Reading and writing have traditionally been seen as two separate skills, as if they were looking in opposite directions like the two faces of the Roman god Janus. But in fact, reading and writing are looking in the same direction: they both look to the language. Writing is learned by reading and reading is learned by writing. This requires the learner to change their relationship with the language from one of consumption of the linguistic resources controlled by the teacher to one of production of the language along with the teacher. These ideas are explored using a short coursebook reading text. A selection of reading questions and suggested answers are provided as part of the discussion of the relation between reading and writing. Good reading habits inevitably lead to seeing the text not as a mere assemblage of words to be decoded with an electronic dictionary, but as writing. In addition, the deepest and most comprehensive understanding of a reading text comes from knowing what the author did not say. Knowing what a writer could have said using the general grammatical and lexical resources of the language activates more knowledge of the language and more of the learner's self than would have been otherwise activated simply by knowing what the author did say.
