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Speaking. Its hard to understand unless they speak and use simple vocabulary. I still can't even understand people talking Finnish a lot of the time but can make myself understood most of the time.
It depends: generally I find easier to read and write in a foreign language, then speaking and only after hearing.
Yet, I can say hear a lot in French but my skills in speaking are lower, I can hear a lot in German and read but speaking it requires me a lot of concentration.
Definitely understanding for me. I have spoken English and Spanish since infancy, so similar languages like French and Italian I can understand at times, but responding back at any proficient level is difficult for me.
Speaking is a bit easier I think. Reading is even more easy.
However, when it comes to understanding, for example, English, it may depend on how this other person speaks it. If he uses too much slang or has some strange accent, it makes things harder. Otherwise I think I speak and understand English on roughly the same level.
But for example French -- I don't speak it well, and I don't write too well, but my reading abilities are better.
It's a toss-up between speaking and reading for me. Probably slightly easier to speak because I am in "control" of the words being used.
Understanding the spoken language is the toughest part for me, and the absolute toughest is understanding someone who is not speaking directly to me: conversations you overhear, announcements, movies, TV, lyrics in songs.
When people are speaking directly to you and realize you are not a native speaker they will often speak more slowly or even use simpler words. Or sometimes if they sense you didn't get a word will come back with a simpler synonym.
I have been told by my language teachers that my accents are very good, and so often I get caught by people whom I have addressed in their language, and thinking I am a native speaker, or at least a 100% fluent one, will immediately start speaking in rapid-fire language X complete with slang and everything!
It depends on the language.
My Portuguese is crooked. Portuguese grammar is quite hard.
I can understand it better when reading it, but not so much when I am just hearing it because they tend to swallow the words.
My Spanish is probably better than my Portuguese. Reading or hearing ( hearing South American Spanish ) I understand it more than Portuguese because it much clearer and I am already very much familiar with most of the words since there are almost 6,000 Spanish words in my language.
Somehow I could understand by combining words that I know, but speaking is actually you have to create thoughts and speak to show them fully understand.
I think I am in the minority, in that I can fairly quickly pick up the ability to express myself in a foreign language, but have great difficulty tuning my ear to understand it.
Which to me, makes perfect logical sense. I learn a vocabulary of a few hundred words and basic syntax and grammar, which is easily understood by a native speaker when I piece them together, but a person speaking to me uses mostly words I don't know and grammatical constructions that I don't know, and talks a lot faster than I can reconstruct in my mind..
Yet, somehow, my traveling companions understand everything people say, but have to nudge me and tell me to ask the questions. My wife says that is because she already knows pretty much what they are going to say, because she can read body language, which I cannot do because I'm autistic.
I'm the same. Speaking (and reading/writing) are easiest for me. And understanding grammar patterns. Understanding the spoken word at normal speed using "normal" vocabulary has always been tricky for me. I have to practice/listen way more than most people to get that down.
I also have sort of a weird "talent" in that I can mimic the sounds of a language very well and speak with little or no "English accent" very quickly, even though I still can't really speak or understand the language.
This happened to me with Spanish. As I was learning, native speakers would hear me speak and think that I was either a native speaker or someone who had spoken the language for years at an advanced level... yet at the time, I really didn't speak so well and I certainly had a hard time understanding the spoken word. But I had no accent and was told that directly many times by native speakers. So I sounded like I could speak well, but didn't. Like a car that looks very fast but has a junkie motor under the hood. Well, as I learned, of course, that got better.
But I tend to mimic the sounds of a language really, really well, which is deceptive for a native speaker because they are used to learners having heavy accents and being obvious learners. It's kind of fun being able to do that, though, because I can memorize a paragraph in a language I don't speak at all and get the sounds perfect or nearly perfect after listening to native speakers a bit and mimicking their sounds and flow.
I've taken 4 years of Spanish myself. I can understand reading and writing just fine, speaking it can be somewhat difficult though, and sometimes native speakers talk way too fast or use a lot of slang that I don't understand. I've noticed that Spanish tends to be spoken in a somewhat monotonous way (unlike English, where our tones tend to shift) so it almost sounds like they're mumbling to me. I prefer European Spanish because that's what my dad's family speaks and they seem enunciate their words more.
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Like a car that looks very fast but has a junkie motor under the hood. 
Well, as I learned, of course, that got better. 
