Scriptorium, another of the wonderful methods created by hyperpolyglot (and all-round superhero) Professor Alexander Arguelles, fills a much-needed gap in the autodidact’s repertoire of tricks in learning a foreign language. The name comes from Latin and referred to the room where monks would copy and illuminate their manuscripts, and this original meaning is related to the current method in that the learner (scribe) must copy out large quantities of text.

This article will explain what Scriptorium is, why every foreign language learner should know about it (even if they choose not to use it), and how to go about using it. I’ll finish by summarising some of the more obvious limitations and advantages.

 

What? 

Scriptorium is one of the few methods that allows the learner to improve his/her writing without a teacher (the other I recommend is CI Clouds). The basic idea is to copy a pre-existing text and yes, while we could theoretically copy a whole book to improve our knowledge of a foreign language, Scriptorium is a considerably more fun and productive method. In copying, the learner must produce content (output), but is also engaging with the text passively in that the student must receive input. 

 

Why?

Writing in a foreign language is important to most learners, and while I don’t believe it is the most crucial skill at the beginning, once a strong foundation has been built in reading and listening, speaking and writing should be practice. However, traditionally, a student would improve his writing by way of composition. However, unfortunately as autodidacts, we don’t have the luxury of paying a teacher to mark our work, so we must find creative ways to remedy the problem.

So, how do we improve our writing without a teacher? Is it possible if no one ever checks our work? How can we be sure that we haven’t made a mistake? Well, Scriptorium solves these problems in its very unique way. What’s also wonderful about this method is that it’s so easy to use; there is almost no set-up involved. For those of you who are familiar with the other methods featured on this site which often feature basic editing tech, this might come as a relief. The student of Scriptorium, much like the Medieval Benedictine monk, only needs a plume, sheepskin, and a mixture of gum, carbon and water for the ink (pen and paper will also do if you can’t find these). You’ll also need a foreign text; this could be a textbook or a reader, but I’m currently using the method every morning with the Art of War, written in classical Chinese over 2000 years ago).

This method is also wonderful for practising speaking. The relationship between the two active skills of speaking and writing has been touched upon elsewhere in my articles, but a quick look through the methods on the home page will reveal that most of the articles appear in two categories. This is not a coincidence. 

Lastly, Scriptorium, while useful for languages with similar scripts to one’s native language, prove to be even more useful for language with a completely different script from your own (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek, etc).

 

How?

So, now that we have established what Scriptorium is and why it’s useful, let’s look at the few simple steps of putting it into practice:

 

Step 1: Find a suitable text. I prefer using a text I’m already familiar with, and for that reason, I use Assimil during the second and third stages of study (see forthcoming article about my roadmap for learning any language). If you don’t have access to this text, most texts are suitable. Try and look for a textbook with fairly short sentences as the exercise may prove too difficult if the learner has to deal with complex sentences that contain several embedded subordinate clauses (much like this one).

 

Step 2: Read the foreign sentence aloud. Can you memorise it? If not, read it aloud again until you are fairly confident that you can reproduce it without looking. This reading-speaking repetition provides excellent practice in spoken language. 

Once you have memorised the sentence, write it in your pad. Always leave an empty line below for correction:

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