In her 1975 article, Rubin states that “the good language learner has a strong desire to communicate” (p. 46). Linguists declare that, of the two main mediums for communication in human language (the spoken and written), it is the spoken medium that has primacy (see, for instance, Brown, 2005). All human languages have had a spoken form, while there are many languages that have had no written form. Humans learn to communicate in speech at an earlier age than in writing. Most people spend far longer communicating in speech/listening than they do in writing/reading. good language learners therefore do not neglect pronunciation. Writers have often compared the process of learning to pronounce another language with that of learning other physical activities, such as swimming. That is, learning to pronounce is a physical activity involving parts of the body (tongue, lips, vocal cords, lungs, etc.) that have to be coordinated well in order to produce the desired effect.

Bloom and Krathwohl's (1956) often-quoted taxonomy of educational objectives (commonly known as Bloom's taxonomy) provides a classification of possible objectives of courses, in three categories. The first, cognitive domain deals with knowledge of a factual nature that is presented, and learnt, during a course of instruction. This is clearly important when learning to swim, as it is necessary to know what to do with hands and feet, how to hold the body in the water, when to take breaths, etc.