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A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the TESOL Certificate Program at Universal Students Center , Montreal, Canada.
Table of Contents:
0. Introduction I. Language skills considered I.1. Receptive Skills I.2. Productive Skills II. Integrated Skills III. The challenge of teaching speaking IV. Conclusion
0. Introduction:
This research paper addresses the skill areas of language learning. I will first look into the nature of these skills by classifying them into groups. Then, I will discuss what is involved in learning these skills. After that, I will consider possible ways of approaching the teaching of these skills. Finally, I will examine the factors and intricacies involved in teaching the skill that poses difficulty to most second/foreign language learners, speaking.
groupings.
On the vertical axis, the skills are grouped according to whether they are oral or written. Listening and speaking are the skills necessary in face-to-face communication. For some learners, this is the main focus of their interest. Reading and writing are the skills necessary in written communication, and this is the main motivation for other learners. So in our teaching procedure, we should take into consideration the purpose of the program taught and the needs of the students. When teaching English to prospective flight attendants or tourist guides, we might have listening and speaking as the focus of the program. But when teaching English for academic purposes (eg. to science researchers), we might want to focus on reading and writing, the purpose being to aid students carry out their research more than to turn them into public speakers. On the horizontal axis, the skills are grouped according to whether they are receptive or productive. Listening and reading are referred to as receptive skills because they are both used to receive language which was produced (either in oral or written form) by someone else. In the same vein, speaking and writing can be grouped together because they are both used when producing language. To this extent, we can call them productive skills.
which will make them better readers of English, or get more practice in the skills of purposeful reading?" It is worth emphasising one obvious difference between listening and reading. With a written text, one can go backward and forward at will. A spoken text is usually only there for the moment it is spoken. If students panic over a few unknown words, they can easily miss the whole point of a message. So, when teaching listening, it is even more important to build up the students' sense of purpose and strategy, coupled with an attitude of confidence in the face of possible uncertainty.
It is my observation, as both a learner and teacher of second languages, that writing CAN help develop speaking skills, but not the other way round. It also occurs to me that what several people are noticing is that the 'writing' that can help speaking is the kind of writing that is really a kind of script for speaking and not the highly conventionalized system that can be significantly remote from day to day speech. 'Real' writing might not assist speaking very much, but speech written down could surely help in many ways. In developing the four skills, we constantly refer to the importance of taking language from relevant sources, and producing language towards relevant ends. These are the keys to motivation. From a teacher's pespective, which of these skills poses difficulty for the student? It is my view that, the most challenging skill for the language learner is speaking.
I would, for instance, start by asking individual students to name the last film they saw. Did they enjoy it? Was it funny? Serious? Violent? The replies I get at this point will be fairly limited, but at least the topic has been introduced and the students are enjoying thinking about movies. After that, I would draw the students' attention to the issue of violence in films. I would ask questions like: Is there too much? Does it matter? Should anything be done about it? etc. I would then put the class into groups. In one group, the students would have to think (and make notes about) the level of violence in films and what effects it might have. In another group, students would have to think of (and make notes about) ways of stopping the portrayal of violence in films. In another group, students would have to think up (and make notes about) reasons why the level of violence in films is quite justifiable and unworrying. When students have had a chance to think of ideas (with me going around the class offering help where necessary), I would ask for an opinion about violence from one of the groups. When a student has given it, I would encourage other students to ask questions about that opinion. I would then ask a different student to say what could be done about it, and that student, in turn, would be questioned. Finally, I would ask a student from the 'violence is not worrying' group to disagree with the violence in movies is a bad thing. This kind of activity enables students to make use of the language functions they have learned. When the ativity has run out of steam, I could work on any language arising out of the activity. There are many discussion possibilies. The important thing is that students need to be engaged with the topic. They then might do some study (if there is a necessity for language input, facts or figures, for example) and move quickly to active stages which include the discussion itself. Alomost certainly, however, there will be feedback after the discussion is over.
IV. Conclusion
Mastering the four language skills constitutes the backbone of second and foreign language learning. Any formal teaching of English should then include these skill areas. The achievement of communicative competence, however, requires, in particular, the skill of speaking more than any other one. So, efforts should be made to work toward a product-based kind of approach to teaching the four language skills. That is, an approach which aims at developing all the skills for the sake of the productive ones.