English as a Foreign Language
There are two ways to learn a language. One way is to make an intensive study of its grammar, to memorize its conjugations, vocabulary, idioms, and oddities. The other is immersion: You go to where the language is spoken, listen, watch, and join the conversation.
The students of grammar sometimes become very adept at written language but are too timid to speak, for fear of making mistakes. The students by immersion sometimes make mistakes in their grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation, but they have no choice. They have to speak in order to live in the new culture.
If English is not your native language, you may be feeling too timid to write and expose your shortcomings with the language. Try not to be. Whether you want to write a blog posting, an email, a letter, or a technical document, the best way is to begin writing as if you were comfortable, to pretend.
Learners of English often make the mistake of writing something first in their own language, then translating it into English. You quickly feel yourself trapped by the limits of what you know of the second language, like an adult trying to fit into clothes that were made for a child.
Begin by accepting that you will not be able to say everything that you want to say. For now, you will not sound as knowledgeable or as full of feeling as you know you are.
For now, you have to begin by writing only what it is possible for you to say in English.
And as any student by immersion knows, with time, you will be able to write more in the new language — simply because you are working with it, testing it out, sometimes getting frustrated, but slowly learning to bend it to your needs.
Related post: The Blank Page, or How to Begin
