Teaching Language Skills-Integrating the Four Skills

By: Gita Rahmi

Materials for Presentation A. Introduction B. The Summary of Materials 1. Teaching the Four Skills 2. Input and Output 3. Top Down and Bottom Up 4. Models of Teaching Integrated Skills 5. Receptive Skills 6. Productive Skills 7. Projects C. Synthesis/ Comments D. Conclusion E. Bibliography

A TAPESTRY

A LOOM

LISTENING

READING

SPEAKING

WRITING

Skills

Listening

Speaking

Reading

Writing

Receptive skills

Listening

Reading

Productive skills

Speaking

Writing

A. Introduction

• In daily life, skills are used in integrated ways not in isolated ones.

• It is impossible to separate one skill to another when you communicate with others.

• Integrating the skills is also about receptive and productive skills.

• Integrating all skills

Teaching the four skills

HARMER, J (2007)

Communication will be wothwhile if it happens in

integrated language skills, not segregated one.

Richards & Rodgers (2001)

There is an approach related to teaching the skills

together, it is called WHOLE LANGUAGE.

Whole language is a theory of language instruction that was

developed to help young children to read, and has also been

extended to middle and secondary levels and to the teaching of ESL

Richards & Rodgers (2001)

Reasons why people need to integrate the language skills:

• Production and reception are two sides of the same coin

• Interaction means sending and receiving messages

• Written and spoken language often bear a relationship each other

• The interrelationship of written and spoken language

• Involving all the four skills to the classroom • One skill often reinforces the others • Natural performance involves the skills.

ACTIVATE

ENGAGE

STUDY

PATCHWORK MODEL

Examples of integrating skills

1. Speaking as preparation and stimulus

2. Texts as models

3. Texts as preparation and stimulus

4. Integrated tasks

Examples of learning sequences Stage 1: students complete form about physical

appearance( reading and speaking skills) Stage 2: students read a text take from novel Stage 3: students answer comprehension

questions (writing skills) Stage 4: students look for any language in the

text and discuss with class (reading&speaking)

Stage 5: students re-write the text Stage 6: students write and discuss the writing Stage 7: students listen to dialogue and make

role play

Input and Output Other

students’ feedback

Teacher’s

feedback

Audio/video tapes Native speakers in

person Native speaker in

media Reading and

pedagogic texts The teacher

Other students

participate

Student modifyies his/her

understanding Students see how it turns out

Speech writing

LANGUAGE STUDENTS

Input Output

Top down and bottom up

Bottom-up: listener and reader focus on such things

Top down: look for general view and helped by prior knowledge or schemata

Models of teaching integrated skills

1. Content Based Instruction (CBI)

“A model of teaching that integrates the learning of some specific subject matter content with the learning of second language”

Examples:

• Immersion programs for elementary –school children

• Sheltered English programs

• Writing across the curriculum

• English for specific purposes (ESP)

Challenges for teachers

• They have to teach particular course and also language

• They must have wide knowledge about many subjects

2. Theme Based Instruction (TBI)

Principles:

• Automaticity

• Meaningful learning

• Intrinsic motivation

• Communicative competence

Activities • Use environmental statistics and facts

for classroom reading, writing, discussion, and debate, like discuss issues and engage in formal debate

• Carry out research and writing projects

• Have students create their own environmental awareness material

• Arrange field trips

• Conduct simulation games

3. Experiential Learning

“Activities that engage both left- and right- brain processing that contextualize language, that integrate skills, and that point toward authentic and real world purposes”

Examples:

• Hands on projects

• Computer activities

• Research projects

• Cross cultural experiences

• Field trips and other “on site” visits

• Role plays and stimulations

4. The Episode Hypothesis

Presentation of language is enhanced if students receive interconnected sentences in an interest-provoking episode rather than in a disconnected series of sentences.

Contribution to integrated skills teaching:

• Stories or episodes challenge the teacher and the textbook writer to present and natural language.

• Episodes can be presented in either spoken or writer.

• Episodes can provide the stimulus for spoken or written questions.

• Students can be encouraged to write their own episodes or complete an episode.

• The written episodes might be dramatized in the class.

5. Task Based Teaching

• Meaning is primary

• There is some communication problem to solve

• There is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities

• Task completion has some priority

• The assessment of the task is in terms of outcome

Receptive Skills A basic metdological model for teaching

receptive skills

Lead in

T directs comprehension task

Ss read/listen

for task

T directs feedback

T directs text-

related task

Type task 2

T directs comprehension

task

Ss read/listen for task

T directs feedback

The Language Issue

Some specific ways to solve language difficulty:

• Pre-teaching vocabulary

• Extensive reading and listening

• Authenticity

Comprehension Task

Testing and teaching

Appropriate challenge

Productive skills a basic methodological model for teaching productive

skills

Lead in T sets

the task

T monitors the task

T gives task

feedback

Task related

follow-up

T sets the task

T monitors the task

T gives task feedback

SS have all information they need

Structuring discourse

Writing

• coherent

• cohesive

speaking

• Understand how to take turns

• Understand discourse markers

Interacting with an audience

• Depend on speaking ability

• Depenp on audience

• Depend on the way of responding to audiences’ reactions

speaking

• Style in writing

• Structure in writing Writing

Dealing with difficulty

Improvising

Discarding

Foreignising

paraphrasing

The language issue

Steps to help students achieve success:

• Supply key language

• Plan activities in advance

Projects

Managing the projects: • The briefing/ the choice • Idea/ language generation • Data gathering • Planning • Drafting and editing • The result • Cosultation/tutorial

A Webquest Project

Using computer to do research and there will be self evaluation for students after doing the activity and also evaluation from teacher.

Sythesis and comments

• Harmer’s theory (main source for the chapter report)

• Brown’ theory

• Richards and Rodgers’s theory

Conclusion

• Teaching integrated skills involves many skills.

• Different experts have different ways in discussing teaching four skills.

Bibliography • Brown, H.D. 2001. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive

Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Pearson Education.

• Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education.

• Hinkel, E. 2006. Current perspective on teaching the four skills. TESOL Quarterly. 40.1:113. Retrieved on September 25, 2012 from http://wha.arizona.edu/classes/ariew/slat596/Hinkel_4skills.pdf

• Oxford, R. 2001. Integrated skills in the ESL/EFL classroom. Eric Digest. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/digest_pdfs/0105-oxford.pdf 15

• Richards, J.C. and S.R. Theodore. 2001. Approaches and Metdos in Language Teaching, ( 2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.