Four Basic language skills

Four Basic language skills

Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. 

The following modules will briefly describe some characteristics of each basic skill in this module group:

1.    Listening:

 Introduction:

 Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. Its really mean is listening and understanding what we hear. Here we will briefly describe some of what is involved in learning to understand what we hear in a second language.

 Listening Situations:

There are two kinds of listening situations in which we find ourselves:

1)   Interactive. 2) Non-interactive

1)  Interactive listening situations:Include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner.

2)   Non-interactive listening situations: are listening to the radio, TV, films, lectures, or sermons. In such situations we usually don't have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition.

Ø  Micro-skills:

Richards (1983, cited in Omaggio) proposes that the following are the micro-skills involved in understanding what someone says to us. The listener has to:

·         Retain chunks of language in short-term memory

·         discriminate among the distinctive sounds in the new language

·         Recognize stress and rhythm patterns, tone patterns, intonation pattern.

·         recognize reduced forms of words

·         recognize vocabulary

·         detect key words, such as those identifying topics and ideas

·         guess meaning from context

2.      Speaking:

Introduction:

        

Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words.

>  Speaking Situations:

There are three kinds of speaking situations in which we find ourselves:

1)      Interactive

2)      Partially interactive

3)      Non-interactive

1)      Interactive speaking situations: Include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner.

2)      Partially interactive: such as when giving a speech to a live audience, where the convention is that the audience does not interrupt the speech. The speaker nevertheless can see the audience and judge from the expressions on their faces and body language whether or not he or she is being understood.

        

3)       Non-interactive: such as when recording a speech for a radio broadcast.

  Micro-skills:

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in speaking. The speaker has to:

        

·         Pronounce the distinctive sounds of a language clearly enough so that people can distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions.

·         Use stress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough so that people can understand what is said.

·         Use the correct forms of words. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, or gender.

·         Put words together in correct word order.

·         Use vocabulary appropriately.

·         Use the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship to the conversation partner.

·         Make clear to the listener the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatever means the language uses.

·         Make the main ideas stand out from supporting ideas or information.

·         Make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what you are saying.

3.      Reading skill:

Ø  Introduction:

Reading is the receptive skill in the written mode. It can develop independently of listening and speaking skills, but often develops along with them, especially in societies with a highly-developed literary tradition. Reading can help build vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later stages, particularly.

Ø  Micro-skills:

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in reading. The reader has to:

·         Pick out key words, such as those identifying topics and main ideas.

·         Figure out the meaning of the words, including unfamiliar vocabulary, from the (written) context.

·         Get the main point or the most important information.

·         Distinguish the main idea from supporting details.

·         adjust reading strategies to different reading purposes, such as skimming for main ideas or studying in-depth

4.      Writing skill:

Ø  Introduction:

Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. It, too, is more complicated than it seems at first, and often seems to be the hardest of the skills, even for native speakers of a language, since it involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way.

Ø  Micro-skills:

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in writing. The writer needs to:

·         Use the orthography correctly, including the script, and spelling and punctuation conventions.

·         Use the correct forms of words. This may mean using forms that express the right tense, or case or gender.

·         Put words together in correct word order.

·         Use vocabulary correctly.

·         Use the style appropriate to the genre and audience.

·         Make the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, and object, clear to the reader.

·         Make the main ideas distinct from supporting ideas or information.

·         Make the text coherent, so that other people can follow the development of the ideas.

·         Judge how much background knowledge the audience has on the subject and make clear what it is assumed they don't know.