Four Skills Activities: Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening

When a teacher makes use of activities that have been specially designed to incorporate several
language skills simultaneously (such as reading, writing, listening, and writing), they provide
their students with situations that allow for well-rounded development and progress in all areas
of language learning. In her reflection, Anna refers to activities that make use of the four skills
but she is not quite sure how to plan activities that incorporate all four. In this section we will
discuss the 'four skills' as well some activities that can be used in the classroom to promote all
four.
What are the four skills?

Reading (comprehension skill)

Listening (comprehension skill)

Speaking (production skill)

Writing (production skill)

How are the four skills used in the language classroom?

Through daily activities, teachers provide learners with opportunities to develop each skill:
students listen (to the teacher use the target language, to a song, to one another in a pair activity),
speak (pronunciation practice, greetings, dialogue creation or recitation, songs, substitution
drills, oral speed reading, role play), read (instructions, written grammar drills, cards for playing
games, flashcards) and write (fill-in-the-blank sheets, sentences that describe a feeling, sight or
experience, a dialogue script, a journal entry).
This approach, however, does not combine the four skills so that they can be used together to
reach the same end (i.e. language development that is well-rounded).
How can the four skills be used together effectively?
The four skills work in tandem when the activities that require their use are designed to support
learners in the process of learning, creating and producing a specific product. Four approaches in
particular are structured so that the four skills can be used simultaneously. These approaches are:
the focal skill approach, content-based instruction, task-based instruction and the project-based
approach.
The Focal Skill Approach

The goal of the focal skill approach is studying in the SL in order to acquire it. This second
language curriculum stresses the balanced development of listening, speaking, reading and
writing by measuring competency in each skill and then focusing on the development of the
weakest skill. Resources like those developed by the International Center for Focal Skills (ICFS)
use placement tests to identify weak skill areas.
Content-based Instruction(CBI)Oxford (2001) describes approaches to CBI, which include
theme-based & adjunct learning. Theme-based CBI focuses on a theme of high interest to
students and develops a wide range of language skills around that theme. The learning of the
content requires considerable exposure to a variety of forms of information, which, in turn,
requires the use of all four modalities.
In the adjunct form of CBI, language and content courses are taught separately but are carefully
coordinated so that literacy, oral language development and thinking skills are positively
enhanced. In this approach, the content teacher presents content to students while the language
teacher brings vocabulary, grammar and subskill development to students attention through
typical exercises, all of which focus on the lexicon of the content.
Task-based Instruction(TBI)According to Nunan (1999), task-based instruction (TBI) uses tasks
or stand-aline activities which require comprehending, producing, manipulating or interacting in
the target language. The amount of listening, speaking, reading and writing involved to complete
the problem posed by the task is dictated by the task itself; however, most complex (multi step)
real-life tasks that take learners into the world outside the classroom will utilize all four skills.
TBI helps learners explore the multitude of communication opportunities provided in their
surroundings. The tasks themselves are scaffolded according to the cognitive demand required to
complete them and can be carried out individually, in pairs or in small cooperative groups.
Project-based approach

This approach concretizes the integration of not only the four skills but also language, culture,
experience and learning strategies (Turnbull, 1999). With the careful selection of a final project
that requires learners to demonstrate what they have learned through both oral and written
production, the teacher plans backwards to identify what aspects of language, culture, experience
and learning strategies are required to complete the end project.
What are some examples of activities that integrate the four skills?
Two activities that make use of all four skills in tandem are Self-introduction and Reading and
Retell.

