kaibutsu

Writing definitely has its place in language learning and can't ever be neglected, but I also think there's a sort of sliding scale of importance depending on the language, if that makes sense. When I was doing French and German, the writing was a little less important to me than it was in Chinese or Japanese, since the writing system of the latter two can be used in lieu of verbal communication in the event that one knows a character's meaning but not how it's pronounced. Not to say that writing isn't important, 'cause it is, but I'd definitely wind up emphasizing learning kanji first over vocabulary for someone who's studying Japanese, for instance. It was a lot easier for me to learn a kanji and its meaning and then attach pronunciation later than vice versa. Meanwhile, my biggest challenges in French writing were figuring out how the accents worked.