Thursday, January 08, 2009

Universal Letter-Writing Week

The week of January 8 - 14 is Universal Letter-Writing Week. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it struck a chord with me. We're not talking about an email letter here but a real hand-written letter, which is a dying breed.

I thought about applying this idea to learning a language. I like actually writing things out when I am learning a language. It somehow sinks in better when I physically write something, rather than type it. Even though we have shiny flash card programs and audio courses, it still works for me to just sit down and study and write sentences in a new language.

Writing a letter to someone, whether to a real person or just as an exercise, seems like good practice to me. You can find penpals to exchange letters with here. Writing to a real person is much more in the spirit of this Universal Letter-Writing Week, but in case you don't have someone to send a letter to, writing one as an exercise is just fine.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

I'm thrilled you mentioned letter writing week! I maintain a letter writing web site called A Passion for Letter Writing and try so hard to keep the art alive. Thanks for encouraging people to write!