My disparity between my spoken German and my written German.

Chagen

When writing German, I'm rather good for the level that's expected of me. I have a mild grasp of tenses, and I can use the case system very well--this is much higher than what is expected out of a German 1 student. My teacher and her assistant (both native German speakers) are amazed at my grasp of German. On the other hand, when speaking German, I mess up my pronounciation and my grammar sometimes. It's kind of aggravating, since knowledge of a language is near useless if you can't pronounce it correctly. My teacher and her assistant say my pronounciation is good, but I don't think so....

LouieW

Chagen,

Someone else who is more knowledgeable in languages than me can feel free to correct me on this, but I think the issue you have is pretty common for people trying to learn a second language. I think that people tend to improve their speaking skills for foreign languages significantly after going abroad for awhile, but otherwise they tend to lag before their writing skills because I feel like it can be a lot easier to teach writing skills without having a native speaker in the classroom whereas having native speakers around can usually really help build speaking skills.

Nyarly

I think that's pretty normal. I can write in English much better than speak in it.

Bob

Opposite for my Mandarin.

InsanityAddict

It's the opposite with me: can't write for shite, but I can give a pretty good approximation of what I want to convey in German by just using the Dutch words with an exaggerated accent. The content of the statements mostly makes our eastern neighbours want to punch me anyway, so a hackneyed delivery really doesn't matter that much.

┻━┻ ︵ ヽ(`Д´）╯︵ ┻━┻

Opposite for me in every language I know.

AHR

That's like most languages, Chagy XD. 

Most people stutter and stuff or pause or, like, have little thought spacers in speaking.

Not needed in the world of text!

Nyarly

Not to mention pronouncation which, depending on how much the language in question differs from your mother language, can be quite tricky.

┻━┻ ︵ ヽ(`Д´）╯︵ ┻━┻

Eh, it's usually fine for me.

Except when reading Korean or English words I don't know. I'm terrible at reading Korean because I haven't seen Korean text for years.

Nyarly

Eh... Aren't you Korean?

┻━┻ ︵ ヽ(`Д´）╯︵ ┻━┻

Yes.

Wait, actually I have seen Korean text plenty of times like yesterday. I think I got too used to all the English/Japanese subtitles they provide on menus and stuff or something, so I never bothered to read the Korean text.

I can still kind of read it, ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ, always piss me off though.

I don't think I got a decent education on my first language in the first place either, I didn't have the nicest parents.

I also find it even harder to type in Korean because I almost never type in Korean and I don't have this sort of keyboard. Typing in Japanese is easy since it just uses english letters that convert into hiragana/katakana.

Stormtroper

I have this, too. Must've been all those videogames and internet.

Though I heard it's not something to be expected.

nohaynicklibre

I want to learn Korean. Their alphabet is way cooler than Japanese.

I have both problems with this. In English, I'm better writing that speaking, but in Catalan is the opposite

Longfellow

Yeah, I've always been like Chagen. Several summers of French immersion camp have gotten my spoken French (and my French comprehension) up to the standards of my writing, but in Swedish I am still far behind as a speaker than as a writer. This kind of disparity is normal.