Teaching the Four Language Basic

Skills
 Introduction

- The four language skills refer to listening, speaking,

reading and writing.
- The mastery of these skills on the part of English
language learners is necessary to enhance students'
communicative proficiency.
- These language macro skills are employed in
communication and taught in classes not in
isolation for they are somehow integrated.
- In English language teaching and learning, these
skills are needed.
 Introduction
- These four language skills are highly interrelated in two
ways: the direction of communication and the mode of
communication.
- Direction of communication indicates whether
information is being given (output) or is being received
(input). Hence, there are productive skills represented
by speaking and writing, and receptive skills namely
listening and reading.
- The mode of communication draws distinction between
oral and written skills. The teaching of these four
language skills should not be side lined, because
proficiency in the use of the language is dependent to
the mastery of these language macro skills.
 Teaching Listening Skills

- A very simple analysis of listening would give

it four headings:
1. understanding a speaker' s accent of
pronunciation,
2. understanding his/ her grammar,
3. recognizing his/ her vocabulary,
4. and being able to grasp the meaning of what
he/ she says.
 Teaching Listening Skills

- Hence, teachers may then construct exercises to

practice each of these aspects of listening one by
one.
- Yet, effective comprehension relies on the ability
to do everything at once and so the learner
should also have some chance of natural
listening practice that is not directed towards any
particular aspect of listening skill but involves
them all (Allen and Corder, 1979: 93).
 Teaching Listening Skills

- The teaching aim of extensive listening practice is

to give the learner plenty of opportunity to
develop and exercise his/ her listening skills in as
natural way as possible.
- Extensive listening needs not be tested in any
detail, but will be done for its sake.
- The learner will be following the meaning of the
listening passage, because he/ she is interested in
the information it contains, or simply because he/
she is enjoying it.
 Teaching Listening Skills

However, intensive listening exercises can be

divided into two types:
(1) Exercises to train a detailed comprehension
of meaning, and
(2) exercises which get the learner to listen to
particular features of language, such as
vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation (Allen
and Corder, 1979: 95-98).
 Teaching Listening Skills

- Technically speaking, most listening texts should be based

on discourse that is either genuine improvised,
spontaneous speech, or at least a fair imitation of it.
- A typical authentic written text that is read aloud as a
basis for classroom listening activity will provide the
learners with no practice, in understanding the most
common form of spoken discourse.
- The listening text should be highly linked to the themes of
the learners' academic field, it can be a text read by the
teacher or one of the learners, recorded text or interview,
a part of video, etc.
 Teaching Listening Skills

- Listening tasks based on the listening texts should include

the following features:
(1) Learners should have in advance some idea about the
kind of text they are going to hear.
(2) Likewise, a listening purpose should be provided by the
definition of pre-set task, which should involve some kind
of clear visible and audible response.
(3) Finally, the task should usually involve intermittent
responses during the listening; learners should be
encouraged to respond to the information they are looking
for as they hear it, not to wait to the end.
 Teaching Listening Skills

- The language laboratory is the most suitable

place where learners can develop their
listening comprehension.
- The language laboratory is not so suitable for
speaking practice as it is for listening practice.
- Thus, listening in the language lab can be a
real language experience, whereas talking in
the lab is only a rehearsal for real
conversation.
 Teaching Speaking Skills

- However, there are some teaching techniques using

language lab can be adopted by the teachers and
practitioners in teaching speaking skills.
- The outstanding technique is the imitation of native
speech models.
- Dialogue exchanges can be recorded to practice the
pronunciation of particular sounds, stress and rhythm
patterns, as well as intonation.
- The learner can repeat these models in the lab as
many times as he/she wants.
 Teaching Speaking Skills

- Most studies about the four basic skills

showed that developing speaking proficiency
is of top priority to the students.
- Teachers should vary speaking teaching
techniques and speaking tasks and activities
for the sake of rising learners' motivation.
 Teaching Speaking Skills

