- 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,
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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.