Teaching and Integrating the Four Language Skills

Integrated skills occur not only in the teaching and learning plan but also in the daily life such listening to someone’s speaking and responding it through oral or written form. In the teaching and learning activity, the teacher should pay attention to four points. First, providing comprehensible input to evolve the productive skills. Second, since the learners have different characteristics in learning, integrated skill may become the most suitable method to maximize those four skills. Third, since communication is both receptive and productive, the learners can experiment a topic through four skills. Fourth, the use of top-down or bottom-up can be very helpful yet the teacher should also consider the learners’ characteristics and conditions.

There are two types of teaching integrated skills especially the receptive skills. First, the learners are encouraged to read the whole text to comprehend the meaning. Second, the learners only need to read the specific information to get the meaning. The rules of language should be firstly considered by the teacher to teach. There are some conditions that the learners should pay attention in productive skills. Different people should be responsed through different ways. Thus, it relates to discourse and socio-cultural ordinance.

However, the reality often shows the opposites. Although they have been taught to use appropriately use the skills, they still face many difficulties. The appropriate and suitable diction to express becomes the main problem. They cannot remember the most suitable ones. Paraphrasing and improvising can be considered as the techniques to underscore. It is believed that presenting their own writing in front of their friends becomes one of the completions to implement the teaching of integrated skills.

A Commonly Found Question

Question	:	In the case of EFL classroom, students mostly find difficulties in balancing their language skills both receptive and productive skills. What is your suggestion to cope with this problem?
Answer	:	In teaching integrated skills, one of the most effective models to use is task-based teaching since it contains series of various activities. The teacher can create their own worksheet to help the students improve those four skills fairly. For example, the first task is listening skill through dictation and repetition by providing some examles. The second task is engaging the students to read the questions and the possible answers by providing the words in a box to complete the sentences and the writing task. It is expected that the comprehensive worksheet will be helpful to promote their comprehension in using the four language skills . also, it can be presented by making new sentences. In addition, extensive reading and listening are also beneficial for the students to have good proficiency in four language skills.

Critical Analysis

Receptive skills and productive skills are integrated and cannot be separated in communication. To interact with other people, we cannot utilize one skill yet four skills should be included such as reading an anouncement. After getting that written information by reading, we are encouraged to spread it by both spoken and written form. While informing it, other people will listen to us and this process is cyclical. Therefore, it is compulsory to teach the students the art of getting by those skills. Task-based teaching is believed as the most appropriate way to perform the integrated skills.

References

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.

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