TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF MACRO SKILLS
forms of information, which, in turn, requires the use of all
Unit 1. Definition, Approaches and Uses of the Macro Stills
Language skills:
 There are four skills that need for complete communication.
These are called the four "language skills". The five skills
of language (also known as the four skills of language
learning) are a set of four capabilities that allow an
individual to comprehend and produce spoken language for
proper and effective interpersonal communication. These
skills are Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. In the
context of first-language acquisition, the four skills are
most often acquired in the order of listening first, then
speaking, then possibly reading and writing. For this
reason, these capabilities are often called LSRW skills.
 English Language has 5 main skills and each skill has other
sub-skills and skill activities. The main skills are all basic
and very important. They are called the Macro skills.
Macro skills refer to the primary, key, main, and largest
skill set relative to a particular context. It is commonly
referred to in English language. The four macro skills are
reading, listening, writing, and speaking. You have to
perfect them in order to use your English language
properly. Listening and speaking are brain input skills but
reading and writing are brain output skills. Of course, there
other skills such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary,
and spelling all play a role in effective English
communication.
THE FIVE MACRO SKILLS:
1. LISTENING (receptive)
- the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages
2. READING (receptive)
- the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and
integrate what the reader already know
3. VIEWING (receptive)
- -the newly added skill
4. WRITING (expressive)
- ability to communicate the message with clarity and ease
through symbols and signs.
5. SPEAKING (expressive)
- ability to communicate orally and effectively
HOW CAN THE FOUR MACRO SKILLS BE USED
TOGETHER EFFECTIVELY
• FOCAL SKILL APPROACH
- The goal of the focal skill approach is studying in the SL in
order to acquire it. This second language curriculum
stresses the balanced development of listening, speaking,
reading and writing by measuring competency in each skill
and then focusing on the development of the weakest skill.
Resources like those developed by the International Center
for Focal Skills (ICFS) use placement tests to identify weak
skill areas.
•CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION
- Oxford (2001) describes approaches to CBI, which include
theme-based & adjunct learning. Theme-based CBI focuses
on a theme of high interest to students and develops a wide
range of language skills around that theme. The learning of
the content requires considerable exposure to a variety of
four modalities.
- In the adjunct form of CBI, language and content courses
are taught separately but are carefully coordinated so that
literacy, oral language development and thinking skills are
positively enhanced. In this approach, the content teacher
presents content to students while the language teacher
brings vocabulary, grammar and subskill development to
students' attention through typical exercises, all of which
focus on the lexicon of the content.
•TASK-BASED INSTRUCTION
- According to Nunan (1999), task-based instruction (TBI)
uses tasks or stand-align activities which require
comprehending, producing, manipulating or interacting in
the target language. The amount of listening, speaking,
reading and writing involved to complete the problem
posed by the task is dictated by the task itself; however,
most complex (multi step) real- life tasks that take learners
into the world outside the classroom will utilize all four
skills. TBI helps learners explore the multitude of
communication opportunities provided in their
surroundings. The tasks themselves are scaffold according
to the cognitive demand required to complete them and can
be carried out individually, in pairs or in small cooperative
groups.
•PROJECT-BASED APPROACH
- This approach concretizes the integration of not only the
four skills but also language, culture, experience and
learning strategies (Turnbull, 1999). With the careful
selection of a final project that requires learners to
demonstrate what they have learned through both oral and
written production, the teacher plans backwards to identify
what aspects of language, culture, experience and learning
strategies are required to complete the end project.
UNIT 2. LISTENING
LISTENING
•communication technique that requires the listener to understand,
interpret and evaluate what he or she hears.
•a complex process that involves the understanding of spoken data
and involves receptive, interpretative, or constructive cognitive
processes (Rost, 2005)
LISTENING STRATEGIES
•TOP-DOWN STRATEGIES
>are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of
the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language.
