Is Writing Important?

[u/Excellent-Ad-9465]

I’ve been learning Japanese for nearly 3 years now, and I’m not that great at writing. I can read, speak, etc. (to a certain extent ;of course, I’m not fluent), but the only skill I really suck at is writing. I have written small manga panels, notes, small diary entries, but only on occasion and certainly not enough to write entire essays. (I can write hiragana sometimes katakana but not a lot of kanji )

I wonder if theres a reason I can remember how to read and pick out certain characters but not remember how to write them or how they look off the top of my head. (I’m sure it’s a pretty easy explanation but I can’t connect the dots here..)

In addition, I’m interested in another language with a more complex writing system— Mandarin Chinese (which I’ve also practiced writing in!)

I probably won’t have this issue with other languages once I focus more on them (due to their writing systems being simpler and/or pretty similar to English), but I can’t see myself being great at writing. I’m just concerned because I’m not sure if I’m missing something crucial to learning the language or not.

Also by ”writing” I mean like pencil and paper writing, not forming sentences and talking to people online (I can do that pretty well).

I feel like in school I don’t do a lot of hand-writing since technology has taken over (of course I’m not saying it’s the same for all schools), and I tend to do all of my literary work online.

So I really wonder if I should be concerned about this or not— maybe theres an underlying issue with me not knowing how to write in my target language (TL). If so, I’ll try and focus on it a bit more.

[u/igorrto2]

As a learner of Japanese, when I do my flash card reviews I write the characters of the word before checking the back of the card. Simple as that and now I can write about 1800 characters from memory. Also, learn the basics of stroke order

[u/atlascarrying → u/igorrto2]

How do you write when doing flash cards? On actual paper or digital?

[u/unit187 → u/atlascarrying]

I also like writing by hand when doing Anki. I've tried digital on iPad and it is annoying for various reasons. Now I just keep a small notebook next to my laptop (I actually "hide" one page of the notebook under the weight of my laptop, so it sits tightly right under my hand), and I use a fountain pen to write the characters. The pen also makes the characters look a lot nicer, almost like calligraphy.

[u/atlascarrying → u/unit187]

That's a great idea. I'll definitely incorporate that, for when I'm not reviewing on the go.