Recommendations for building verbal skills

Just like mathematical skills, verbal skills are extremely important both for performing well as a student and in later life. In fact, verbal skills are more likely to be useful in a wide range of jobs on a day-to-day basis. As an example, drafting emails and writing up documents is part of the routine in many skilled and semi-skilled jobs. Having sufficiently strong verbal skills to be able to execute these tasks twice as fast means a substantial boost to one's overall productivity.

Verbal skills include:

• Strong vocabulary
• Skills of comprehension and interpretation (reading passages, grasping key points, being able to answer questions about them)
• Analytical skills: Being able to synthesize and manipulate ideas expressed verbally
• Skills of expression and exposition

Note that although verbal and math skills are often considered two different ends of the intellectual skill spectrum, verbal skills can be quite useful in mathematics. In particular, the verbal analytical skills strongly overlap with skills used in higher mathematics, such as skills of proof discovery.

Although primary language classes (such as English language classes in the United States) are often considered the main place to build verbal skills, it is worth noting that these classes may not be the most efficient way to build verbal skills -- although they have other benefits such as exposing students to quality literature and ideas.