Your Foreign Language Skills - are they Hard or Soft Skills?

If you answered hard, you're right. And if you answered soft, you're also right. Learn more the symbiotic relationship between the hard and the soft side of language.

What is Language?

Linguists define language as a system of symbols, sounds, or signs with a set of rules for how to combine and use them.

Without rules, language would be random, and we would have a hard time understanding each other. Imagine, everyone coming up with their own rules for creating sentences or with their own spelling. Or if everyone just pronounced words the way they thought was best. That would be quite chaotic and result in a lot of misunderstandings.

A few interesting facts about languages:

According to Ethnologue, there are more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. Only 23 of them account for more than half of the world’s population. Many of the 7,000+ languages are endangered and have only a small group of active users left.

What's the Purpose of Language

Language is our main tool for communication. Of course, there are other ways of communicating. We can, for example, use visuals to transmit information.

Think about a recipe. You can write down each step in the cooking process. That’s what we find in cookbooks or in recipe blogs. But you can also create a video that uses no words at all to demonstrate how to make the recipe. Or think of furniture assembly instructions that use only drawings to explain each step of the assembly process. Visuals can be a great way to convey information.

While visuals work well for some things, a visuals-only approach is not a practical solution for everyday professional communication. Imagine having to draw the message of every email you send or being limited to showing only pictures in your sales presentation.

We need language to get precise messages across: to explain, to clarify, to persuade, to motivate, to express how we feel and what we want, and more.

Soft Versus Hard Skills

When you think about the skills you possess, you can probably list a range of special abilities you’ve acquired in the course of time: certain software skills, woodworking or mechanical skills, time management skills, critical thinking skills, or creative writing skills. And maybe you speak a foreign language.

You can develop new skills through hands-on-practice and study. Many require quite a bit of effort and hard work. If we feel confident about our skills, we use them on our resumes or when we want to highlight our strengths. Skills can help us stand out.

A common categorization for our skills repertoire is hard versus soft skills. While computer skills would be categorized as hard skills, critical thinking skills would fall under soft skills.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are often referred to as technical skills. They tend to be related to a specific discipline or career field and are necessary to be successful in that field. Hard skills can usually be quantified, measured, or assessed formally. People may have a degree or certificate as proof of their technical or content-specific skills.

Soft Skills

Soft skills focus on how we interact with each other. They can often be applied to different disciplines and workplaces, which is why they are also referred to as transferable or non-technical skills.

It can be challenging to assess soft skills, especially with standardized tests. Sometimes it is even hard to clearly define the soft skill itself. While there are plenty of courses for soft skills, the outcomes of these courses are a lot harder to measure.

Language Skills are HARD Skills

When we think of language as a system of sounds or symbols and rules, then language skills can clearly be categorized as hard skills, regardless of whether we talk about our mother tongue or foreign language skills.

A hand holding a red pencil and correcting an essay.

Think back to your time in school. Most likely, you had to write spelling tests, grammar tests, vocabulary tests, and more. These tests yielded scores that would tell you and others – your teachers, your parents, etc. – about your skill level.

We also have language tests outside of school. One that many non-native speakers of English are familiar with is the TOEFL® (Test of English as a Foreign Language), a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers who want to attend university in an English-speaking country.

Then there are industry-specific language tests, such as business English tests, carried out by various organizations. In short, we have a host of tools to assess and describe someone’s language proficiency.

Some interesting facts about proficiency:

There are various systems for indicating a person's language level. In Europe, the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) organizes language proficiency in six levels, from A1 (basic user) to C2 (proficient user). Europeans frequently use these letter-number combinations to indicate their proficiency on resumes: English - B2 or French - C1. In the US, ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) describes five main levels from Novice to Distinguished. Including sub-levels, ACTFL actually defines 10 proficiency levels! And there are other systems and descriptors out there, such as elementary, intermediate, advanced, etc.

Language Skills are SOFT Skills

A high score on a spelling, vocabulary, or grammar test does not really say much about your ability to communicate effectively. For effective communication, it is important that you can apply your skills to the circumstances and know how to handle the interaction.

And that’s where we’re getting into the soft side of language. While knowledge and abilities relating to grammar, pronunciation, or lexis can be considered hard skills, how we use language to communicate appropriately and effectively is a soft skill.

Conversation — Photo by Jessica Da Rosa on Unsplash

Communication – a Symbiosis of Skills

Communication skills are consistently among the top soft skill requirements listed by employers. They include a range of sub-skills, such as active listening, empathizing with others, correctly interpreting non-verbal cues, being able to negotiate and resolve conflict, voicing ideas clearly, speaking confidently, and adapting your style to your audience, to name just a few.

But communication is not just a soft skill. Soft skills can only flourish when built on a solid foundation of hard language skills - and hard language skills only come to life when applied with soft-skill awareness. There's a symbiotic relationship between hard and soft. When learning to communicate effectively in a foreign language, it's essential to pay attention to both aspects.

The good news? Both hard and soft communication skills can be developed through targeted coaching and training.

TransAtlantic Coaching & Training offers one-on-one coaching and group trainings that blend hard language skills, soft interactive skills, and intercultural insights in a highly personalized manner. Reach out if you want to learn to communicate more effectively in American English.

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Last blog update: April 8, 2025