The four cornerstones of language learning, part 3: Writing

Having language skills means being able to both understand and produce language by writing and speaking. In this third part of our blog series, we will focus our attention on writing.

Even though I definitely encourage you to actually start speaking the language you are learning from day one, it might feel too scary. Writing might seem like a safer option, and that’s completely okay.

In fact, it can be a really good idea to write down some simple scripts that you can use to prepare for real spoken conversations. We will discuss this topic in more detail in the next and final part of this blog series.

In any case, being able to write short passages and messages in the language you are learning is really rewarding. You get to see actual, physical results of your hard work. It feels amazing to be able to form real sentences and get your message across by putting words you’ve learned one after another – possibly even in the right form and order!

There is a huge amount of great templates that you can use as a basis when writing a business email, a cover letter or a job application.  We prepared this template to help you write a formal email in English. Enjoy!

Greeting

Dear Sir // Dear Madam // To whom it may concern

Useful expressions

I am writing to…

Thank you for your email regarding the…

Could you please let me know if…

I am afraid I will not be able to…

I am glad to inform that…

Ending

Please find attached the file you requested.

Let me know if there is anything else…

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely (more formal)// Best regards (less formal)

You can find similar templates in other languages as well. There are also services that you can use to get your text reviewed and corrected by native speakers.

There is also one automated tool that’s worth trying out. It’s called Grammarly and can be installed as a browser add-on to automatically detect and correct your grammar errors, e.g. when you are writing an email in English. You can also upload documents to Grammarly’s browser version and let it check your text. Very handy indeed!

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