Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening ... Oh My! (04/09/14)

Ideally, integrating the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening encourages a whole language approach, which focuses on two or more interrelated skills.  Some may argue, according to Brown (2007), that integration diminishes the importance of the rules for listening, speaking, reading and writing that are unique to each individual skill.  Chapter 17 highlights the four skills and shares insight into teaching models of skills integration.

• Content-Based Instruction allows learners to acquire knowledge and skills beyond bits and pieces of language taught in a regular language classroom.

• Task-Based Language Teaching is a well-integrated approach to instruction in which users undertake practical real-world tasks to experience the functional purpose for language learning.

• Theme-Based Instruction is also considered "topic-based" teaching and can serve the multiple interests of students, offering a focus on content while adhering to  the curriculum standards.

•  Experiential Learning includes activities that involve both cerebral hemispheres, contextualize the language, integrate skills, and point toward authentic purposes for language outside of the classroom.

• The Series Method (based on the episode hypothesis) presents language in a format that is structured episodically (an easy to follow storyline) and is easier to reproduce, understand, and recall.

Other chapters are committed specifically to each of the skills.   Chapter 20 on teaching reading explores strategies for reading comprehension.  The use of prereading, during-reading and after-reading activities are encouraged as they cause students to be interactive with reading passages.

Chapter 21 is devoted to teaching writing and highlights the "process versus product" for this skill.  A few benefits to process approaches are: allowing students to discover their own voice, offering learners an opportunity to engage in meaningful writing; and providing a sense of audience and authentic tasks. Process is not the end; it is the means to the end (product).

Chapter19, which covers teaching Speaking, encourages a focus on both fluency and accuracy, which do not include activities like mindless, repetitious drills.

Chapter 18 is devoted to teaching listening, and sheds light on what makes listening difficult.  I would have to say that the rate of delivery may be the number one culprit. Nearly every language learner initially believes that native speakers talk too fast.

These brief snippets are nothing compared to the chapters themselves, which can be found in Teaching by Principles, An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, by H. Douglas Brown.

Brown, H. D. (2007). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language

     pedagogy (3rd edition). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

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