LEARNING TIP# 2

COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY WHEN WRITING

"I had difficulties reading and understanding your text."
This is a sentence you might have heard from your teacher more than once when you are given your compositions back. Maybe the remark is about one particular paragraph or the whole text. It has to do with communicating your ideas effectively. This is the aspect of writing I would like to reflect on in this post.

I know that nobody likes to hear that there is anything wrong with their compositions, but I feel that some mistakes are perceived as better than others. Correct me if I am wrong, but let's say your compostion has a lot of grammar problems. You'll probably feel bad about it, but you know it is a question of revision, so you can take certain control over it and, on top of that, hope you will make less mistakes the next time.

But when you hear that your writing is not effective because it forces the reader to go back again I am not sure everyone is aware of the fact that this can be improved too. But first, you need to understand why the text is ineffective. And this is not always easy.

Firstly, because as a writer you know what you want to say. The information is clear for you. So, when you read your own text again it is difficult to perceive the communication problems that the reader has because you can understand it pretty well yourself.
Secondly, because you probably haven't had much experience reading ineffective texts in Spanish.

But...I found one a couple of days ago. I hope it is useful to illustrate what I mean.

It is a flim review I found in a local paper (I am sorry for the writer but I really couldn't help using it as an example).

Why don't you have a look yourself?

Just think of the impression you get as a reader. DON'T ANALYSE IT. Simply read it just as you would read any article written in your own language.
This experiment is going to be specially useful for those of you who haven't seen the film.

Click here to download the text.