Assisted writing means writing in the target language with tools available — a dictionary, grammar reference, AI chatbot, or any other resource that helps you produce better text than you could unaided.
How It Works
Find a quiet place, open a notepad (physical or digital), and start writing. The topic doesn't matter — a journal entry about your day, an opinion about something, a description of a movie, a message to a friend. What matters is that you're putting your thoughts into the target language.
When you don't know a word, look it up. When you're unsure about a grammar pattern, check it. When a sentence feels wrong, ask an AI chatbot to help you correct it. The goal of assisted writing is to stretch yourself — to write at a level above what you could produce on your own.
Once you're finished, you can also use automated tools (or ask a native) to give you further corrections and comments.
-> Check out our AI Writing Tutor
Why It Matters
Writing builds accuracy in a way that speaking can't. When you write, you have time to think, revise, and correct yourself. This deliberate, slow process is how you develop a feel for what's correct in the language. The accuracy you build through writing eventually transfers to your speech.
Writing also reveals gaps in your knowledge that you might not notice while consuming content. You might understand the word "nevertheless" when you read it, but can you actually use it correctly in a sentence? Writing forces you to find out.
Tips
- Don't overthink topic choice. Writing about anything is better than not writing.
- Using tools is the whole point of "assisted" writing. Looking things up isn't cheating.
- When you discover a new word or pattern through writing, consider mining it for your flashcards.
- If you don't know how to type in the target language, see Typing Practice.
- Free platforms like Bearblog or Journaly let you share your writing publicly, which can be motivating.
When to Start
Assisted writing is introduced in Phase 5A and continues through Phase 7.