments to express my thoughts in an easy way.
Johanna, apart from speaking in class and when you are teaching in school, how or where else do you think you can improve speaking?
ReplyDeleteHi Johanna. You make a very important point about the difference between writing and speaking (Carmen mentioned it too). Speaking is in real time so the cognitive processes are more intense. However, if you look at analysis of written and spoken language, there is a huge difference in the range of vovabulary & structures, etc - writing is generally more complex - however, there are other things involved in speaking like strategies to give you time to find words (e.g. ....er..., now let me think, just a minute, etc) and it is amazing the amount of shared knowledge that allows people to understand from cultural context or general knowledge context that doesn't actually have to be expressed in spoken language. 2nd language learners need to acquire these conversation skills too.
ReplyDeleteJohanna!I agree! Eventhough speaking is not my weakest skill, I felt identified with you. It is amazing that all the vocabulary, the structures and the ideas that we have in mind, we don't have the time to think on them when we are speaking, because we can become less fluent.
ReplyDeleteHi Valentina. In my case my daughters and my husband speak English so I have the chances to speak with them. One of them studies English Literature at UC, she usually tries to help me to speak more and I try to use English with her at home.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that speaking is hard for many of us, it happens the same to me, I know many words and structures but putting them together in few seconds and try to make them sound right looks difficult I agree the best way to improve is speaking, also reading but to check if you have improved you must speak in real context.
ReplyDeleteJohanna, I agree with you when you say that when we write we can say things without being worried of making mistakes all the time. The same happens to me. I feel much more comfortable when writing than when speaking, because when I write I can check and correct everything I have written as many times as I want to. This doesn't happen when we are speaking and this makes me feel nervous and even a little anxious when speaking.
ReplyDeleteI tell my students sometimes that speaking in English is like a baby starting to speak. Babies start speaking in a weird way, so do we when we start speaking L2,it's like we need to mould our muscles, jaw, I don't know what exactly but it is not just knowing the words, practice is also necessary to speak fluently.
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