5 steps to improve your Chinese writing skills

This month, I’m participating in the Chinese writing challenge by Hacking Chinese. In my daily life, I don’t need to write in Chinese, so this challenge motivates me to practice writing.

Learning to write is not easy

Writing is one of the hardest skills to acquire when learning a language. Not only does it demand active production, but it also requires deliberate articulation. All of my posts on this blog are written with an outline.

Fortunately, Chinese grammar isn’t as complex as English. Tenses do not exist, so you don’t have to worry about irregular verbs and the syntax isn’t too different from English. “I like flowers” can be translated into this: 我喜欢花 (wǒ xǐhuān huā), which has the same syntax.

However, learning to write like a native is still challenging. How does a native write? As a heritage speaker, you may know how to speak naturally, but writing is an entirely different skill. It requires an understanding of grammar and syntax. Did you know? The Chinese language prefers to put time at the start of a sentence. The example below is from Allset Learning:

我 明年 要 开 一 个 公司 (wǒ míngnián yào kāi yī gè gōngsī.). Translation: I want to open a company next year.

明年 means and it’s at the beginning of the sentence.

Like any form of production, writing cannot come from nothing. We must build a repertoire of words, phrases, and sentence structures we could tap into and apply to our writing. Reading becomes critical to improve writing. I once told my Chinese tutor that I wanted to learn to read. She said that’s great, but it’s important to not neglect the other areas of language learning: writing, listening, and speaking.

A misconception I had early on was believing that only advanced learners could write—which is not true. Anyone at any level can start writing. The sentences may start out basic, but they will become the foundation to build on for later stages.

How to improve your Chinese writing skills

Whether you’re just getting started or have been studying Chinese for several years, here are the main steps I recommend for you to improve your Chinese writing:

1. Copy good Chinese writing: A colleague, who is an editor at my workplace, once gave me this advice on writing for an organization: before writing, read material from the same topic for a few minutes. This helps you scaffold your writing, so you aren’t starting from scratch. It’s good advice even for language learners. Find reading resources like Mandarin Bean and spend a few minutes reading and copying several sentences from their articles.

2. Respond to a prompt: You can make your own prompts based on what you just read or ask GenAI to create them for you. How much you write depends on how much time you have. I usually can commit to one paragraph when I’m studying. You can write on paper or type on the computer. The latter is sufficient since this is an exercise about articulation, not recalling character strokes. Lately, I’ve been using the exercises in this book Developing Writing Skills in Chinese. It’s a great resource for intermediate learners albeit pricey (luckily, I found this in a used bookstore for under $20).

3. Ask for feedback: There are a few ways to do this. If you have a language partner, you can ask them for feedback. You can also post it to HiNative.com. It has a feature called “Does this sound natural?”. You post your writing and a native speaker will correct it. This is a premium feature, which you can purchase as needed. You do not need to subscribe monthly for this. I buy 100 coins for about $10 and each question I ask costs 9 coins. The price is quite good value for money. Here’s a question I asked with corrections by a few native speakers.

4. Reflect and apply: This is the hardest part, and to be honest, I still struggle with it. Getting feedback isn’t enough. You need to think about areas for improvement. In my case with HiNative, I review the corrections. Then I look at my original text and try to correct it by myself. You might consider rewriting it entirely by recalling the corrections from memory.

5. Track your progress: Don’t forget to log your study time to hold yourself accountable for your learning. Check out my post on tracking Chinese learning progress for tips on how to log your study sessions.

Start writing today

Writing in a language that you’re still learning is intimidating, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start slow. Be patient and keep it up. I promise you will see improvement as you practice. Let me know in the comments how you practice and learn to write in Chinese.

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