What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Learning A Language?

I am often asked what is the most important aspect of learning a language and where should you focus all your time and effort. There really isn’t a simple answer to this. Every ones experience with a language will be different and what you may find difficult may be totally different to what I find hard.

The main thing you need to know is that all the areas of language – Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking are all equally important to each other and you need to consistently put the effort in to all of these areas to see the results you want. 

It Depends On Your Language Goals

Really the most important part of a language is the part you decide is the most important. When you are learning a new language you need to set goals and focus on certain things.

Languages are made up of 4 main skills – Reading, Writing Listening and Speaking. Most people and most courses will have you focus on all 4 of these. There is generally a balanced approach to make sure you get a good grasp of everything and this is probably the best approach to take.

However there is nothing stopping you ignoring half of these. You could easily make your goal to only focus on speaking and listening and learn the language that way. This is pretty much what babies do. They learn to read and write at a later stage.

However, as adults we can already read and write, so it makes sense to just do this in our new language. It can be a bit over whelming at first to tackle all 4 skills, but it’s worth the extra effort. 

I like to imagine these 4 skill areas like chair legs. You need all 4 areas to be equal for a solid balanced seat. You can try and just balance on 2, but we all know the problem with that. It can get a little wobbly and you can very easily come crashing down.

Language Goals Can Change

Your goals will also change from time to time depending on what language you are learning and what stage you are at in your journey.

If I started learning Korean tomorrow I would probably make my initial goal to only focus on learning to read the alphabet. Once I was comfortable with that I would change the goal to focus on immersing a lot so that I can start to understand the language.  After a few months I would change it again and start looking to now work on all 4 skill areas equally.

Really your end goal is always going to be focusing all for areas if you want to reach a high level in the language.

 (You can read more about What Is The Hardest Part Of Learning A Language?)

Comprehension Is Important When Learning A Language

It can be argued that comprehension is the most important aspect of a language. On a simple level this is pretty true. You need to understand the language, without this you’ve got nothing.

This would also suggest that input based skills like reading and listening are the most important aspects as they are going to be the ones that get you understand the language.

Listening is real world exposure to the language and can help you get better at mastering the pronunciation and natural flow of the language. Reading is the opposite as it is slow and methodically. You can take your time and really think about things and analyse the language to help you understand what is going on. These are certainly two important areas to focus on.   

However we cannot ignore the output skills of writing and speaking. Although language learning is not a physical skill, it is still a skill. The best way to improve any skill is to actually use it and practice it.

Writing can help us with recalling the words we need and spelling them correctly. It’s also going to get us great practice building our own sentences and mastering how everything fits together. The same is also true for speaking, which needs to be done at a quicker pace as well as improving your pronunciation.

Really the advice again is to work towards being able to work on everything equally. You need both the input skills to understand the language, but you also need the output skills to really develop them and to solidify them in your head.

Making reading, writing, listening and speaking all equally important is going to be the best approach for learning your language, although I would argue that beginners should focus on input before they also add the output elements.

(You can read more about – How To Find Comprehensible Input For Language Learning)

Grammar Is Important When Learning A Language

You will often hear that grammar is the most important thing in a language. While this is important, I feel it’s not the most crucial.

You can still get pretty far without grammar. If you look at the way children learn, they have no idea what grammar is until they are sent to school and made to study it, yet they are all able to speak correctly long before this.

If you only focus on grammar you are building a strong skeleton, but you will have no meat on the bones. It’s great to understand how to form sentences correctly, but if you do not know enough words you are not going to be able to form many sentences.

I think you should skim through the grammar initially, then come back later when you have had some good exposure to the language and you will find it makes a lot more sense then.

Vocabulary Is Important When Learning A Language

The exact same can be said for vocabulary. It is important, but it’s not everything. You are going to end up with the opposite problem compared to only learning grammar.

If you just learn thousands of words, this is great and will increase your understanding. However, if you have no concept of grammar you are not going to be able to string all these words together into a proper sentence.

Maybe the language you are learning has a similar structure to your native language and you can guess your way through, but you are ultimately going to sound like a caveman just saying a number of words and hoping you get the message across. 

I would still focus on vocabulary before grammar, but ultimately you will need both.

(You can read more about – How Do We Acquire More Vocabulary?)

Pronunciation Is Important When Learning A Language

You will get a few people saying that pronunciation is the most important thing and I equally agreed and disagree

If we are talking about saying the word correctly, then this is pretty important. You need to be able to move your mouth and form the correct sounds and enunciate the correct parts of the word in the correct way. This is just the speaking version of spelling correctly. You just have to do this right.

However, if we are talking about trying to “sound native”, this doesn’t matter. This is more focusing on the accent and you should not worry about this one bit. This would be the speaking version of using a different type font to everyone else. Everything is correct; it is just a little different.

Most people who learn English have a little twang of their native accent mixed in and I don’t see the problem with this.

Just think of someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He clearly speaks perfect English, but that little Austrian twang is still there. It doesn’t change how well we can understand him as he pronounces all the words correctly.

Consistency and Effort Are Important When Learning A Language

As you can probably tell from above I think pretty much every aspect of language learning is important as each other.

The four main skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking all intertwine with each other and help each other out. The same goes with learning vocabulary and grammar; you need one to help the other so you can’t ignore anything. A balanced approach is going to be the best approach.

As you develop you may notice certain areas are weaker and you can make these more important for a period of time.

However, the aspect that is going to bring your the most improvement is the amount of effort you put in and your level of consistency.

I’ve said it a million times already on this site, but language learning is long and slow. You have to just keep showing up and putting in the effort. This is what will get you results.

Language learning can simply be boiled down to focusing on everything equally and just stick at it. Eventually you will get there with enough effort.

(You can read more about How Often Should You Study A Language?)