[bjcy]

A lot of people have already commented on the part of not speaking being virtually useless at the beginning. I tend to agree with the criticisms listed there, but I submit another reason: muscle memory.

Practicing making the sounds of the target language as soon as possible with the correction of a native speaker, in my opinion, is absolutely essential. For many languages, there are unique sounds that are just close enough to one’s primary language, that our muscle memory causes us to make the familiar, incorrect sound instead of the proper one. Because it’s more a matter of physical exercise alongside the rewiring of our brains to recognise said phonemes, the more time spent working on it, the better on the path to fluency.

Having said all that, everyone’s language acquisition ability and language goals will be different, so I can see where this piece of advice does not have universal application.