Understanding Language Skills: 4 Skills

The integration of all four language skills with multi-lesson and multi-level activities considers learning as a whole language approach. Communication consists of sending and receiving messages. Production (writing & speaking) and reception (reading & listening) are interrelated. Practicing one skill strengthens the other. Multi-level activities should be considered when designing practical lesson plans. Lessons should reflect real-world situations, be functional, and also consider the socio-cultural context. Even if the main focus of an activity is not grammar it can still be an incorporated component of a communicative activity.

Reading the World

Reading Skills:

• Skill which opens the doors to the world, language, culture & ideas
• Knowledge: Syntactic (grammar rules to form sentences) Morphological  (relationship of words ie. kind unkindness) General World, Sociocultural (context) Topic (subject,theme) Genre (particular style)                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
• Schematic knowledge: concept of prior knowledge, able to make  connections and give meaning to unfamiliar words and ideas
• Reading strategies: For comprehension first scan, read article quickly for context. Underline unknown words, read again then use dictionary. Guessing words and then verify. Summarise by paragraph, reread and then summarise by article. 

Writing up a Storm

Writing Skills:

• Like reading the advantages of literacy as in the context of education where students are tested on writing proficiency.
•  Process of writing is not linear. Recursive process means writers plan, draft, edit, re-plan, re-draft, re-edit like a wheel before they have written a final version.
• Writing & Speaking: Both are products of a language. Written word tends to be permanent, speaking is often transient, unless text messaging which resembles informal speech. 
• Aspects to consider when writing: Purpose, genre, text construction, cohesion, coherence and register.

Pardon Me, What was that?

Listening Skills:

• Prominence of English such as access to the world (BBC), pleasure (music), travel/tourism (lingua franca), work purposes and academic requirements (international English)
• Some difficulties in learning to listen are mishearing messages, accents in delivery, affective characteristics of listener (tired), defective equipment, overload of input.
•  Strategies: predicting, note-taking, use of gap-fill exercises, phrases asking for clarification.
• Features to consider in a good recorded text: interest, cultural accessibility, discourse structure, density, language level, length, quality of recording, speed, number of speakers, and accent.

Keep the Conversation Going

Speaking Skills:

• Most important of four language skills in communication for daily interaction, work purposes, creative expression and travel.
• Three stages to verbal communication: conceptualisation, formulation, and articulation.
• Speaking serves either a transactional function such as service encounters or an interpersonal function such as a conversation between friends.
• Strategies for speakers to achieve fluency is the use of chunks such as idioms, phrasal verbs, sentence frames, social formulas and discourse markers.