The capacity to express ourselves through language 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 adverse environments, to better understand our surroundings and to form large communities in which hundreds of people cooperate with each other.

In short, we are a thriving species in part because of our ability to combine words with each other. We can call this ability linguistic intelligence (or verbal intelligence ).

A definition of linguistic intelligence

Think of the way you would explain to someone else that a pot has fallen on the ground and 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 give a summary about it to someone else.

You probably think that this last task is a lot more complicated, even though you haven’t read that text. Although you are able to cope with language in your everyday life, some tasks involving the use of words seem particularly 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 don’t fully master.

These little 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 from this ability.

Linguistic intelligence (sometimes called also verbal intelligence) is part of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner , and taking it into account allows the creation of strategies to enhance the use of language.

A tool to adapt to the environment

Reality is not an easy thing to understand, so the way to formulate explanations about it should not be easy either. The vast majority of people 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 words, that our linguistic intelligence is not as developed as the context requires.

That is precisely why linguistic intelligence is important: taking into account its existence, we can know how skilful we are at making ourselves understood and understanding what we are told, both in speech and in writing. This is especially important if we take into account that the use of language allows us to get closer to our objectives and, therefore, having more or less Linguistic Intelligence has an impact on our possibilities of managing problems, tackling projects or even maintaining healthy relationships with other people.

How to improve your linguistic intelligence?

If it is true that Intelligence can be quickly summarized as the ability to find solutions to new problems in the most effective way , it is no less true that it can be improved by taking some habits and routines. Linguistic intelligence, as a concrete parcel within the broader concept of “intelligence”, is no exception to this rule. This means that we can take measures to influence our performance in Linguistic Intelligence , changing for the better our ability to adapt to new situations in which a skilful handling of words is useful (difficult to find a situation in which I don’t know this!).

Knowing all this, you can start making small changes in your day-to-day life to improve your language skills. Here are some tips and recommendations to boost your linguistic intelligence.

1. Start a personal journal

Starting a journal is a good first step. You will write about topics that affect you indirectly and that you find interesting or relevant, so it is hard to make this activity boring. Also, you won’t have the pressure of having to write something impressive to impress someone, because they are written for you, which no one else has to do. You will easily 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 one feels and starting from one’s own way of seeing reality is a good way of training in linguistic intelligence, but it is worthwhile to pose challenges so that the level of difficulty of the tasks is not always the same . That is why, in addition to writing a diary, it is good to delimit somewhat more universal topics and write about them. In this way, you will be forced to expand your vocabulary and improve your ability to express yourself on a specific topic over the course of more or less long texts.

3. Appreciates the value of good dialogue

If you want to polish your linguistic intelligence, you may also find it useful to interact with people you don’t usually communicate with . People with interests and concerns different from your own, people with whom you can’t use your own slang and who force you out of your comfort zone when speaking. There is nothing better than the challenge of communicating with someone who has another point of view in order to become able to understand and be understood.

4. Reads a lot and well

There are few better things to discover expressions and vocabulary than reading . There are an almost infinite number of books in which you can memorize and review all sorts of language routes while having fun or learning about things that interest you . However, if you want to improve your linguistic intelligence by making the most of books, it is best to take care of what you read. Try to get your hands on books by a variety of authors so that you can see a little bit of everything.

5. Do you give poetry and music a chance?

The poetry and the music have the added value of breaking the conventions of grammar to communicate and express phenomena and emotions. Coming into contact with lyrical forms of expression can make you get used to seeing language as a creative game in which words are at the service of the message, and not the other way round. In fact, there is an example of how music training for preschool children was found to improve their verbal intelligence.

Linguistic Intelligence in Children

These recommendations may be useful to you, but some of them can also be adapted to help children to enter the skills related to linguistic intelligence . After all, it is in the early stages of childhood that it becomes more important to have the means to quickly learn the rudiments of language, which will develop as you grow up.

Bibliographic references:

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