MODULE 6 LANGUAGE SKILLS

THE FOUR BASIC LANGUAGE SKILLS

One definition of "language" is "a system of symbols that permit people to communicate or
interact." These symbols can include:

 vocal and written forms.

 gestures, and body language.

People generally learn these four skills in the following order:

 Listening: When people are learning a new language they first hear it spoken.
 Speaking: Eventually, they try to repeat what they hear.
 Reading: Later, they see the spoken language depicted symbolically in print.
 Writing: Finally, they reproduce these symbols on paper.
In your teaching, you will need to address each of these skills. And, whenever possible,
you should utilize activities that integrate all four skills since each reinforces the other.

WHAT IS LISTENING?
Listening is a receptive skill that involves:

 Responding to language rather than producing it.

 Making sense of the meaningful sounds of language.
Simply put, it's the ability to decode the meaning of an audio string.

Feelings about listening: Reasons we listen:

 boredom  for general education
 panic  for specific information
 enjoyment  for entertainment
 enthusiasm  because it's there
 frustration  curiosity
 WAYS OF CHECKING COMPREHENSION

NON-PRODUCTIVE PRODUCTIVE
 place a check mark  write words
 sequence  write sentences
 underline  write answers
 cross out to questions
 circle  make up questions to
 allocate a letter number be asked
 match  correct mistakes
 raise a hand or a finger  write a summary
 stand up / sit down  take notes
 act out a role

REASONS FOR LISTENING KINDS OF TEXT TYPES

People do not listen to everything in the same way. When we listen, we need to be
How people listen depends on their reason for able to understand different
listening: kinds of text types:

 Am I listening to receive information?  conversations

 Am I listening to follow instructions?  stories
 Am I listening to evaluate information?  announcements
 Am I listening for pleasure?  songs
 Am I listening to empathize?  instructions
 lectures
 advertisements
WHAT AFFECTS
UNDERSTANDING OF
LISTENING? EFFECTIVE LISTENERS:
 Different speeds of speech also  Make Connections
affect speech understanding  Find meaning
 Some people speak slowly with  Question
more pauses.  Make and
 Others speak fast and/or with few pauses. confirm
 Different accents are a factor as well. predictions
o British vs. American English  Reflect and evaluate
o New York / Boston vs Southern
 LISTENING SUB-SKILLS

Listen for gist:

To listen to a text to understand its general meaning or purpose.

Listen for specific information:

To listen to a text in order to find a specific piece of information.

Listening for detail:

To listen to a text in order to get meaning out of every word.

Listening for mood:

To listen to a text in order to identify the feelings of the speaker.

KEY CONCEPTS
1.- When we listen to audio recordings, we can't:
 See the speaker's body language.
 See the context s/he is speaking in.
 Ask the speaker to repeat or explain.

2.- These are all factors that make listening to recording more difficult
than listening to live speakers.
3.- Understanding and showing you have understood are not the same thing.
 Maybe you fully understand a story, but you can't tell the story.

3.- The language in comprehension activities should be easier than the

language in the text.

DEVELOPING THE LISTENING SKILLS

Teachers should focus on:
 problem sounds
 features of connected speech
 subskills
 STAGES OF LISTENING LESSONS
PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES
Tasks designed to help orient learners before they actually begin listening to something.
Before listening, students need assistance to activate what they already know about the
ideas they are going to hear. Simply being told the topic is not enough.
Pre-listening activities are required to:

 Establish what is already known about the topic.

 Build necessary background.
 Set purpose for listening.

There are three main kinds of pre-listening activities:

 Vocabulary preparation
o allows Ss to recognize previously learned vocabulary or understand meaning to
unfamiliar vocabulary.
 Review of existing knowledge.
 Anticipation of content (prediction).

WHILE LISTENING ACTIVITIES

Tasks that a learner does while listening to a passage in order to show their understanding
of what was heard of.
Well-designed activities can help students to:

 Identify what's important in a text.

 Perceive the text structure.
 Keep themselves concentrated throughout the listening.
 Show their understanding or non-understanding.

These are comprehension activities that develop different listening subskills:

 comprehension questions
 fill in the blank
 matching
 sequencing
 identification of errors
 checking predictions

POST LISTENING ACTIVITIES

Extended practice that allows learners to use the language freely.

 Post activities could be:

 roleplay/dialogue
 writing assignment: a brief report, a newspaper article, etc.
 picture story
 give opinions of the topic
 Re-tell the story
 KEY NOTES
For many students, listening is the most challenging of the four skills. Often listening
lessons are like tests and teachers need to find ways of making these lessons more
manageable and less threatening.
Listening lessons need to be thoroughly prepared and planned.

 suitable tasks.
 preparing all materials associated with the listening.
During the lesson, tasks should be set before playing the audio and teachers should
maintain as low a profile as possible.

