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.