Reading / Writing

How does one learn English or any other language the best? By reading or by writing? I think both methods have there language learning qualities and disadvantages.

The great learning benefit of reading English, is that you do it a lot! The reading list of the literature department of the UL is quite impressive. I think, all in all, I will have read 13 books, 4 short stories and a whole collection of poems at the end of the semester. Moreover, everyday I spend hours on English websites, reading away! While reading, one gets really familiarized with how others use language. Especially expressions get internalized after a while. Soon, a language learner will feel confident enough to use these collocations themselves.
The disadvantage of learning by reading is that you do not use language yourself. When a word is unfamiliar, I don't feel the urge to look it up. Mostly, I can just read on without missing the zest of the story.

This is different for writing. A writer has to use vocabulary and think of synonyms to make a text more interesting. By doing this, new terms stick much more easily. Of course, the input of language is rather limited while writing. You use the collocations and grammatical structures you know and only sometimes need a synonym. Writing is also not something you do so quickly as reading. Sure, I have to write 10 essays this semester, but all together they do not even add up to "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters, a 500 page book.

It is quite obvious that, to learn a language, one should combine the development of reading and writing skills to reach the best result.