HOW TO SUCCED WITH LISTENING WORK

1. Before beginning, make sure that the students understand very clearly what
they are expected to do so that they can carry out the planned activities
confident that what they are doing is right.

2. Give a purpose for listening in order to focus the listeners' attention.

3. Do plenty of pre-listening work to prepare the listeners for the task.

4. Encourage the learners not to worry if they don't understand every word. Tell
them to say, “I didn't catch that!" rather than "I didn't understand it."

5. Always listen to recorded listening material prior to its implementation in the

classroom. Make sure the recording is clear.

6. Leave the audio at the exact starting point. If you have to repeat a segment
several times, it saves valuable class time to record that segment two or three
times in a sequence.

7. Be sure you know how to operate the equipment before you arrive in the
classroom. Listening work can be totally ruined by incompetent handling of
equipment.
 READING
GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS
Anyone can learn to read and/or to read No one can teach anyone how to read or
more effectively. even how to read more effectively.
Human beings are pre-programmed to
perform language acts, like listening, Reading is a complex cognitive l skill that
speaking, reading, and writing. cannot be broken down into a series of
steps that a teacher can take into a
Students can learn to do these things with classroom and teach.
relative ease if provided with:
 real opportunities
 a minimum of guidance
 a stimulating, non-threatening context

The teacher's job is, therefore, to facilitate what is essentially a natural process.
To do this most effectively, s/he must:
 Develop some understanding of that process.
 Guide students to use the appropriate strategies.

WHAT IS READING?
Reading is a receptive skill. It involves responding to text rather than producing it.
Simply stated, reading involves making sense of text by decoding the meaning of
a written string.
To do this we need to understand the language of the text at:
 word level
 sentence level
 whole-text level
WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND…
• what the letters are
• how the letters join together to make words
• what the words mean
• the grammar of the words and the sentence
• our knowledge of the world
 SUB-SKILLS FOR READING
Our reasons for reading influence which reading sub skill we use.

Reading for specific information (scanning).

• Look for a specific word, number, or time. It is not necessary to read the
whole text for this.

Reading for gist (skimming).

• Reading to get a general but not detailed understanding of the text.

Intensive reading (detail).

• Reading to get the meaning out of every word.

Extensive reading. (Also called RECEPTIVE READING)

• Reading long pieces of text over a period of time where your attention and
interest may vary.

Prediction
• Looking at headlines or pictures to guess what you think a text will be about.

Inferring.
• Guessing the meaning of new vocabulary or understanding meaning or a
message in the text that is not immediately obvious.
 SIMILARITIES
READING AND LISTENING

READING BOTH
• Flow of information is • Done for a purpose.
not fleeting. • Deriving meaning from a text.
• a complex process
of elaboration.
• Making use of background
LISTENING and interpretation.
• Involves thinking ahead • Knowledge taking in
aided by non-verbal cues. chunks, not words.
• Possibility of asking • Anticipating what comes
for clarification. next an interactive skill.
• Involves guessing.

The features of a text intended to be heard are the same as those of a text
intended to be read.
The only differences are:
• Flow of information in a reading text is not fleeting and can be recaptured.
• A reader cannot ask for clarification.
• Non-verbal cues are not usually present in written texts.

GOOD READERS
READING STRATEGIES
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 SPEAKING
Speaking is a productive skill that involves using speech to express meanings to
other people. It is the ability to encode thoughts and concepts into oral form.

PURPOSE OF COMMUNICATION (SPEAKING)

 The purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task.
 In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the
other person will say.

WHY TEACH PEAKING SKIILS?

The goal of teaching these skills is to acquire communicative efficiency. In order to
be understood, learners need to use their current level of proficiency to the fullest.
 FLUENCY
 Fluency is "the ability to communicate an intended message, or to affect the listener or
interlocutor in the way that is intended by the speaker.
 The accurate use of language is a component in this ability, but over attention to
accuracy in the learning process may actually inhibit the development of fluency.
 Fluency involves the ability to adjust the message according to the responses of the
listener or interlocutor, to construct utterances and stretches of speech, to respond and
to speak without undue hesitation.
 It also involves the ability to use strategies such as simplification, circumlocution and
gesture to aid communication when the speaker may not have access to the
vocabulary or grammar which would normally be appropriate."

