writing in L1 and L2 based on my experiences

I am used to write since I was in elementary school. At that time, my Bahasa Indonesia teacher forced me and other students to write a journal once a week. I still remember that the journal was about giving some comments to a story book that we borrowed once a week at the school library. In that case I was writing in my L1 which is Bahasa Indonesia. That was the first thing that introduced me to writing. As the time went by, I tried to write in english although it was very rough and very bad in the structure and the grammar. In the junior high school, I started to write a bit in English, for example in my note book and my rough book. Based on my experience, I found some differences between writing in L1 (Bahasa Indonesia) and writing in L2 (English).

The first thing is that writing in L2 is a bit harder for me than writing in my mother language. Since my mother language is Bahasa Indonesia, it is harder to me to write in English than in Bahasa Indonesia. I feel more confident when I write in Bahasa Indonesia than in English. But, I always learn hard to master my English as my L2 and now I still in that process. I hope I can master my L2 and I wish writing in L2 would not hard anymore for me soon.

Writing in L2 challenges me more than writing in my L1. As I said before that writing in L2 is a bit harder for me than writing in my mother language, so it is very challenging. I need to look at my dictionary every time I want to convert a difficult word from L1 to L2 and I often trapped when I can’t find the words that I need. It’s different when I am writing in my L1, I meet no obstacle and I feel that there is no challenge in it. I try to receive that challenge and make every effort to make writing in L2 easier for me and I try to make it my habit.

When I write in L2, which is English, there are more people who understand my writing on the internet. We all have known that English is a universal language. Due to that sentence, I often use English more than Bahasa Indonesia to communicate on the internet. Those are some comparison and contrast between writing in L1 and L2 based on my experiences.