The MOST IMPORTANT English skill is...
Hi I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Which English skill is the most important?
Let’s talk about it.
Which is the most important English skill?
Speaking, listening, pronunciation, reading,
writing?
Well, I’m not gonna make you wait until the
end of this lesson to tell you, I’m not gonna
make you wait five minutes.
I’m gonna tell you right now that speaking
is the most important English skill, in my
opinion.
Why is speaking the most important?
But Vanessa, what about writing business emails?
I need to write professional emails.
Okay, okay, I understand.
In specific situations, you need to write
well, but can learn with a few quick tips
how to write a decent business email.
You can watch my lesson about how to improve
your writing skills, here.
So why is speaking the most important English
skill?
Let’s take a look at the top three situations
where your most likely to use English.
Number one, traveling to another country.
If you go to New York City or even to Berlin
in Germany, you’re going to need to communicate
with the hotel staff, the airport crew, your
tour guide.
You’re not going to write down, excuse me,
my flight was delayed, can you help me book
another flight?
No, no, no, you’re not gonna write it down,
you’re gonna say it.
You need to speak with those people.
If you don’t know what to say in those situations,
you can watch my travel playlist up here for
some essential travel expressions.
Number two is, you go on a business meeting
internationally or maybe you have an American
client or representative from the American
branch come to visit you in your country.
In this situation, it’s even more important
to speak English, because yes you’ll have
some business meetings, you’ll have some business
conversations, but you’ll probably also take
the clients or take the representatives to
dinner.
In these casual situations you’re gonna need
to speak the whole time together, so speaking
is essential.
Number three, you want to make friends around
the world and really who doesn’t want to make
friends around the world.
This is truly how we can have more peace in
the world.
I know it seems idealistic and like a fantasy,
but really when we see other people and talk
with other people from other cultures, we
can connect more directly and we can more
directly see what other people are like and
we often learn that people are people everywhere.
Now that I’ve explained why speaking is the
most important English skill, I’d like to
tell you that the second most important skill
in English is listening.
Why?
Well, conversations are two way.
You speak, they listen.
They speak, you listen.
You have to understand the other person in
order to have a conversation.
But how can you understand fast, natural English
conversations?
Well, I have some good news.
You can click on the video up here or in the
description and this lesson will help you
a lot.
It will increase your listening skills and
you’ll be on the path to understanding native
speakers so that you can speak and have a
conversation.
We’ve talked about speaking and listening
and writing, but what about pronunciation?
Well of course you want other people to understand
you, you want your accent to be good enough,
so that other people can understand you, but
how can you improve your accent?
Well, you have to speak.
You have to practice speaking.
So everything goes back to speaking.
Speaking is that key point to help you improve
your pronunciation, improve your listening
skills, improve your vocabulary and everything.
What about reading?
When you’re reading, it’s a great way to increase
your vocabulary and feel more comfortable
with natural sentence structure, but with
reading you can take your time.
If you’re reading a medical article for your
studies or you’re reading a business email,
or maybe you’re reading one of the books that
I recommended in last week’s video, you can
take your time and review and go over the
vocabulary.
With speaking, someone else is standing right
there, waiting for you to create a sentence,
so it’s more urgent to improve your speaking.
I hope that I’ve convinced you that speaking
and listening are the most important skills
in English.
So now you might have a question.
Vanessa, how do I get started?
I believe that speaking is the most important
skill, so what do I do now?
Well I have some good news.
This is the Speak English with Vanessa YouTube
channel, so the goal of this whole channel
is to help you improve your speaking skills.
So I’m gonna post a link up here, and also
at the end of this video that is to my video,
How to Start Speaking Today.
I hope that you will watch that video, take
those tips and start today.
Don’t waste any time.
And now it’s your turn.
I want to know which English skill do you
think is the most important, speaking, listening,
pronunciation, reading, writing, let me know
in the comments and I’ll see you again next
Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube
channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free e-book,
Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English
Speaker.
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.