Jason de Villa, a professor at my alma mater, recently wrote that “the best way to learn how to write is, well, to write.” My immediate thought: the second best way is to read.

I don’t mean to brag (ok, maybe a little), but my teachers (both in high school and in college) recognized that I did pretty well in most of my writing assignments. The thing is, I hardly wrote anything outside of those assignments.

If I didn’t particularly enjoy writing, what then could explain my knack for it?

I devour books.

When I was younger, I read the encyclopedia (World Book, 1981 edition), Childcraft, Reader’s Digest, Time Magazine, Disney classics, and pretty everything except the collection of Hardy Boys books that my mom wanted me to read.

When I got tired of the books from the family library, I started with my siblings’ collections. I discovered Douglas Coupland, Michael Crichton, Alex Garland, John Grisham, Jessica Hagedorn, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, Jose Saramago, Jessica Zafra, and a whole bunch of other authors.

Basically, like I mentioned earlier, I devour books.

At this point, let me digress a little and give you a little background information about me.

I don’t remember speaking English a whole lot when I was younger.

At school, my friends and I spoke in Filipino most of the time. Yes, we spoke English in class, but outside the classroom, we spoke in Filipino, or switched back and forth between the two.

The story wasn’t really very different at home - in fact, I think we spoke in the vernacular most of the time.

Basically, I didn’t really speak English except in class.

This begs the question then - if I didn’t practice the language, how did I become fluent in it?

This is when we get back to our original topic - reading.

I didn’t speak English very often, and I only wrote when required. In other words, I didn’t really put a whole lot of effort into learning the language. I did, however, keep myself exposed to it through books. Like I already mentioned, I didn’t really write much, but I definitely exposed myself to good writing.

In other words, I learned English through reading.

Let’s go back to the original statement though: “the best way to learn how to write is, well, to write.” How, you may ask, did I learn to write?

Again, I exposed myself to a good writing. I may not quite know all the rules of writing (though I am known to be a grammar geek), but simply because of how much I’ve read, I get a sense of what good writing is.

Yes, I know that writing more (that’s one reason I maintain this blog) helps improve my writing. I also know that some instruction couldn’t hurt either. However, I still maintain that reading helps a whole lot.

What do you think?

image credit: Reading Well by moriza - Creative Commons Attribution