I learned to write in English around 2011. At that time, I took 5 years of an English course and my level in this language was upper intermediate. I was not confident in my writing skills so I just started to exchange letters and e-mails with foreigners. Pen pals, I may write more about in a future post. During these years composing hundreds, or thousands of emails, I just learned to write in English better than most people I know.
Writing in a foreign language is quite complex, at first you just end up writing the same way you speak… but it changes over time. To write an essay is way more complex than a post on a social network website. I never wrote a formal article in English but I do believe after 15 years writing emails I can scratch the surface in terms of colloquial writing.
Today there are ways to just refine the text using an artificial intelligence LLM model. It can reshape your text entirely and homogenize your structure to a “standard” English. I don't edit using an AI filter, it lacks the real original form and the writing decisions of the author. I do prefer to keep the grammar mistakes. Seems more natural than a fake correction using a machine.
I still write in English, weekly, to my pen pals. But in my job and day to day life, I consume a lot of content in English. Writing is an active way to express your ideas, and doing this in a second language is quite interesting. Just those who know a second language can grasp this idea. It is hard, it is quite challenging, but I do like to beat these challenges. Writing in your language is quite hard, in another language, even harder. But we manage to build new ideas in the form of sentences and words. In the end, writing is part of my life, in Portuguese or English.