[vunderba]

I vastly prefer the ability to potentially infer the rough meaning of an unrecognized word, then the ability to pronounce it.

As an ESL CELTA certified teacher for years, their rubric also seems to back this up in order of relative importance: it's meaning, then form, then finally pronunciation.

[latentsea]

I don't know if a rubric for English is as applicable to Japanese.

You're just trading one set of problems for another. Those aren't even problems English has.