Language Learning: the four Skills
The four macro skills are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The receptive skills are listening and reading and the productive skills are speaking and writing.
Listening is a receptive skill in the oral mode. We can have two kinds of listening situations: interactive and non-interactive. Interactive listening situations include face to face conversations and telephone calls in which the listeners have the alternately to ask for clarification, repetition or slower speech from a partner. Some of the non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, TV, or lectures, where the listeners do not have the opportunity to ask for clarification.
Speaking is a productive skill in the oral mode. It involves pronouncing words. There are three situations: interactive speaking situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls. Some speaking situations are partially interactive and few speaking situations are non-interactive. The speaker has to: pronounce the sounds clearly and include tonal distinctions, use stress and the rhythmic intonation, use the correct forms of words and in the correct order, use vocabulary appropriately, make a discourse that people can follow what you are saying.
Reading is the receptive skill in the written mode. It can help build vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later stages. The reader has to: recognize vocabulary, grammatical words, basic system patterns, pick out words, use the knowledge , get the main point, distinguish the main idea.
Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. The writer needs: use orthography correctly, including spelling and punctuation, use the correct form of the words, put words in the correct order, use vocabulary correctly, make the main sentence constituents, make the text coherent.
All the skills should be practised and integrated in a lesson by the teacher because one skill cannot be...