This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help
the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come
next.
•BOTTOM-UP STRATEGIES
>include listening for specific details, recognizing cognates and
recognizing word-order patterns.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF LISTENING
-LISTENING FOR GIST
This type of listening refers to the situations in which we listen with
the intention of knowing the general idea of what’s being said.
-LISTENING FOR DETAILED UNDERSTANDING
This refers to the type of listening we do in which we can’t afford to
ignore anything because we don’t exactly what information of the
listening passage will be necessary to complete the task
-LISTENING FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION
This refers to occasions in which we don’t have to understand
everything that’s being said, but only a very specific part
SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING YOUR LISTENING
SKILLS
•Before you listen: think about the topic of the text you are going to
listen to
•While you are listening: it is not necessary to understand every
single word focus on key words and facts
•After listening: think about the text again
SUB-PROCESSES OF LISTENING
•DECODING
- Decoding is the process of recognising the words in whatever form
they occur (whether complete or crushed) in the stream of speech
•COMPREHENSION
This is the stage during which the listener determines the context and
meanings of the words he or she hears. Determining the context and
meaning of individual words, as well as assigning meaning in
language, is essential to understanding sentences. This, in turn, is
essential to understanding a speaker’s message.
•INTERPRETATION
During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and
auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that
information. It is through the interpreting stage that we may begin to
understand the stimuli we have received. When we understand
something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information
to previous experiences.
LISTENING CAN BE:
•RECIPROCAL LISTENING - involves dialogues in which the
original listener and speaker have alternating roles as source and as
receiver of information.
•NON-RECIPROCAL LISTENING - involves a one-way role
taking as in the case of listening to monologues. comparing the two,
nonreciprocal listening appears to be more difficult to undertake.
MODES OF LISTENING
•ACTIVE OR REFLECTIVE LISTENING is considered the most
effective because the listener is not only listening with interest, but
actively acknowledging listening by brief responses.
•PASSIVE OR ATTENTIVE LISTENING is little more than
hearing. passive listening is listening without reacting: allowing
someone to speak, without interrupting. not doing anything else at the
same time, and yet not really paying attention to what’s being said.
•COMPETITIVE OR COMBATIVE LISTENING: this is the type
of listening that is done when people want to push their own type of
view or opinion rather than listen to someone else's.
PRINCIPLES AND TEACHING PRINCIPLES OF LISTENING
PRINCIPLES OF GOOD LISTENING
•Basics: pay attention
•Practice active listening
•Pay attention to structure
•Listen to key words
•Key phrases or markers
TEACHING PRINCIPLES OF LISTENING
•Make it explicit
•Model
•Practice
ASSESSING LISTENING SKILLS
•Criteria rather than marks
•Too many students!
•Speaking tasks
•Self-assessment
WRITING
•The representation of language in text form.
•Writing is perhaps the most complex of the communication skills
and takes the most time to master. As with any other skill, the craft of
putting words on paper is improved through practice and a
willingness to improve on past attempts.
GENRES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE
ACADEMIC WRITING
 papers and general subject reports essays, compositions,
academically focused journals, Short-answer test responses,
technical reports (e. g, lab report) theses, and dissertations.
JOB-RELATED WRITING
 messages (e.g., phone messages) Letters/emails, memos
(e.g., interoffice reports (e.g., job evaluations, project
reports) schedules, labels, signs, advertisements,
announcements and manuals.
PERSONAL WRITING
 letters, emails, greeting cards, invitations, messages, notes
calendar entries, shopping lists, reminders, financial
documents (e.g., checks, tax forms, loan applications)
forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration
documents, diaries, personal journals and fiction (e.g. short
stories, poetry)
FOUR CATEGORIES OF WRITTEN PERFORMANCE
IMITATIVE
❖To produce written language, the learner must attain skills in the
fundamental, basic tasks of writing letters, words, punctuation, and
very brief sentences. ❖At this stage, form is the primary if not
exclusive focus, while context and meaning are of secondary concern.
INTENSIVE (CONTROLLED)
❖Beyond the fundamentals of imitative writing are skills in
producing appropriate vocabulary within a context, collocations and
