“I learned writing from The Economist. Back home, it wasn’t easy to learn English. No one in my social circle was fluent in the language and I couldn’t afford a

“I learned writing from The Economist. Back home, it wasn’t easy to learn English. No one in my social circle was fluent in the language and I couldn’t afford a private tutor. The best I could do was to create my own syllabus. The kiosk near my house had, to my surprise, the newspaper1. I’d save my allowance to buy whatever issue was on the stand. I’d divide each issue into two units: New Vocabulary and Writing Tools. I’d then memorize the novel words and apply the newly-discovered sentence structures to my essays. I kept doing this for three years.” “Learned writing from The Economist. Wasn’t easy to learn English at home. No one I knew was fluent and I couldn’t afford a private tutor. Best I could do was to create my own syllabus. The kiosk near my house had the Economist. I’d save my allowance to buy whatever issue was on the stand. Divided each issue into 2 units: Vocabulary and Writing Tools. I’d memorize the novel words and apply the newly-discovered sentence structures. Kept doing this for three years.” [“Good university-level” writing is verbose, filled with flourishes and redundant verbosities, and things that can be accurately context-guessed.]