Self-introduction takes the answers to a series of personal questions (name, age, grade level,
where you live, members of your family, favourite sports, animals, colours, subjects, etc.) and
sequences them into a self introduction. Students are given large visuals to trigger each
component of the self introduction. The teacher can point to each picture while modeling a selfintroduction (students are listening) and then invite learners to introduce themselves (speaking)
to one or two if their peers. Some of the visuals can then be changed and the students can be
invited to introduce themselves to others in the class to whom they have never spoken. This
activity can be adapted to become a regular (daily, weekly) warm-up activity to get learners
talking in the target language. Having covered listening and speaking in the oral selfintroduction, a scenario can then be created wherein learners must write a self-introduction to a
potential homestay host. The same picture cues can be used, reconfigured to show a salutation,
closing and signature. The picture cues provide learners with support without giving them a text
to memorize.
In multilevel SL classes, graded readers can be excellent springboards for another activity that
integrates the four skills- a reading and retell. First, learners select a book or story at their own
level and read it. Learners are then given a template to follow to summarize their thoughts about
the story (writing). The summary is designed to help learners gauge the amount of detail required
in a retell. After additional practice reading the summary silently and aloud several times,
learners are asked to select two or three illustrations from the book to help them tell the story.
They then practice telling the story by using the pictures and remembering what they wrote in the
template. Students find a partner who has not read the same story and retell (speaking) their story
to one another using the selected illustrations. Partners not only listen to the retell but also
complete a feedback checklist (writing) about the retell. After reading the feedback, partners
switch roles.
Why are four skills activities useful?

Four skills activities in the language classroom serve many valuable purposes: they give learners
scaffolded support, opportunities to create, contexts in which to use the language for exchanges
of real information, evidence of their own ability (proof of learning) and, most important,
confidence.
Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening? Which is most important and why?

Reading, Writing, Speaking or Listening? What should I learn first?

English language teaching is frequently broken into the four domains of reading, writing,
speaking and listening. A room full of English language teachers will often debate about the

relative importance of each domain and offer differing opinions as to which domain is the most
important to learn.
My perspective upon English language acquisition is that each area of English is equally
important and the development of one area tends to accelerate learning in another. For example,
a student with fluent conversational skills will often learn to read and write more quickly than a
student who is less fluent, whereas a student who is an avid reader may learn conversational
skills at a rapid rate because they have increased levels of vocabulary. Therefore, exposure to all
domains of English holds equal importance because each can accelerate the acquisition of
language skills in the others domain.
As the English language learning co-ordinator at TIS, parents, students and teachers will often
ask me questions like, How do you get good at English quickly? My advice is typically simple
but it involves a huge amount of time and commitment from parents, students and teachers. If
you want to get good at English, you need to find ways to read, write, speak and listen to as
much English as you can. In an English learning environment such as Macau, this can be tricky,
since the predominant languages, both spoken and written, are Cantonese and Mandarin. As a
result, many of our students struggle to get enough exposure to English whether it be in the
domain of reading, writing, speaking or listening.
More than anything I recommend that our students become active participants in their learning of
English. For example, our students can choose to work on their conversational skills in the
hallway, during classroom conversations, at school events or on teams and clubs. Reading skills
can be developed throughout the day in their content area classes, and at home through materials
borrowed from our library. Students can choose to work on their listening skills by watching the
news, television shows, movies, conversing with friends or listening to music. Writing skills can
be fostered by taking care when completing homework to accurately convey ideas. Students
should continually ask for feedback in regards to vocab, organization and grammar.
Overall, I encourage our teachers, students and parents to acknowledge the complex and
interactive nature of English language acquisition. Therefore, to become fluent at English, read,
write, speak and listen as much as possible. Find interesting books to read, people to talk to,
extra-curricula activites to join and media to interact with. Be proactive in your learning so that
you are genuinely engaged and enjoy the process of mastering a language!
DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS
Listening is the first receptive skill developed by language learners in both their first and second
language. In the latter case, the level of listening comprehension normally increases in parallel

