> the researchers noted that students who tended to speak more ended up doing _worse_ on final exams Surely those exams focus on literary analysis or advanced

> the researchers noted that students who tended to speak more ended up doing _worse_ on final exams Surely those exams focus on literary analysis or advanced grammar structures. Who is the better speaker of a language? The person who can carry simple (daily life topics) conversations fluently or the person who knows pedantic language constructs but can only utter them with significant delays and only speak in chunks of a few sentences? Knowing a language and being able to speak it are different things. I agree you have to know it (understand grammar and vocabulary) before it makes sense to practice speaking it. Until you are forced to quickly think on your feet in another language your speaking ability won't progress much.