Linguistic intelligence: what is it and how can it be improved?

The ability to express ourselves through language It is one of those characteristics that distinguishes us from other living beings. Verbal communication is also a useful tool that has allowed us to survive in environments to better understand our environment and form large communities in which hundreds of people cooperate each.

In short, we are a prosperous species in part thanks to our ability to combine words with one another. We can call this capacity Linguistic intelligence (or verbal intelligence).

A definition on linguistic intelligence

Think about how you would explain to another person that a pot has fallen to the ground and has broken. Simple, right? Now think about this other situation: you have to read a two-page text in which a philosopher explains what metaphysics is to her, and summarize it for someone else.

Surely you will believe that this last task is much more complicated, despite not having read that text. Although you are able to cope well with the language in your day to day,

some tasks involving the use of words seem especially difficult compared to others. Some of these activities, in fact, may seem impossible to do, such as explaining how we feel to a person whose language we do not fully speak.

These small everyday pitfalls serve to give us an idea of ​​what Linguistic Intelligence is: the degree to which a person is able to skillfully use language to express and understand ideas and to achieve goals based on them skill.

Linguistic Intelligence (sometimes also called Verbal Intelligence) is part of the Theory of multiple intelligences from Howard Gardner, and taking it into account allows creating strategies to enhance the use of language.

A tool to adapt to the environment

Reality is not something easy to understand, so the way of formulating explanations about it should not be either. The vast majority of people we are born with the ability to learn language, but not all of us get along equally well with our mother tongue. And it is possible that in some situations we notice that we have no control over the words, that our linguistic intelligence is not as developed as the context requires.

This is precisely why linguistic intelligence is important: taking into account its existence we can know to what extent we are skilled at making ourselves understand and understanding what is said to us, both by spoken and by written. This is especially important if we take into account that the use of language allows us to get closer to our goals and, therefore, to have more or less linguistic intelligence. affects our ability to manage problems, tackle projects or even maintain healthy relationships with other people.

How to improve in linguistic intelligence?

If it is true that the Intelligence can be quickly summarized as the ability to find solutions to new problems in the most effective wayIt is no less true that this can be improved by taking some habits and routines. Linguistic intelligence, as a concrete part of the broader concept of "intelligence", is no exception to this rule. That means we can take steps to influence our level of linguistic intelligence performance, changing for the better our ability to adapt to new situations in which a skillful handling of words is useful (difficult to find a situation in which I do not know this!).

Knowing all this, you can start to make small changes in your day to day to improve your language skills. Here are some indications and recommendations to enhance your linguistic intelligence.

1. Start a personal journal

Starting a journal is a good first step. You will write about subjects that affect you indirectly and that you find interesting or relevant, so it is difficult for this activity to become boring. Also, you will not have the pressure of having to write something impressive to impress someone, because they are written for you, which no one else has to see. It will be easy for you to improve your verbal skills if you force yourself to explain your experiences and feelings.

2. Choose an interesting topic and write a short essay about it

Writing freely about what you feel and starting from your own way of seeing reality is a good way to train in Linguistic Intelligence, but It is convenient to pose challenges so that the level of difficulty of the tasks is not always the same. For this reason, in addition to writing a journal, it is good to limit topics that are somewhat more universal and write about them. In this way you will force yourself to expand your vocabulary and improve your ability to express yourself on a specific topic throughout more or less long texts.

3. Appreciate the value of good dialogue

If you want to polish your Linguistic Intelligence, too It may be useful to associate with people with whom you do not usually communicate regularly. People with concerns and interests different from yours, people with whom you cannot use your own slang and who forces you to leave your comfort zone At the time of speaking. Nothing better than the challenge of communicating with someone who has another point of view to become able to understand and be understood.

4. Read a lot and well

There are few things better for discovering expressions and vocabulary than reading. There is an almost infinite number of books in which you can memorize and review all kinds of language routes while entertaining yourself or learning about things that interest you. However, if you want to improve your linguistic intelligence by getting the most out of books, it is best to take care of what you read. Make sure that books by various authors fall into your hands, to see a little of everything.

5. Do you give poetry and music a chance?

The poetry and the music they have the added value of breaking the conventions of grammar to communicate and express phenomena and emotions. Get in touch with lyrical forms of expression can get you used to seeing language as a creative game in which the words are at the service of the message, and not the other way around. In fact, there is an example in which it was verified how musical training in preschool children served to improve their verbal intelligence.

Linguistic intelligence in children

These recommendations may be useful to you, but some may also can be adapted so that children enter the skills related to linguistic intelligence. After all, it is in the early stages of childhood when it becomes most important to have the means to quickly learn the rudiments of language, which will be developed during the increase.

Bibliographic references:

• Operskalski, O. T., Paul, E. J., Colom, R., Barbey, A. K., Grafman, J. (2015). Lesion Mapping the Four-Factor Structure of Emotional Intelligence. Front. Hum. Neurosci.
• Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; and García-Allen, Jonathan (2018). "What is intelligence? From IQ to multiple intelligences ". EMSE Publishing.