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, you know, you 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 you're 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 gonna need to communicate with the hotel staff, the airport crew, your tour guide.

You're not gonna 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 that is to my video, "How to Start Speaking Today."

And 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.