Using Twitter in Your Language Learning – Reading Practice

This is the second and penultimate post in my Using Twitter in Your Language Learning series. This time, we will be looking at the ways in which you can use Twitter as a means of improving your reading comprehension.

One of the easiest ways to find foreign-language posts is to use the Search function. For example, typing 日本語 into the search box will return results which include the word 日本語. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the search results will be written in Japanese but it’s a good starting point. A word of caution : some of the posts may be written by people who are learning Japanese so you will need to keep an eye out for posts written by native speakers if you want to read “real” Japanese.

The public timeline is another good place to look for foreign-language posts, though you will probably find yourself refreshing the page a countless number of times in order to find a post in the language you’re learning.

Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you can try “deciphering” the tweet. Analyse the grammar (if the author made the effort to bother writing something grammatically sound), use an online or print dictionary to find the meaning of any words you don’t know and try to translate the post into your own native language. Analysing the way that people write can be a good way to reinforce and improve your own writing skills. Writing even a short post in the language you’re learning can be a challenge if you’re not sure how to express your feelings in that language or lack the vocabulary. It’s very tempting to try and translate things word for word but I’m sure most of you are aware that this is not the way to do it.

I find it very useful to memorise sentence structures and learn how to modify them for my own purposes. I enjoy breaking down Japanese and Mandarin tweets to get a feel for the writing style and learn new slang and idiomatic expressions. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from reading people’s Twitter messages, blog entries and forum posts.

Having said that, I wouldn’t recommend relying on Twitter as your sole means of reading practice. Don’t expect everyone to use correct grammar, spelling or punctuation. It would be unwise to assume that what you are reading is a good example of written Japanese, German, whatever. The character limit prevents people from writing in-depth posts and people commonly resort to abbreviations and “text-speak” as they only have 140 characters to work with. It’s also worth keeping in mind that a lot of the posts will be on very trivial matters, such as what time the author got out of bed and complaints about the weather.

If you’re determined to use Twitter as a means of boosting your reading skills, it might be a good idea to ask a language partner or native speaker to explain any unknown words or expressions to you or point out the differences between formal and informal written language. Make sure you supplement your reading material with other, more orthodox material so that your writing skills don’t suffer.