What is the best way to improve your language skills?

What is the best way to teach yourself to write in English as a second language?

• English is my second language. Now I can communicate with other people in this language; however, I usually find that my writing is not so beautiful and elegant when compared with others'. I want to know if there's any good way to polish my writing skills. I don't plan to write a novel or publish a book or something. I just wish to improve the sentences I can produce in English.

• Answer:

  Practice writing. Best is if you can get somebody to edit it, but even if you are the only reader, practice helps. Write answers on Quora, or a diary, or whatever you feel like. You might think that without being taught, you cannot learn new things simply by doing the things you already know. But that isn't true. Your potential ability to write is much better than your actual ability. By that I mean that there is lots of knowledge that exists in your brain at some level, but in a way that is not necessarily sufficiently well organized to apply it. Practice can turn latent knowledge into real applicable knowledge. Focus, at least in the beginning, on quantity over quality. If you obsess over doing everything right, you never get enough practice to actually start getting things right. Read books. Which ones? Really what matters most is that you read books you like. Or magazines, or newspapers: anything with words. But do make sure to keep challenging yourself; at some point, you have little more English to learn from gossip magazines or AP news stories, but there may still be plenty of challenge left in The Economist or a good novel, so if you want to keep learning, you have to move on. If you like someone's style, try to determine what's unique about it. Not specific to writing, but to build vocabulary and listening comprehension, while nothing beats practicing with native (or, at any rate, fluent) speakers, I benefited a lot from watching TV. Some of my friends and I would watch certain BBC shows every week. Initially, I couldn't make heads or tails of the rapid speech and diverse accents, so I mostly read the Ceefax subtitles. Over time, I got better. Today, there is of course online video and DVDs with switchable subtitles and other such newfangled things we didn't have back in the day, so you can actually find something interesting to you at any time rather than having to wait for your weekly half hour of Tomorrow's World. Acknowledge that with a different language, you also get different standards of what is considered good writing. English prose style traditionally favors simplicity and clarity to the point where English speakers are surprised when they encounter cultures where more allusive, indirect styles of writing are actually admired.