What is the difference between spoken and written language?

When a child doesn’t speak much Dutch yet, the solution often seems quite logical: we simply need to get them talking more.

And of course, speaking is important. Very important, in fact.

But language development doesn’t happen in the same way for every child. Some children understand a lot of Dutch but find it difficult to speak it themselves. Others can chat away quite easily but struggle much more with reading and writing.

I saw this difference between spoken and written language very clearly with Sofia, one of my very first students at Dutch for Kids.

Sofia understood much more Dutch than she could speak

Sofia was only eight years old when she started Dutch lessons with me.

Her mother is Dutch, her father is Italian, and she lived with her family in Venice. Dutch was therefore part of her life, but Italian was the language she used most in her everyday life.

When we started the lessons, I quickly noticed that Sofia actually understood a lot of Dutch. When I spoke to her in Dutch, she could follow me very well.

But speaking Dutch herself was much more difficult.

She was also quite a quiet girl. Sometimes her mother or brother would pop in during a lesson and I would hear them chatting away. Sofia herself needed a little more time before she felt comfortable telling me things in Dutch.

As a teacher, it would have been very easy to think:

She doesn’t speak much Dutch yet, so that’s what we need to practise most.

But with Sofia, I discovered that there was another way.

Learning Dutch is about more than speaking

When parents sign their child up for Dutch lessons and tell us that their child doesn’t speak much Dutch yet, we often focus a little more on speaking and vocabulary at first.

And that makes sense.

But during our lessons, we don’t only work on speaking. We also practise reading, writing, spelling, grammar and reading comprehension.

And I quickly noticed that Sofia absolutely loved those parts of the lessons.

So we simply started working on them.

Not because speaking was suddenly less important, but because I could see how much she enjoyed exploring other parts of the Dutch language.

And it turned out she was incredibly good at them too.

Sofia became incredibly good at Dutch spelling

I often started our lessons with a short spelling test.

It was a simple way to revisit the spelling rules we had worked on in the previous lesson. And Sofia almost always knew them.

Open and closed syllables, long and short vowel sounds, words ending in d or t, and all kinds of other Dutch spelling rules: she picked them up incredibly quickly.

Sometimes I was genuinely amazed by how easily she remembered the rules and then applied them correctly in her writing.

Her written Dutch developed incredibly quickly.

But her spoken Dutch was still lagging behind a little.

And that was what I found so interesting.

What is the difference between spoken and written language?

Spoken language is the language we use when we talk to each other.

It is usually spontaneous. We don’t carefully think about every sentence before saying it. We might use shorter sentences, change direction halfway through a sentence, and use our voice, facial expressions and gestures to help communicate what we mean.

Written language works differently.

When we write, we have more time to think about language. We can consider which word we want to use, how to structure a sentence and how a word should be spelled.

That’s why a child’s spoken and written language skills can develop at very different rates.

For example, a child might:

• understand a lot of Dutch but speak very little;
• speak Dutch easily but struggle with writing;
• read and write well while still finding spontaneous conversation difficult;
• or speak Dutch fluently without knowing much about Dutch spelling and grammar.

We regularly see these differences in bilingual children growing up abroad.

Can reading and writing help a child speak better Dutch?

That is exactly what happened with Sofia.

As her reading and writing became stronger, she built up more and more Dutch language knowledge.

She learned new words. She repeatedly saw how Dutch sentences were structured. She learned how to conjugate verbs and developed a better understanding of Dutch grammar and spelling.

And eventually, she started using all of that knowledge when she spoke too.

In Sofia’s case, developing strong written Dutch actually helped her spoken Dutch to improve.

Slowly, the little conversations we had at the beginning of each lesson became longer.

At first, I might only get a few short answers.

Later, she would tell me about school, things she found difficult, what she was looking forward to, her birthday, her holidays and everything else that was happening in her life.

And more and more often, we would simply find ourselves chatting away together in Dutch.

Should a child practise speaking more if they don’t speak much Dutch?

Sofia taught me something important as a teacher.

When a child doesn’t speak much Dutch, our natural reaction is often to practise exactly that skill even more.

Come on, tell me about it.

Can you make a sentence?

Try saying it in Dutch.

And of course, children need plenty of opportunities to speak Dutch.

But language development doesn’t always have to take the most direct route.

Sometimes it is much more effective to look at the part of language a child enjoys and feels confident about.

For Sofia, that was reading, writing and spelling.

Those were the areas where she experienced success. They gave her confidence and showed her just how much Dutch she already knew.

And from that strong foundation, speaking gradually became easier too.

Spoken and written language strengthen each other

Speaking, listening, reading and writing are different language skills, but they don’t exist separately from one another.

A child who reads a lot encounters new words and sentence structures.

A child who writes has to actively think about words and how sentences are put together.

A child who hears a lot of Dutch gradually develops a stronger feel for how the language sounds.

And a child who speaks Dutch learns to use all of that knowledge more quickly and spontaneously.

That is why, in our online Dutch lessons for children, I think it is so important to look at language as a whole.

Not only at what a child cannot do yet, but also at where their strengths lie.

From an eight-year-old girl to a bilingual young woman

And this is perhaps the most special part of Sofia’s story: she is now around 21 years old.

She was one of my very first students, so I have had the privilege of watching her grow up over the years.

She is such a lovely and thoughtful person. She would always remember my birthday, for example. Suddenly, a little note, a card or even a present would arrive in the post.

We laughed so much during our lessons.

And all the while, her Dutch became stronger and stronger.

She has since spent time studying in the Netherlands, has Dutch friends and regularly visits the Netherlands to see her family.

She can read, write and speak Dutch.

And that means that now, as a young adult, she has the freedom to live, work or study in either Italy or the Netherlands.

I think that might be the most wonderful part of her story.

Every bilingual child develops Dutch in their own way

For me, Sofia’s story is a beautiful example of how bilingual language development is not a straight line.

One child might understand almost everything but speak very little.

Another might chat away in Dutch but have very little experience with Dutch spelling.

And another child might discover the Dutch language through books, writing and language rules.

That is why, when teaching Dutch, I never only ask:

What can this child not do yet?

I think it is just as important to ask:

What does this child enjoy? What are they good at? And how can we use those strengths to help the rest of their Dutch develop too?

Because sometimes, the part of language you thought was less important turns out to be the key to so much growth.