Provided that the phonetic system of my target language is not overly complex and I have no major issues with pronunciation, I find speaking easier than listening and reading to a marked degree. When you speak, you can use a relatively limited amount of words and grammar structures to make yourself understood. When you read a book by comparison, you have to deal with a very large amount of words and the whole gamut of grammar structures.

You can make an experiment. Next time you have a student telling you that they can read and understand, but can't speak, ask them whether they can also read an actual book. Not necessarily "Ulysses" or "Moby Dick" of course, but just your random, run of the mill book on their specialty or area of interest, say astronomy or chess. My prediction is that in the overwhelming majority of cases they will not able to read such a book. But if a person is not able to read a book on their own specialty or their own area of interest, I wouldn't say that they are able to read.

If you indeed have a language learner who can read very well, but can't speak that much, which is a possible, but probably a rare case, my supposition is that they probably have not studied the grammar very much. Should I ever find myself in this situation, I would put a premium on grammar study.

In my opinion to speak one's target language is a big help for motivation. But if a student is already motivated, speaking is just as good a use of their time as other language learning activities. I disagree with calling listening and reading 'easy' and that those language learners who like to listen rather than talk indulge in self-delusion that they learn a language. They do learn a language.

Hi, Joseph.

First I really want to thank you for your last discussion about how to improve the speaking section of learning one language. I really try these days repeating what I hear from the lecturer's speech or other audio files, and I often focus on vedio or audio files, practice it again and again.  After about just three day's learning in that way, I found my speaking ability has made some pregress a bit by having conversation with my friends. Several days ago, I could speak in English with someone but not fluently; however, after practice with the method learned from your discussion and the link of one famous polyglut, I believe it really works. 

Second, about how much time a student need to spend on his/her language speaking learning, I think, of course, the more, the better, yet, most people do not have enough time for just learing one foreign language, so I think 2 full hours each day should be enough for an student who is imtermediate level.

I think that students should practice speaking and try to speak as much as posible if they can do it. 

In my case I don't know anybody to speak and I need a native person to improve my English, because I write, read and listen quite well, but I think  that if I don't speak it isn't enough and I wish speak English!

I want to spend much time speaking English, but it seems impossible for me as people surrounding me are all Chinese, and we feel comfortable to speak with our mother tongue. It will be quite good to have a friend speaking English as their native language.

I try to read and write a lot.