SPEAKING ACTIVITIES
Awareness
 As I was saying.
 True or False.
Linguistically Controlled
 Split Exchanges
 Dialogue fill-in
 Cheat
Fluency
 Performance
 speech
 debates
 role play

INFORMATION GAP, JIGSAW, AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

ACTIVITIES.
Two common kinds of structured output activities are information gap and jigsaw
activities.
In both these types of activities, students complete a task by obtaining missing by
information, a feature the activities have in common with real communication.
An advantage of these activities is that students must interact to accomplish their
task.
ROLEPLAYS
 HOW TO SUCCEED WITH SPEAKING
ACTIVITIES
Prepare carefully:
Introduce activity by describing the situation.
Set a goal or outcome:
Be sure Ss understand what the end product of the role-play should be.
Use role cards:
Give each students a card that describes the person or role to be played. Include words
and/or expressions that the person might use for lower-level students.
Brainstorm:
Before you start a role-play, have students predict what vocabulary and grammar might be
used. Include any idiomatic expressions that might be useful.
Keep groups small:
By doing so, slower students will feel more confident and able to participate.
Give students time to prepare:
let them work individually to outline their ideas and the language they will need to express.
Role cards can be very helpful.
Teacher should be present as a resource, not a watchdog:
Be ready to answer students' questions. Try not to correct their pronunciation or grammar
mistakes just then unless asked to do so.
Allow students to work at their own levels:
Each student is unique and has different language skills.
Follow up:
After the role-play is over, give feedback on pronunciation or grammar mistakes you heard.
 WRITING SKILL
Writing is a productive skill. It involves producing language rather than receiving it. It is the
ability to encode thoughts and concepts into written form.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO WRITE?

 a message.
 someone to communicate it to.
 to be able to form letters and words.
 to join them to form sentences or a series of sentences that link together.

WRITING ACCURATELY INVOLVES:

• Spelling correctly
• Forming letters correctly
• Writing legibly
• Punctuating correctly
• Using correct layouts
• Choosing the right vocabulary
• Using grammar correctly
• Joining sentences correctly
• Using paragraphs correctly
But writing isn't just about accuracy. It is also about having a message and communicating
it successfully to people.

WRITING PROCESS
• brainstorming (thinking of everything we can about the topic)
• taking notes
• planning (organizing ideas)
• writing a draft
• editing a text
• re-writing a draft
• proof-reading (checking for mistakes)
 GOOD WRITERS ARE ABLE TO
• Use appropriate vocabulary.
• Replicate specific sentence construction or word ordering.
• Write with appropriate punctuation.
• Spell correctly.
• Use consistently a register appropriate to the genre or text type.
• Select a style appropriate to the attitude to be conveyed and the relationship between
the writer and the reader.
• Sequence the text's message logically.
• Lay out the text with accepted conventions of indentation, headings, positioning of
date, address, etc.
• Guide the reader through the message by using the appropriate logical devices.
• Organize the text in a way that conforms to the genre (e.g., narrations, descriptions,
formal letters).
• Pay attention to Parallel structure.
o Parallel structure refers to same word pattern within a sentence by repeating a
chosen grammatical form. It emphasizes on the same level of importance of
multiple ideas or information given in the same sentence.

WHEN TEACHING WRITING, ATTENTION MUST BE FOCUS ON:

• accuracy
• communicating a message
• the writing process

TIPS FOR TEACHING WRITING

• Start the very first day.
• Start with words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Build up gradually.
• Provide a wide range of models.
• Demonstrate how written language functions as communication.
• Make writing tasks realistic and relevant.
• Integrate writing with other skills.
• Introduce a variety of techniques and formats.
• Provide adequate guidance.
• Be patient and encouraging.
DIFERENT TYPES OF WRITING TASKS
 BENEFITS OF INTEGRATING SKILLS IN
A LESSON
• Integrating the main four language skills means combining reading, writing, listening,
and speaking in the classroom.
• Teachers often separate language skills and highlight just one skill at a time.
• In a normal situation, people use all language skills to communicate so experts
suggest integrating the four main language skills in EFL classes.

REASONS FOR INTEGRATING THE 4 SKILLS

• Students experiment and take risks with learning the foreign language which makes
learning more meaningful and productive.
• Interaction means sending and receiving messages.
• Written and spoken languages have a relationship with each other.
• Teacher can see what learners can do with a language.
• Often, one skill will reinforce another.
• The integration of all the four skills can contribute toward a more real-life environment
for both teachers and learners, the thing which may make learning more meaningful
and motivating.
• The integration will give students more opportunities to use English both fluently and
accurately.
Keep in mind that the main purpose of mind that the main of integrating the four
language skills is developing real-life communication. Therefore, it is very important
to provide students with:
• authentic materials.
• real-life situations to increase opportunities for real communication.
• continuous practice for them to gain both fluency and accuracy in using the language.