How journaling in Italian can enrich your speaking skills ( and your life)
This simple practice has changed my life and it’s much easier than you think.
A couple of weeks ago I received a lovely email from a fellow teacher whose student I’d welcomed to one of my retreats. It went more or less like this:
Alexandra ha seguito il consiglio che le hai dato durante il retreat di cominciare a fare journaling , cioè tenere un diario e da allora lo sta facendo con regolarità e io guardo se ci sono correzioni da fare. Nel giro di poco tempo il suo italiano è migliorato veramente tanto ! Volevo fartelo sapere perché sapevo che ti avrebbe fatto piacere.
Alexandra followed the suggestions you gave her during the retreat about starting an Italian journaling practice. Since then, she’s been journaling regularly and I check in to see if any corrections are necessary. Over a very short amount of time, her Italian has improved incredibly! I wanted to let you know because I know how happy you’d be to hear that.
Of course, I was doubly happy. For one thing, what wonderful people I get to work with. Two, yay for improvement through journaling!
I’ve been journaling for a while now and I never cease being amazed at how this extremely simple practice can enhance a language learning journey.
If you’re one of those people who find the idea of journaling a bit irritating, you might want to skip this post altogether because that’s what we’re talking about today. No hard feelings, I know that not everyone shares my enthusiasm with this practice.🙂 However, if you want to improve your speaking skills over a short period of time, keep on reading.
In this post, I’ll give you a quick list of different ways of journaling so that you can pick and test out the one that most suits you.
We buy time-consuming apps to improve our languages but this tiny habit has the power to truly give your Italian a makeover. And it’s free, minus the cost of pen and paper.
I think part of the problem is that there are many misconceptions with the idea of journaling.
Journaling is not something you do because you have something interesting to chronicle. Quite the opposite.
It’s just a place where you log in your daily impressions or habits and that can look like many different things depending on how you are, what your life is like.
When I started journaling in Spanish back in 2014, I’d just had some health issues that kept me from being active. I had to spend a lot of time at home and could barely walk. Learning Spanish helped me cope with all that.
I was a complete beginner and I’d just jot down the tiny daily events that occurred to me that were clearly very limited.
I’d write things like:
I took the garbage out.
Garbage is basura in Spanish,( spazzatura in Italian, of course) now how would that have ever come up in a Skype session with my tutor?
I spoke with my friend over the phone.
I washed my hair.
See what I mean? Simple entries like these are still journaling and they force you to stretch your linguistic muscles and look up for new vocabulary.
One of the most common complaints from my students is about wanting to “ think” in Italian and not merely translate from English. This is how you can actually do it.
Journaling can be many things.
A gratitude list for the day. In Italian. That means you’d be creating and connecting with positive feelings and associations while working on your Italian. You’re doing an activity your subconscious will look forward to. A win-win! Plus you’re creating beautiful memories in your target language.
A food log. Simply, make a list of what you ate during the day. What better way to keep track of your meals ( so many health benefits) ? And learn new food vocabulary that is always handy.
Keep a log of books/tv shows you watch with your opinion. It doesn’t have to be long. Was the book good or bad? Boring?
5-year diaries are a beautiful gift to yourself that allow you to build your future in Italian. It’s quick and heartwarming. Not familiar with it? You write just 1-3 sentences every day for 5 years. They sell many of them on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be five years either, this is your practice, you decide.
To-do lists. What better way to enrich your vocabulary than to plan your days in Italian?
Reflection journaling. If you don’t feel like writing about your daily life, how about spending time with your thoughts with prompts? The Reflection app by Holstee offers wonderful ideas to help you get your thoughts out on paper. I used it for a period and found their ideas wonderfully stimulating.
The thing that all these options have in common is that these are forms of journaling that can be as long or as short as you want.
The idea that keeping a journal takes time, or even that writing in a foreign language has to be painful and time-consuming is short-sighted. There are so many ways to take it and they all involve enriching your days while working on your Italian.
Because journaling is an activity that allows you to appreciate your life more.
That’s not all either.
You know how we’re always needing someone else to help us assess our language level? Language improvement is so hard to quantify.
Well, worry no more, because all the forms of journaling I mentioned above, provide an invaluable tool to see how much you’ve improved.
All you have to do is go back six months ( consistency is important) and notice the difference in how you write now and how you wrote a few months earlier.
It’s tangible proof. If you see mistakes, it means that there’s been growth, che bello!
Does journaling need correction? That’s entirely up to you.
The benefits of journaling in a foreign language don’t stem from that.
They come from the consistency and applying the language to areas of YOUR life so you can start living the language fully.
Especially if you get few speaking opportunities, writing allows you to actively use the language while improving your speaking skills.
Everyone thinks that to speak better you have to speak more. That’s simply not true, because you can plateau and get stagnant in your speaking. If you want to grow linguistically, writing is the fastest way.
Learn more about the benefits of journaling in this post from the queen of language journaling herself, Jessica from Bubbles of French
Lastly, there are many digital journals out there but I always recommend getting away from our devices and using pen and paper because that’s what our brains retain better.
Have you ever tried journaling in Italian? What has your experience been? Please share in the comments.
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