- Instructors can use role play, simulations, and

plays targeting authentic debatable topics
associated with the learners specialty.
- The goal of any speaking activity should be
making social interaction comfortable and
non-threatening and to communicate good
will, in addition to discussing specialized
information related to the syllabus diction.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- Most students considered reading as non-

important skill to be developed while the
reverse situation is noted with writing skills.
- Therefore, much attention, time, and
activities should be dedicated to writing at the
expense of reading related tasks.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- In dealing with the skill of reading, instructors

must synthesize various elements:
(1) Theories about the nature of reading itself,
specifically models of mature reading;
(2) the characteristics of reading selections, or
textual analysis; and
(3) the specific characteristics and needs of the
learners.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- When concerned with the skill of reading, the reading

materials' designer functions as a mediator between the text
and the learner-reader; this mediating process brings the
learner in touch with strategies for successful reading which
are used by efficient, mature native-readers.
- Hence, the materials preparer 's task is to synthesize three
(03) elements:
(1) reading strategies, or a reconstruction of what an efficient
native reader does unconsciously,
(2) textual analysis, or an examination of a text for the
organizational and stylistic effects put there by the writer,
and (3) learners' characteristics.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- The reading materials' designer as synthesizer

pays attention to the following:
(1) Workouts that bring about interaction with
the text.
(2) Providing a variety of materials to read.
(3) Selecting texts appropriate for the targeted
learners level and academic specialty.
(Fraida and Elite, 1986: 149-150).
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- In performing reading related tasks, teachers should make

sure that the following efficient reading requirements are
taken into consideration:
- The language of the text is comprehensible to the learners.
- The content of the text is accessible to the learners: they
know enough about it to be able to apply their own
background knowledge.
- The reading progresses fairly fast.
- The reader concentrates on the significant bits, and skims
the rest; may even skip parts he/she knows to be significant.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- The reader takes incomprehensible vocabulary in his or her

stride: guesses its meaning from the surrounding text without
using dictionaries.
- The reader thinks ahead, hypothesizes, predicts.
- The reader has and uses background information to help
understand the text.
- The reader is motivated to read by interesting content highly
attached to the learners' academic branch and challenging tasks.
- The reader is aware of a clear purpose in reading, for example
to find out something.
(Penny, 2005: 62-63)
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

Any reading task may include the following key steps and
instructions:
- A preparatory stage, that is pre-reading stage that includes a
warming up questions giving the reader an idea about the topic
of the text and its main ideas.
- A reading text highly associated with the learners' academic
specialty.
- The reading text should be followed by information about the
source of the text and his/her author.
- The instructor reads the text in front of the learners, and the
learner-readers should be asked to read the text silently aiming at
identifying the text main ideas and supporting details.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- Comprehension questions: a variety types comprehension

questions (wh + how questions, yes-no questions,
true/false ideas, choice questions, matching elements,
completing ideas with information from the reading
passage, etc.) that cover all the text paragraphs and ideas in
purpose of understanding the text content.
- Text exploration related activities in terms of translation
of the texts' key terms and specialized vocabulary, and
driving learners' attention to the overwhelming syntactic
and textual features of the reading passage prior to moving
to teach grammar based on the content of the reading text.
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- As far as teaching writing is concerned, it has often been

remarked that writing is the most difficult of the language
abilities to acquire as it is perceived by learners in various
empirical studies.
- In any attempt to determine the elements that should be
covered, teachers should consider such components as
accuracy (maintains consistent grammatical control of
simple and complex language), fluency, interaction,
coherence (coherent and cohesive discourse, appropriate
use of a variety of organizational patterns and a wide range
of connectors and other cohesive devices).
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

The requirements needed for the formation of

appropriate skills in the writing, the following objectives
should be achieved:
(1)Organize paragraphs, make headings and sub-headings;
(2) interpret, compare and contrast tables, charts and
diagrams; in technical writing related to science and
technology fields.
(3) make an outline that organizes ideas logically;
(4) use logical connectors for linking sentences and
paragraphs
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

(5) proof-read and revise of various documentation

related to the topic of writing;
(6) use grammatical structures needed to express
appropriate functions and terms flexibly, and produce
texts in the academic and professional areas;
(7) use language forms appropriate to academic register;
(8) have a good range of relevant vocabulary
(terminology and abbreviations) needed in academic and
professional areas.
(Lubianova, 2015: 37)
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

In administering any writing activity, instructors should pay

attention to the following criteria:
(1) Would the learners find the writing activity motivating,
stimulating and interesting to do ?
(2) Is it of an appropriate level for them ? Or would they find it
too easy, difficult, sophisticated ?
(3) Is the kind of writing relevant to their needs ?
(4) Would the teacher needs to do some preliminary teaching
in preparation for this activity ?
(5) Are the topics of writing activities relevant to the learners'
academic branch ?
 Teaching Reading and Writing Skills

- Giving corrective feedback on writing is of great importance.

- When a student submits a piece of original writing, the most
important about it is its content, whether the ideas or
details that are written about are significant and interesting.
- Next, there is the organization and the presentation,
whether the ideas are arranged in a way that is easy to
follow and pleasing to read.
- Finally, there is the issue of language forms, whether the
grammar, vocabulary, spelling are of an acceptable standard
of accuracy.