Voltaire once said, ‘Writing is the painting of the voice’. In the context of second language acquisition, writing is defined here as putting words on paper. The more you read, the more your writing improves. However, it is also possible to have good reading comprehension without being able to write well. Although these skills are interrelated, you need to work on each area or skill separately.
It is normal for learners of Spanish to give more importance to the acquisition of listening or reading skills over writing skills. However, writing in Spanish can be a major step forward in your learning. It allows you to actively consolidate the grammatical structures you have learned as well as helping you organise how to express your ideas in Spanish. Every language has a particular set of writing rules. Although some rules seem to be almost universal, others vary from language to language. Therefore, in order to learn to write in Spanish correctly, you need to know the main rules:
- Spanish spelling. Spanish spelling is easier than English as we normally write words as they are pronounced, i.e. each sound corresponds to a single letter and vice versa. However, there are some cases to pay attention to:
• The letter ‘h’ is not pronounced. Also, this letter changes the sound of the letter ‘c’ when they are together, as in coche or noche.
• There are some letter pairs that can be confusing, such as b/v, r/rr, g/j, ll/y, c/k/q and c/s/z.
• Spanish uses accents. If a word is accented in Spanish, it cannot be ignored as they sometimes change the meaning of words (dé/de; té/te).
- The use of capital letters in Spanish. Spanish and English, for example, share many capitalisation rules, but there are also some differences. For example, Spanish does not capitalise months, days of the week, languages, nationalities, religions, social and political movements or the pronoun yo (unless it is the first word of the sentence). Also, in Spanish, the first word after a colon is not capitalised.
- Punctuation in Spanish. There are some rules of punctuation in Spanish that should not be overlooked:
• Spanish has a question mark and an opening exclamation mark (¿, ¡). For example, ¿Dónde está el gato? ‘Where is the cat?’, ¡Qué buen día hace hoy! ‘What a lovely day it is!’
• Spanish uses a colon at the opening of letters (e.g. Querido José: ‘Dear José,’ or Hola, Pepe: ‘Hi Pepe,’) whereas English uses a comma (colons apply only in the case of formal letters).
• The last two items in a list should be joined with a conjunction such as y ‘and’ or o ‘or’.
• In Spanish, a space is used to separate groups of thousands (e.g. 100 000), and a comma is used as a decimal separator (e.g. 1,5).
• Spanish usually leaves commas, full stops and other punctuation marks outside the inverted commas. In English, the placement of these punctuation marks varies depending on which regional variation of English is being used, for example, UK or US.
- Spanish sentence structure. Structure refers to the internal organisation of a language, i.e. the order in which we must place the parts of a sentence to make it grammatically correct. Both Spanish and English follow the general rule: Subject + Verb + Object but this is not always the case.
- In Spanish, the subject can be omitted if it is a pronoun. This is possible because Spanish verbs have a different ending for each grammatical person.
- Adjectives follow the noun. There are some exceptions that alter the meaning but, in general, adjectives always follow the noun. For example, una habitación luminosa ‘a bright room’.
- Nouns, determiners and adjectives have to agree in Spanish. For example, la chica guapa ‘the beautiful girl’.
3.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE
In addition to knowing the main rules for writing in Spanish correctly, the written text must have the following characteristics:
- Adequacy. This refers to whether or not a text is appropriate in its context. It determines the regional variety and the register to be used. It fulfils the established communicative purpose and respects the social and discursive conventions of the genre.
- Coherence. This refers to the semantic relationships between the parts that make up a text, so that it makes sense and can be understood by the reader. It organises the communicative structure in a certain way (introduction, sections, conclusions, etc.). In this way, it helps to construct the meaning of the text, as well as to organise it.
- Cohesion. The different elements of the text are connected by means of different mechanisms: repetitions, semantic relations (antonymy and hom*onymy), links, discourse connectors, anaphoric and deictic pronouns, etc.
3.2 THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXTS YOU CAN WRITE IN SPANISH
The different types of texts you might write in Spanish are messages, informal or formal letters, professional emails, your CV or perhaps a job application.
