MODULE 1: “Consolidation and Review” “Teaching Integrated Skills” (Harmer

CH 17)

1. Integrated Skills Approach to Language Teaching.

The integration of skills in the language classroom can be defined as activities or

tasks which use any combination of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and
writing), in a continuous and related sequence. They help students to practice and
extend the learners use of a particular function or a language structure, lexis, etc.
Also, helps students to develop their ability in three or the four skills within a
constant context. Production (productive skills=speaking and writing) and reception
(receptive skills=listening and reading). Interaction means sending and receiving
messages.

2. Advantages of Teaching Integrated Skills in the EFL Classroom.

1. Continuity: It allows for continuity in the teaching and learning progress. Tasks
and activities are not performed in isolation, they are closely related and
dependent on each other.
2. Realism: It allows for the development of all four skills within a realistic and
communicative framework which helps to promote awareness of how they
lead naturally in real life.
3. Input before output: (Input= listening and reading, Output= writing and
speaking) There is an input before output. This input must be suitable to form
the basis for the learner’s own output and productive use of language.
4. Appropriateness: It gives learners opportunities to recognise and become
aware of the language they are learning in different contexts and modes.
5. Variety: Activities involving all four skills provide variety and can be invaluable
in maintaining motivation.
6. Recycling: It allows naturally the revision of already taught language and is
helpful for remedial teaching*.
7. Confidence: It is helpful for learners who are weak and less confident.

3. A suggested Procedure for Integrating linguistics skills in the classroom.

Design a lesson that includes a pre-reading discussion of a topic, a listening task , a

specific reading skill activity, and then write a response to the reading task. For
example: A project in which the objective is to describe animals and their
characteristics. In pair or group work, they must find out information of the animal
chosen and they will have to prepare a poster. Then, present it. (Reading when they
search for information, listening when they interchange information, writing when
they wrote the information of the animal and speaking when they present it)

Authentic material: It is normal and natural language used by competent and native
speakers of a language. This is what students will face if they come into contact with
target-language speakers. Because it is authentic, it is unlikely to be simplified or
spoken slowly. This can be extremely demotivating for students since they will not
understand it, therefore, we should let students read and listen to things that they
can have a chance of understanding.

4. Skills Together

In meaningful communication, people employ incremental language skills not in

isolation, but in tandem (two things that work together to achieve a result). For
example, texting (writing and reading instantly).

5. Input vs Output
What we say or write is heavily influenced by what we hear and see (Input). The
more we see and listen to input, the more English we acquire. Examples: audio and
video material (inside or outside the classroom), radio, TV, internet.
Students get input in relation to their own output. When a student produces a piece
of language and sees how it turns out, that information is fed back into the
acquisition process. Output and the students' response to their own output becomes
input.
We modify what we write or say as we go along based on how effectively we think
we are communicating. Feedback also comes from the people we are talking with.
For example, feedback can be given when they change the tone of their voice or
lack of response showing us that they haven't understood us.

6. Speaking as a preparation and stimulus.

Discuss a topic as a way of activating their schemata (the formations of ideas based
on prior knowledge and known information) or engaging them in a topic that they are
going to read or hear about. Speaking is a part of a longer planning sequence.

7. Integrated tasks.

Integrated taks are the ones that involve more than 1 skill. For example: listen to
something (a recorded conversation) and take notes. A spoken summary of
something they have read. Read information as preparation for a role-play. Almost
any speaking activity involves listening. In collaborative writing, students will be
speaking, listening, writing and reading almost simultaneously. Even when a task is
to encourage just one skill usually involves another skill too.

8. Top-down and bottom-up.

TOP-DOWN BOTTOM-UP
Looking a forest Studying the individual trees
In top-down processing the In bottom-up processing, the
student gets a general view of the student focuses on such things as
reading or listening, absorbing the individual words, phrases and
overall information. It helps to achieves understanding by
create expectations of what they stringing these detailed elements
are going to come across. together to build up a whole.

9. A procedure for teaching receptive skills.

Type 1 Task Type 2 Task

The students read or listen to Students pick the details and do
some general understanding or an analysis of the text.
response.

Lead-in: Engage the students with the topic of the reading and to try to activate their
schema. (Our schema is the background knowledge we have of the world, “pre-
existing knowledge”). The students can predict what a text is likely to be about, or
what they are going to see or hear. (The teacher will help to do this prediction with
various clues; pictures, words, phrases of the text, etc.) Prediction is extremely
useful if we want to engage students with the text.

Comprehension/response task: Set a comprehension task trying to get students

extracting a mostly general understanding of what they are going to listen or read.

Reading/listening: Read or listen to the text in order to complete the task that has
been set and then the teacher gives feedback. The students should share their
answers in pairs or small groups.

Text related task: Any kind of follow-up activity. Text-related tasks. (Tasks type 2).

10. Pre-teaching vocabulary.

To help students it is important to pre-teach vocabulary that may be in the text or the
listening. This removes some difficulties in relation to the understanding of the text.
On the other hand, if we want to practice authentic reading, maybe this wouldn't be
too helpful for them. It would be better to challenge them and after reading the text,
check the words that were difficult. This way we promote the idea that not everytime
we will be able to give them the definitions of all the words that they didn’t know to
understand a text.
Another technique, would be to suggest words that possibly are unknown from the
reading or listening to create an interest and activate the students schemata. The
students can first research the meanings of the words and then predict what the text
will be about.

11. Extensive reading and listening.

EXTENSIVE INTENSIVE
Suggests reading or listening for Tends to be more concentrated,
pleasure in a leisurely way. less relaxed.
Students are on their own. Is often done with the help or
intervention of the teacher.
Students are more enthusiastic Students need more incentive
about reading and will help them (more focus) than just pleasure to
to develop automaticity (the make the most of reading
automatic recognition of words extensively.
when they see them)
The more that students listen, the
more they acquire language and
the better they get at listening
activities in general.

12. Comprehension tasks.

The choice of the tasks that we ask our students to perform on is a key feature in
teaching receptive skills. The best kind of tasks are those which raise the students’
expectations, help them tease out meanings and provoke an examination of the
reading or listening passage.

If students are encouraged to try to predict the answers to the questions before
reading or listening, it creates expectations in their minds that help them focus their
reading or listening. We have turned a potential test task into a creative tool for
receptive skill training.