siberia replied to your post: On writing and language

“I cannot (…) understand why I can read complex stuff and not manage to translate the same skill into complex writing.” Comprehension comes before production when you learn a language.

Yeah, I know that, but I’ve been learning Dutch for 15 years! I might as well acknowledge that it’ll never happen (writing in Dutch as I do in English or Spanish). I don’t like to “brag” about my language skills but a year ago, I had to go through the mandatory interview with the people who police immigrant’s language skills (it’s an office within the Municipality but it reports the results to the immigration authorities who then can revoke your residence; complicated bureaucracy, as is always the case with this shit). The woman who interviewed me was, in honesty, lovely. She was Afro Caribbean Dutch herself, which gave her a very different outlook and approach to this stuff than the usual White Native civil servant. Truth be told, we ended up talking for like two hours about immigration issues and related subjects. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I wanted to improve my skills, they couldn’t help me because they had no courses for someone who already has my reading and speaking level. She basically wrote me off for these (usually mandatory) courses because they offered classes that were below what I already know. Since then, I’ve checked the private offerings and a course to go one or two levels higher than I am now would run at around 5000 Euros. Alas, I’ll have to abandon the goal of ever writing in Dutch with some degree of complexity. The price tag is out of my reach.

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