Item 4 Svisch Sabina gr 31 (E/G)

Speaking about integrating skills, first of all, it’s important to determine

what that means. Integrated skills refer to the interaction of the four main language
skills all together during the learning process. As we know these skills are:
listening, writing, speaking and reading. I think that these four skills are all part of
normal language proficiency and use. They can also work together in language
acquisition, and the phrase “integrated skills” is commonly used to describe
curricula that develop the skills in parallel fashion. To my
mind, integrating the skills allows teacher to build in more variety into
the lesson because the range of activities will be wider. Instead of just having
listening, the students can have speaking, reading and writing practice. This can
raise their motivation to learn English.
There are several lessons of the 8th form as an example of integrated ones.
Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to interview the teacher, but I can say
that the teacher demonstrated high level of techniques which she used to integrate
skills. These techniques helped not only to develop students' listening, writing,
speaking and reading skills, but also to make the lessons more diverse and
interesting, increasing learners’ motivation.
However, integrating the four language skills can be challenging for the
teacher. There are some problems that may arise. A teacher should have the good
understanding of discourse, and to be able to use textbooks flexibly. This can also
be time-consuming, requiring a lot of preparation. Another limitation is the
problem of designing suitable materials that take account of students’ different
skill levels. The four skills tend to develop at a different pace: receptive skills are
stronger than productive skills, for example.
The teacher whose lessons we observed mainly used “Gateway” textbooks
by David Spencer, Macmillan. Although the textbook is full of written tasks, it
clearly has a lack of tasks based on integrating of skills. That is why the teacher
had to improve the existing tasks herself. In general, she combined reading or
writing with speaking to make activities more communicative and encourage
learners to discuss in class. For example, in the 8th form, students studied the
future tense. After they completed several written tasks, the teacher asked the
students to pair up and create a dialogue based on this grammar topic (for example,
the first learner asks the question “What are you going to do on the weekend?” and
the second learner answers, then they change roles). Another example of
integration I observed in the 9th grade. First, the teacher wrote a statement on the
“Keep a healthy and balanced diet” and asked the pupils whether they agree with
it, who is on a diet and why should people follow a diet, and also shared her ideas.
Then the students wrote an essay on this topic.
As A. Raimes (1983, “Tradition and Revolution in ESL Teaching”) states,
“listening and speaking are, regardless of who the people using the language are, at
least as important as the other skills to communicate”. Byrne (1991) states that
“one should keep in mind that writing, speaking, reading and listening skills are
normally integrated in real life”. The term integrated skills is frequently used as if
it were almost synonymous with reinforcement. Viewed in this way, the process of
integrating language skills involves linking them together in such a way that what
has been learnt and practiced through the exercise of one skill is reinforced and
perhaps extended through further language tasks which bring different skills into
use. Here, the use of any skill may quite naturally lead to the use of other.