Language Skills
There are 4 basic Language Skills
You can see that these can be grouped in different ways:
- method of communication: oral (listening/speaking) or written (reading/writing)
- direction of communication: receiving (listening/reading) or producing (speaking/writing)
In general, the way in which we learn these skills are in this order: listening, speaking, reading, writing.
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Listening
Listening is not only hearing but also understanding what is being said. In general there are two kinds of listening: active where we are in a face to face conversation or on the phone, etc; and passive when we watch television or listen to the radio.
Within this skill area there are also sub-skills which need to be learnt:
- discriminate among the distinctive sounds in the new language
- recognise stress and rhythm patterns, tone and intonation
- recognise reduced forms of words
- distinguish word boundaries
- recognise typical word-order patterns
- recognise vocabulary
- detect key words, such as those identifying topics and ideas
- guess meaning from context
- recognise grammatical word classes
- recognise basic syntactic patterns
- recognise cohesive devices
- detect sentence constituents, such as subjects, verbs, objects, prepositions, and so on
Speaking
As with listening, speaking can be active or passive. Active speaking is when we speak on the phone or face to face and there is interaction between the speaker and listener. Passive speaking is when we speak with no interruptions or feedback from others (e.g. giveing a speech).
Sub-skills here include:
- pronunciation
- using stress, rhythm and intonation well enough so that people can understand what is said
- using the correct forms of words
- putting words together in correct word order
- using appropriate vocabulary
- using the appropriate language register
- building an argument
Reading
Reading is well developed in most societies. Sub-skills here include:
- deciphering the script (Roman, Greek, Chinese and so on)
- recognising vocabulary
- picking out key words
- understanding the meaning of the words (sometimes from context)
- recognising grammatical word classes: nouns, adjectives, etc
- recognising basic syntax
- use our real-world knowledge to infer meaning
- distinguishing the main idea from supporting details
- adjust reading strategies to different reading purposes: skimming, reading for gist, reading for detail, studying, etc
Writing
Sub-skills here include:
- spelling, alphabet and punctuation
- using the correct grammar
- using the correct vocabulary
- style appropriate to the circumstances:
- prose
- poetry
- business reports
- love letter
- resignation letter
- memo
- shopping list