with the students linguistic competence, but this does not mean that the listening skill can
develop naturally or by itself.
To develop listening proficiency, learners still need intensive and extensive exposure to
authentic listening material, as well as relevant classroom training. Using authentic materials
provide exposure to a wide range of more or less culture-bound contexts and topics, as well as to
varieties of English (British, American, Australian) or particular regional accents. This is not
only more challenging than listening to the teachers voice, but also helpful in teaching elements
of culture and developing cross-cultural competencies regarding the English speaking world.
That is why any balanced language programme should include a wide range of listening
activities on a variety of topics. The materials should be relevant for the students age, level and
interests. Classroom listening is essential in developing effective listening strategies and skills,
even if students can also train these skills independently, through extensive exposure outside the
classroom, by listening to music, watching films, documentaries, etc.
In any language, listening is an essential part of everyday social or professional interaction.
Alongside reading, listening is the main channel through which we get information and learn
about the world. Whatever the medium involved face to face interaction or the mass media
we listen to a wide variety of context-bound discourses and for different purposes, which
determine the listening strategies we use.
DEVELOPING READING SKILLS

Reading is a receptive skill which, like listening, presupposes language comprehension rather
than production. Understanding the content of a written text means interpreting each of its
constitutive components: information (integrating the old with the new), structure
(comprehending sentence/text grammar), lexis (recognising letters/words, guessing meaning)
text organisation (interpreting the use of paragraphing and linking devices for text cohesion and
coherence) and context (assigning the text to a text type).
These are the implicit reader operations/tasks underlying text comprehension, which means that
a fluent reader interacts with the text at several levels, contributing meaning to the text on the

basis of previous experience. Therefore classroom procedures and tasks should reflect the
purposeful, task-based, interactive nature of real life reading and exercise types should, as far as
possible, approximate to cognitive reality. This refers to the cognitive experience which the
reader inherently brings to a text.
DEVELOPING SPEAKING SKILLS

Speaking and writing skills belong to the category of productive skills, as they require learners to
produce language input, oral or written. Of course, we can talk about learner language
production only with reference to free practice, communicative activities, based entirely or at
least to a large extent on student input.
Needless to say, productive skills are more difficult to develop than comprehension skills,
and require more time and effort on the part of both teacher and learners. With speaking and
writing, progress is often slow and not so readily evident or so accurately measurable. Building
fluency takes time and requires patience, sustained effort, plenty of confidence-building
activities, as well as constant encouragement and positive feedback from the teacher.
As in the other areas of language and skills practice, speaking practice includes
controlled, semi-controlled and free practice activities, in which teacher or student control over
language depends on language proficiency level, activity focus and type (accuracy/fluency). As
various types of more or less controlled speaking activities have already been illustrated in the
previous chapters, this chapter will focus on free speaking, interactive, fluency building
activities, aimed at developing oral communication skills.
DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS

Writing is, arguably, the most difficult skill to develop, as it requires time, effort and application
on the part of the students. It is a product-oriented activity with a more tangible outcome. The
likelihood of making mistakes and being penalised for them is much higher, therefore raising
motivation for writing is harder to achieve. In contrast with speaking, writing is a less natural

activity and channel of everyday communication, where feedback is not instant, but delayed, and
bad, careless grammar is hardly acceptable, especially in formal style text-types.
For this reason, students need constant and sustained guidance and encouragement with
their writing, so a sensitive attitude and positive feedback on the teachers part are essential. Far
too often, teachers may simply evaluate a piece of writing by negative marking, that is by
focusing on what the student failed to do rather than considering what the student has achieved.
That is why the students should be made aware of the nature of writing as a process which
requires careful crafting, revising and editing. Moreover, they should be involved in selfevaluation and self-correction, activities which can lead to a sense of achievement, thus helping
increase confidence and motivation.
Motivation is at a premium in getting students to write. If we consider the learners long-term
needs, writing may be considered by many as the least important of the four skills, since few
students are likely to have much use for writing in the foreign language. Realistically speaking,
they are more likely to listen to, read and speak English than to write it. Besides, they might not
often write in their first language. Other daunting problems for learners may be related to
spelling difficulty, complex punctuation, stylistic confusions between spoken and written English
and the stronger possibility of L1 interference.