How to integrate the skills
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The document discusses the importance of integrating language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing - when teaching English as a foreign language. It argues that teaching skills in isolation, without relating them to each other, leads to rote learning rather than meaningful learning. Learners need comprehensible input in order to produce output, and all four skills should be developed together to mirror real-world language use. The document recommends using techniques like tuning students into activities, providing comprehensible input, and creating natural contexts for communication to facilitate language acquisition.
How to integrate the skills
- 1. HOW TO INTEGRATE THE SKILLS.<br />I must confess that every time I read about teaching and related issues I feel overwhelmed of the great responsibility and demands we have in our hands. For instance, planning an English course does not only mean selecting the topics without taking into account the importance of students needs. I would say that most of the times we, as teachers overlook some important aspects such as context, needs, background, and learners likes and dislikes in order to make successful classes and to avoid failure classes. That is why teaching cannot be only assessed in terms of classroom activities,it is important to reflect on knowledge , planning and methodology to prevent poor performance in the teaching and learning process.Nevertheless, there are some additional factors that affect the teaching process,for these reasons I would support this reflection paper on providing some another aspects which have been ignored but they could be useful in the teaching and learning process.<br />. <br />First, it is a must for us to consider lots of challenges: Government policies, PEIs, diverse students needs, technological advances, ,which remember us to look for alternatives in teaching English as Foreign Language. However, some teachers think that planning the content of a course means to select a book, following everything that is included making easier the teachers planning task. But , what about the learners needs and interests ?. Besides, most of the books sometimes are totally unreal to apply in our context.<br />Therefore, planning content is making our mind clear taking into account contextualization, real communication and meagninful learning.We know that desygning a plan it is a challenge for us as teachers and because of this reason we prefer sometimes to take the easiest way because it is much more difficult to respond to the learners needs and interests.<br />Second, we have to take into account the standars when we design a study plan that have been designed based on a Foreign Framework (CEF) was not centered in the specif characteristics of our country, and teachers did not participate in the design, but they have to implement them in the syllabuses. Then in our country , teachers will not have any possibility to set the syllabuses in different ways, not even the objectives because everything is included in the standards.Based on the previous aspects, it is worthwhile mentioning that learning a foreign language is not just to develop in the students competence and performance, but also showing them that as a language, English must be seen as a whole and for that reason skills cannot be taught separately. <br />It is then essential to take into account the different skills such as, listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to have a good success as foreign language. Besides, it is important for us as future teachers to know how to mix those abilities, and to apply them into our classes because we have to overlay the absence of a real context. For those reasons, it is vital to take into account some contributions from some researches in order to have a deep reflection how to integrate those skills.<br />According to Chomsky (1.991) Language is systematically in such a way, it is an integration of abilities, they cannot be applied isolated if we want to have good results in our teaching. The principal purpose of this integration is to make language functional and that is why skills cannot be divided when teaching . Besides, we have to exploit of the numerous advantages that we can obtain if we teach the skills in an integrated way than in an isolated one. Some of these great advantages it is to make the language functional specially in our context where learners do not have so much contact with the <br />English language and this absence has to be overlay with the English classes because language is not divided by pieces like rote learning.According to Asubels subsumption (1.963 , p,92) it is necessary to highlight that learning must be meaningful instead of rote. He described rote learning as the process of isolated blocks with no particular function in the building of a structure and no relationship to other blocks and meagningful learning is described as the process whereby blocks become an integral part of already established categories or systematic clusters of blocks. The evidence seems to indicate that if we teach a language with isolated skills the knowledge can be divided by blocks, and there are not relationships between the learning, making our students develop short term memory as rote learning .<br />However, if we apply our classes taking into account the integration of the four skills, our pupils can acquire the learning in a meaningful way and they can relate the knowledge getting a long term memory. For this reason it is important to involve the skills in order to have successful learners because we do not need students that develop just one skill we need students where they can speak, write, listen, and read. <br />Another aspect that it is important to take into account in this reflection is that every skill has its function in the language and they are associated to obtain succesful learning. Speaking plays a vital role in this process and if we want to develop speaking first , we require input (listening) As Krashen (1.982 p, <br /> said Speaking is the result of acquisition and not its cause. Speech cannot be taught directly, but rather emerges on its own as a result o f building competente via comprensible input. So speaking and listening are related because first, a learner<br />needs to receive instructions, vocabulary , expressions from the tutor in order to know how the language works. In this process it is important how the teacher encourages his or her students in order to use the language. <br />This encouragement has to be through different strategies where pupils feel the need to express their own feelings, opinions and comments through real communication, to be aware that English is a functional language, it is not just memorizing, repetitions and drills. <br />The learner has to be conscious that he or she can use the language to give his or her comments, opinions and ideas where the learner does not learn a piece of a text but heart, it has to go beyond that memorizing. Nevertheless, it is important to take into account the writing and reading skill in order to complete the acquisition process of a second language . Unfortunately, most of the English teachers in our region apply the traditional teaching and they focus the writing process in grammar structures where the learner has to understand how each grammar structure works. <br /> We know that this aspect is important but we have to develop it through strategies where the learners could be able to discover how the language is structured as Hymes (1972) stated that what is crucial is not so much a better understanding of how language is structured internally, but a better understanding of how language is used. Moreover, when the learner receives enough meaningful input he or she is going to be conscious about grammar mistakes in his or her production but we have to remember at the beginning o f a language acquisition process it is essential that learners make errors because it helps it to get fluency in his output and to speak with less grammar errors. Another skill that plays an important role in a language is reading but Reading is not just to read some texts, it demands a big effort in order to understand and comprehend a reading. But we have to take into account different aspects in this skill such as:studentss background in the English language, vocabulary, type of learners and strategies that make aware the importance of developing of this skill.<br />The teachers talk plays a vital source in reading activities because the teacher has to take into account the type of reading and it has to be understandable and comprehensible for the students and if we can exposed to children to real language trought readings it could be better in order to increase his or her understanding to the second language. When the student acquires the necessary tools he or she can start giving ouput with reading using the speaking skill. <br />According to Krashens input hypothesis ,(1.985) If input is understood, and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar the learner needs to learn is automatically provided. The language teacher does not need to teach the next structure along a continuum of learnability or difficulty it will be provided in just the right quantities and automatically reviewed if the student receives a sufficient amount of comprehensible input.<br />In a few words, I think that it must therefore be recognised that the root of the teaching problem is not grammar structures, there is a biggest trouble and it is how to develop a meaningful and clear communication between learner and teacher in order to facilitate the language acquisition process. As Underwood (1,989) pointed out that before start ing a task it is important to tune students with the activitys expectations in order to avoid misunderstandings in the teacher and students interaction . <br /> Besides, input plays an important role because , students need to understand and comprehend the language before they give output, and it is develop by teachers input that must be providing to students with almost real communicative situations in an artificial environment .Because of this reason it is important to take into account the environment . So, we need to change our mind creating natural context where our students can express their ideas in order to decrease languages fears and to increase self esteem with the language and at the end students can get right with any grammar rule. <br />