2011/06/21

First Steps To Writing In French

So you've decided to have a go at writing in French. Congratulations! Your French must be at a very advanced level. Indeed, it is extremely rare to find individuals who can write well in a foreign language. Professional translators, for example, nearly always translate into their native language, the language in which they are most comfortable.

Although writing includes a world of literary works like poetry, theatre, short stories and novels, we'll concentrate on non-fiction.

But non-fiction is a vast category in itself. It includes things like emails, letters, blogs, text messages, advertising, marketing materials, press releases, memos, user guides, academic writing, term papers, technical reports, newspaper articles, legal documents, signs and notices, etc.

It may be of some consolation to realize that native-speakers of French often have difficulty writing. Unlike speaking, writing is a skill learned in school and requires a lot of practice. Not everyone writes well. As you can see, you're going to have to work hard at this. But if you're up to the challenge, here are some suggestions and strategies for success.

1. Recognize your limits and ALWAYS have an educated native-speaker review your work. All great authors have their work reviewed by a professional editor. Since French is not your first language, you will make mistakes. What is worse is to inflict these mistakes on your readers.

You certainly don't want to damage your credibility with bad grammar and clumsy writing. Except for certain very short messages, do not, I repeat, do not send anything out unless you are sure that it is correct.

There are even online forums where people will check your writing either for free or for reciprocal services.

2. Use the right tools. You'll need a good bilingual or monolingual dictionary and any appropriate reference works. All of these can be found online for free.

A highly recommended tool is a word processor with a grammar and spell check. If your word processor is configured for English, it will probably flag your French spellings as mistaken and automatically correct them. This is obviously annoying and downright counterproductive. Make sure to change your dictionary and spell-check settings.

Be careful with word processors. They can be good at correcting spelling mistakes and some grammatical errors, but they can only do so much. Do not rely only on software to correct your writing.

If you want to be really precise, be aware that French typographical conventions require that question marks, exclamation marks and full colons be preceded by a white space called une espace fine. To the untrained eye, it looks like an extra space in front of these characters.

3. Before attempting to write in a certain genre, create a collection of trustworthy examples of your target genre. These could be entire texts or sample sentences. For example, if you have to write memos, start by gathering some examples of memos that you like. The Internet is a fabulous gold mine of examples.

Study these sample texts to see how they work. Try to get a sense of the tone and style that are typical of the genre. Pay particular attention to the first line of every paragraph.

Some people recommend copying out good examples by hand to get a feel for how the language of a particular genre works.

4. Writing in French is just like any kind of writing. You should probably work from an outline. Vary your sentence structures and vocabulary. Seek the right tone of voice and appropriate style.

5. Imitate to the limits of plagiarism. Since French is not your native tongue, your best bet for producing good texts is to simply imitate trustworthy examples. The trick here is to take the sample sentences you like and modify them to your liking.

6. Once you're done checking for grammar and spelling, read your text aloud. This is a good way to catch grammatical errors and to see how the writing flows. Then have someone go over your work and make any necessary changes.

Stanley Aleong specializes in teaching foreign languages and believes that an effective strategy for achieving advanced proficiency in French or Spanish is to work with many carefully selected authentic examples. To learn more about some very effective learning tools based on this principle, visit Advanced French / Spanish


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