Some people insist that the main emphasis in foreign language teaching should be on speaking and writing correctly, while others feel that teaching learners how to communicate and express their ideas fluently should be the main goal. What’s your opinion? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

In this multi-cultural society, the notion of learning foreign languages has seemingly gained traction on a global scale. However, conflicting views have been triggered as to whether what are the underlying purposes of language acquisition: the maximized precision in the process of writing and speaking or the ability to vent individuals’ inner feelings or perspectives in an absolutely fluent manner. From my perspective, the two specified viewpoints have their own instrumental effects on learners, thus should be promoted in parallel. Understandably, achieving the unerring accuracy in speaking or writing second or third languages would, in all likelihood, minimize the possibility of communication misunderstandings as well as displaying the utmost respect for the long-held language rules of the nations. Concerning the former, the haphazard use of grammar and vocabularies or the inaccurate pronunciation will probably distort the meant messages transmitted. This can be exemplified by the fact that English irrefutably contains a wide array of homonyms such as “no” and “know”, “break” and “brake”. Accordingly, the disregard of pronunciation would inevitably throw the receivers into the state of misconception, causing the intended meanings of the transmitters to be misperceived or in extreme cases deleteriously affecting their mutual relationships. Turning to the latter, through mankind’s lack of precision in writing or speaking alien languages lays an utter disrespect for the country’s language regulations. The indispensable role of language as a mechanism for communication has accounted for human’s need to accurately abide by the time-honored rules in return. This, however, is no reason to completely dismiss the notion of acquiring foreign languages to become an articulate speaker as being ridiculous. One obvious argument in its favor is that as an alternative to follow such stiff requirements, adopting second or third languages for the sake of being capable of persuasively giving vent to one’s thoughts should be the key consideration. Such standpoint manifests itself in the economy sectors. A case in point can be seen in the fact that in a contract-signing meeting, far from being the high accuracy of language use, one of the baseline requirements for landing a lucrative deal would be the presentation skills. To illustrate, the details of the contract conveyed in the most graphic and eloquent manner would somehow positively affect the choice of the multinational corporation’s counterparts. In this way, not merely could being influential speech delivers accelerate the process of prospering in people’s career path, but also facilitate the quantum leaps in economic growth of the company that employ them. To conclude, the mentioned above standpoints have clarified my perspective that as these single aims of adopting foreign languages are both beneficial, the combination of them should be promoted in the foreseeable future to produce the most desirable outcomes.