idioms and correct grammatical features up to the length of a
sentence. ❖Meaning and context are of some importance in
determining correctness and appropriateness, but most assessment
tasks are more concerned with a focus on form, and are rather strictly
controlled by the test design.
RESPONSIVE
❖assessment tasks require learners to perform at a limited discourse
level, connecting sentences into a paragraph and creating a logically
connected sentence of two or three paragraphs.
❖Genres of writing include brief narratives and descriptions, short
reports, lab reports, summaries, brief responses to reading, and
interpretation
❖The writer has mastered the fundamentals of sentence –level
grammar and is more focused on the discourse conventions that will
achieve the objectives in a written texttions of charts or graphs.
EXTENSIVE
❖Writing implies successful management of all the processes and
strategies of writing for all purposes, up to the length of an essay.
❖Learners focus on achieving a purpose, organizing and developing
ideas logically, using details to support or illustrate ideas,
demonstrating syntactic and lexical variety, and in many cases,
engaging in the process of multiple drafts to achieve a final product.
MICRO AND MACRO SKILLS OF WRITING
MICRO SKILLS
1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
3. Produce acceptable grammatical systems (e.g. tense, agreement,
pluralization, patterns, and rules.
4. Use an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order
patterns.
5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
6. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.
MACRO SKILLS
7. The rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.
8. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written
tasks according to form and purpose.
9. Convey links and connections between events, and communicate
such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given
information, generalization, and exemplification.
10. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.
MICRO AND MACRO SKILLS OF WRITING
11. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of
written text
12. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately
assessing the audience's interpretation, using prewriting devices,
writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and
synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using
feedback for revising and editing.
TEACHING AND ASSESSING WRITING SKILLS
HOW TO EFFECTIVELY TEACH ENGLISH WRITING
SKILLS
1. Choosing the skills you will focus on
2. Choosing your activities or writing exercises
3. Choosing your topics.
Two Basic Ways of Teaching Writing Skills
1. PRODUCT FOCUSED APPROACH PRINCIPLES
A. The teaching of second language writing has often been
synonymous with the teaching of grammar or sentence structure.
B. This view of writing reflects the principles of audiolingual theory
which saw writing as the written form of spoken language.
C. At more advanced levels, students will learn how to write an
essay.
D. Correct sentence structure is an essential component of writing;
grammatical skills receive considerable emphasis.
E. Errors in writing are avoided by providing learners with models to
follow.
F. Students do not usually learn from their mistakes.
TEACHING AND ASSESSING WRITING SKILLS
TECHNIQUES:
a. Providing models to which learners make minor changes and
substitutions.
b. Expanding an outline or summary.
c. Constructing paragraphs from frames, tables, and other guides.
d. Producing a text through answering a set of questions.
e. Sentence combining: developing complex sentences following
different rules of combination.
2. PROCESS APPROACH PRINCIPLES
A. This approach starts from an examination of what good writers
actually do as they write.
B. Writing activities should reflect a focus on the different stages in
the writing process: planning, drafting and revising.
C. New role of learners: they assume greater control over what they
write, how they write ¡t, and the evaluation of their own writing.
D. New role of teachers: they act as facilitators, organizing writing
experiences that enable the learner to develop effective composing
strategies.

E. Students should produce complete (not isolated sentences),

contextualized pieces of writing.

F. Emphasis on why the writing is being done (a sense of purpose)

and who it is being written for (a sense of audience).

G. Students should spend c1assroom time on writing (not just a

homework activity).

H. Group composition: at each stage of the activity the group

interaction contributes in useful ways to the writing process.

TEACHING AND ASSESSING WRITING SKILLS

TECHNIQUES:

a. In the planning stage: brainstorming, free association, word

mapping, ranking activities, quick writing.

b. In the drafting stage: elaboration exercise, reduction exercise,

jumbled paragraph, jumbled essay, writing thesis statements and
topic sentences, group drafting, quick writing.

c. In the revising stage: peer feedback, group correction activities,

rewriting exercises, teacher feedback.