Quote:
Originally Posted by Mivo
As for the question whether reading improves writing, well, yes, of course it does. The brain is a "what goes in, comes out" kind of device. I often discover brilliant ways of expressing ideas or concepts in short stories and novels, new words and phrases, or just elegant and innovative approaches.
English isn't my native language, either, though I am not sure that it matters as much as it may seem at first glance: if you are a decent writer in one language, you should do decently in the second or third language, too, at least once you have assembled enough building blocks (vocabulary, idioms, etc.), which you do by reading. Reading is like scavenging in that regard. 
I believe that the brain is (or may be) language-independent in the sense that it stores information as "objects", and that words are only labels that refer to these "objects". Learning a second language "only" adds a second set of labels, and in time it will be mostly just the same. That happens when you start thinking in the "foreign" language (context-sensitive) and no longer mentally translate. For me, this occurred after a few years of intensive exposure to English. (But since I learned English mostly as an adult, and in written form before I could actually speak it, my grammar is frequently still a little German in nature.)
But it is entirely possible that I am totally off. |
I totally agree with you about the input-output thing.
As for the labels, I believe it depends pretty much on how they are arranged in different languages. My mother tongue, Vietnamese, is very different from English, unfortunately. That causes a lot of problems to beginners and they can't n help but translate everything as starters. Besides, culturally speaking, it is also up to the ways people perceive and reflect upon the world. But that is a good thing, isn't it? Being entirely absorbed in a second language can give you another lens to look at life!