Since the decline of audiolingualism, there was bias towards speech in language teaching for communicative ends. Though, the stress on speaking rather than writing produces fluent but inaccurate learners (Hughes, 1983).
Learning to speak comes first, in all evolutionary terms for the human species.
Writing (numbers included) is there and emerged to solidify our language foundation and communication.
It has factually a mental function to be precise, exact and clear=understandable over a distance. However, as we know from language archeology, it is not an easy task to re-translate a written text into spoken language, if the line of tradition got somehow lost, e.g. we can read Plato, but have no authentic phonetics. This is especially critical with sacred texts, where authorities claim to be orthodox.
Learning to speak comes first, in all evolutionary terms for the human species.
Writing (numbers included) is there and emerged to solidify our language foundation and communication.
It has factually a mental function to be precise, exact and clear=understandable over a distance. However, as we know from language archeology, it is not an easy task to re-translate a written text into spoken language, if the line of tradition got somehow lost, e.g. we can read Plato, but have no authentic phonetics. This is especially critical with sacred texts, where authorities claim to be orthodox.
I think writing skill became more important when people started formal education. It is the basis of all assessments and evaluations in learning.
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