Writing in Spanish covers all kinds of situations, so we will briefly review the main characteristics of each text.
3.2.1 Writing letters in Spanish
Letters can be formal or informal. This will affect not only the body of the letter, but also the way you start and end it. There are some rules to keep in mind when writing a letter in Spanish:
- Querido/a is only used in informal letters, while Estimado/a is the preferred form in formal letters. Both can be translated as ‘Dear’ in English.
- Normally only the name of the person you are writing to is used if the letter is informal as in Querido Luis ‘Dear Luis’, but Señor, Señora plus the surname if the letter is formal as in Estimado Sr. Martín (equivalent in terms of formality to ‘Dear Sir’). If you do not know the name of the person you are addressing, you can opt for Estimados señores ‘Dear Sirs’.
- When closing a letter, you can write Besos or Abrazos (equivalent to ‘Love from’ or ‘Lots of love’) in informal letters, but never in formal letters. Use Saludos ‘Best wishes’ in semi-formal letters and Cordialmente ‘Kind regards’ or Atentamente ‘Yours faithfully’ in formal letters.
3.2.2 Writing an email in Spanish
Knowing how to write an email in Spanish is a skill you are going to need sooner or later because email communication, especially in a professional environment, is something we do on a daily basis nowadays. Most letter writing rules also apply here. Make sure that you use the right opening and closing in your email, and that the general tone and vocabulary used are appropriate to the situation.
When writing an email, especially a formal one, you will normally need to include five sections: greeting, introduction, reason for the email, body and closing.
3.2.3 Writing an essay in Spanish
Beginning to write an essay in Spanish is possibly one of the most difficult tasks for beginner learners. Going from single sentences to several paragraphs requires a lot of practice, but there are fixed expressions that can be used to make this process easier. Depending on the type of writing you do, you will need to cover one or more of the following points:
- Opinion. This is very common in essays, especially those included in official Spanish exams. Make sure you use expressions which help you introduce your opinions: en mi opinión ‘in my opinion’, a mi juicio ‘in my opinion’, desde mi punto de vista ‘from my point of view’, me parece que ‘it seems to me that’, creo que ‘I think that’, etc.
- Constructing an argument. In this type of writing you should back up your statements with arguments. Try to introduce words and expressions such as según ‘according to’, de acuerdo con ‘in accordance with’, en palabras de ‘in the words of’, etc. and write the source.
- Conclusion. The conclusion usually summarises the main themes of the essay and answers the questions and hypotheses that have been raised in the introduction. When writing a conclusion, use expressions such as: en conclusión ‘in conclusion’, por esta razón ‘this is why’, en definitiva ‘in conclusion’, en resumen ‘in summary’, etc.When you write, you have time to reflect.
And of course, it is now almost impossible to avoid writing. Think about how many times you have written something today - writing is inescapable! If your goal is to learn the language, you will have to learn to write in Spanish.
Indeed, writing in Spanish can provide you with many advantages:
- It improves fluency. Writing practice helps you think and speak in the language you are learning. As you practise, you will be able to form new thoughts in the language. Your ability to create complete sentences will help you in real conversation because you have already learned the grammar rules.
- It is active learning. Speaking and writing are two closely related skills. Both force you to think for yourself and use the words you know to create the sentences you want to write in Spanish.
- It forces you to research information. When writing in Spanish, you might have to look up words you don't know. This helps you to quickly learn the words that are most relevant in that context.
- It helps you avoid mistakes. When you try to speak in a foreign language you are learning, you don't have much time to focus on the mistakes you make, otherwise the flow of the conversation will be interrupted. However, when you write and create sentences, you’ve got time to correct your mistakes. We also recommend you show the text you have tried to write in Spanish to your teacher or someone who knows the language. Ask them to check what you have written and show you the mistakes you have made.
- It helps build vocabulary. Verb construction and new vocabulary are learned when you practise writing in a foreign language. Memorising verbs and nouns is fine, but using them smoothly in speech or writing is another matter. By writing new words in Spanish, your brain retains them, allowing you to access them later. Writing in Spanish also helps you understand how to integrate words into complete sentences.
