6 Practical Tips to Improve Your Writing in Spanish
Learning Spanish as an adult has been bar none the most fulfilling adventure of my life. Yet, one of the most profound realizations of language learning for me has been that the learning never stops. It’s not as if you become fluent, and suddenly, you think, speak, read, and write with the same capabilities in Spanish as you do in your lengua materna (mother tongue.)
After I reached a base level of conversational fluency, I yearned to read and even write in Spanish.
Three years later, I had my first poem in Spanish published in the journal Esferas thanks to my involvement in the Spanish program for Spanish speakers at NYU. Now several more years later, I continue to push myself to write in Spanish.
Just like speaking, it’s a continuous journey. Yet, here are some of my real-world tips to improve your Spanish writing.
Ultimately, writing in Spanish will be a reflection of your ability to immerse yourself in the Spanish language
There’s nothing magical about writing.
After all, as Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
In fact, in many respects writing in Spanish is much easier than writing in English. Spanish is phonetic, so things are spelled how they’re pronounced. Thanks to spell-checkers and now even more emerging AI tools (which are handy to help with your grammar) what’s most important is the adequacy in the language itself. You must have the words, know the verbs, and twirl the Spanish language expressions as if they were your own.
This comes from speaking and immersing, although I believe you can do it without traveling too, as I wrote about in this article on how to learn Spanish with and without immersion. These tips here are designed to help make Spanish a part of you. I focus on the concrete. Broad tips like “read more” certainly work, but I’m sure you already thought of that.
As Tim Ferriss said, “Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.”
Why I Don’t Worry About Orthography Rules
I think there’s a place to learn about when to write a be (b) versus and uve (v), as in abeja (bee) versus oveja (sheep), I’ve found that I learn these things in actual context. This is the same way, mostly, you learn how to spell words in English. You read them enough, you write them out enough, and it sticks. It works the same in Spanish.
Instead, focus on getting more reps with the language. Here are my tips to do so to improve your Spanish writing.
1) Read Bilingual Poetry Books
I gravitated towards reading poetry in Spanish, both for enjoyment and as a means for Spanish writing improvement, for several reasons.
First, poetry is a much lighter lift than reading books. It’s a boost to one’s confidence to be able to read through a whole book without immense strain.
Second , you can take the time to pause on every single word and consider its meaning. Poetry, in any language, hits harder when you take your time with it.
I buy poetry books with Spanish on one side, and English on the other. This makes it easy and practical to get translations immediately, and you won’t need to whip out your phone to do so.
As for who to read, the whole literary world is at your fingertips. I really like to read the Nuyorican poets. This is a group of Puerto Rican immigrants who made their mark on the New York literary scene, often writing in both languages.
2) Read Young Adult Novels You’ve Read Before
Reading is one of the best ways to improve the way you speak and write. This is true for English, Spanish, and any other language.
When you read, you will subconsciously learn words, and understand how they’re used in context. Then, when you think in Spanish, you’ll be able to pull them out of your subconscious brain.
I recommend reading books in Spanish you’ve already read in English. Or you can alternate between a series. I’ve done this with Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and the Eragon books.
I also recommend you stick with young adult books. Even if they’re easy, they’ll help you build confidence and momentum.
What You’ll Learn Reading Books
By reading books, you’ll learn a lot of rules about the Spanish language. For example, you’ll see that in dialogue, you don’t use quotation marks, you use dashes. For questions and exclamatory sentences, you use an upside-down question mark and an upside-down exclamation point at the beginning of these sentences.
You’ll see which words use accents. If you’ve heard the words spoken before, you’ll notice that this is where you put the stress on the word. All of this will help you when you go to write in Spanish. All of this will happen at a subconscious and conscious level.
3) Watch TV With Spanish Subtitles
When you’re watching good ol’ normal, English-language TV, put the subtitles on in Spanish. This is another opportunity to read and absorb Spanish vocab and syntax subconsciously. It will give you, often without even realizing it, more tools to write in Spanish later on.
4) Speak!
I know this is a weird one, but if you have the opportunity to speak in Spanish more, that will improve your writing. After all, would you be able to write in English if you couldn’t speak it? No, you couldn’t. The ability to comfortably think in a language is a prerequisite for writing.
Think of it this way…
Not everone who speaks Spanish can write Spanish, but everone who writes in Spanish can speak Spanish.
Speaking Helps the Writing Come to Life
Another important part of speaking is that you actually hear how words are pronounced, which will help you when you read and write, and you can bridge the gap between spelling and pronunciation.
5) Create Writing Prompts in Spanish Specific To Your Spanish Brain
Now that we’ve covered a few immersive strategies that will help you think and absorb Spanish, and therefore write more effectively, let’s get into actual writing strategies.
“Journal in Spanish,” is somewhat obvious advice. It’s exactly the type of advice I warned against at the onset of this article. So I’d like to go a little more specific with this request to give you more to go off of.
Relationship expert Esther Perel speaks a whopping TEN languages. In a print interview, Perel was asked the question, “What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?” She responded with a portrait of how her skills as a polyglot have shaped her world.
“From a very early age, I understood that a language is a doorway to another word—its culture, sensibility, aesthetic, and humor… Different parts of me come alive when I switch languages.”
In my experience, this is also true. As a Spanish speaker, I have a different personality, different experiences, and different expertise than myself as a English speaker.
For me, in Spanish, it’s much more natural to write about Spain, to write about taking siestas and eating tortilla de patatas. So these are the experiences I write about.
I say all this to suggest that your Spanish writing should center on your Spanish-speaking experience. Write about your Spanish travels, or the shows you’ve watched in Spanish, or the ideas you’ve had while thinking in Spanish. If you do this, the writing in Spanish will flow much more naturally.
Some Prompts
- Write about a time you didn’t know what to say.
- Write about a time you were scared to go up and talk to someone.
- Write about learning a word that changed your Spanish-speaking experience.
- Write about the flight attendant you wish you had talked to.
- Write about a food you discovered in a foreign country.
- Escribe sobre una ocasión en la que no supiste qué decir.
- Cuenta sobre una vez que te dio miedo hablar con alguien.
- Habla sobre la experiencia aprendiendo una palabra que transformó tu experiencia hispanohablante
- Describe a un auxiliar de vuelo con el que te hubiera gustado conversar.
- Escribe sobre una comida que descubriste en un país extranjero.
These are just a start. I encouraged you to write your own prompts.
6) Take a Class or Hire a Tutor
My writing in Spanish improved greatly thanks to the fact that I took 4 semesters of advanced Spanish classes at NYU.
Two of these classes were specifically escritura creativa classes.
This provided the accountability to write, since I had reading assignments and writing homework.
Most importantly, it gave me feedback.
The most important piece is that I got direct feedback on my writing. There’s almost no way to get this without a teacher or tutor. So if you’re serious about improving your writing in Spanish, consider hiring a tutor, or taking writing in Spanish classes.
Ultimately, It’s Not So Different From Learning How to Speak
Learning how to write in Spanish will mimic a lot of the processes for how you learn to speak Spanish. You must get reps, get corrected, and immerse yourself in the language. Also like speaking, I’ve found writing in Spanish to be a continuous ebb and flow. Some days, weeks, or months, it comes naturally, other times it’s sluggish and slow. This, I’ve found, depends on how much I’ve been speaking or reading Spanish. So, once again, immersion wins out in language learning.
