Teaching the Four Skills

The four language skills are Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. These skills can be
broken down into two groups : Receptive (or Passive) and Productive (or Active) skills.
Listening and reading are both classed as receptive skills because they require learners to
receive language and understand it. Speaking and writing, on the other hand, are
productive skills which require students to produce language for themselves.

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1 - Extensive reading : is another type of
reading style that is practiced outside the
Teaching Reading skill classroom and the major ideas of this skill are
Reading skill is the ability to process texts, fully understand to encourage reading with enthusiasm, and to
their meaning, and integrate with what the reader already attain a general understanding of texts with a
knows. lesser amount of focusing on grammatical

❖ What is not reading ? details.

- Bringing boring texts or topics. - Intensive reading : is practicing

- Just telling students to read. reading inside the classroom with the

- Giving difficult instructions. supervision of a teacher and it demands

- A lot of difficult words in a text. focusing on details in order to comprehend the

❖ What are the reading subskills ? text appropriately, using specific aims and

- Scanning : is reading quickly to locate specific tasks.

information that we need, such as a date, a figure, or a name. ❖ How to teach reading ?
In scanning we focus our search only on the information we There are three stages the teacher should follow
want, passing quickly over all the irrelevant material. to teach reading :
- Skimming : is reading quickly to gain the general, - Pre-reading : Pre-reading tasks often
overall ideas of the whole text. Skimming helps you identify aim to raise the readers' knowledge of what they
whether or not to continue reading a book or an article. are about to read as this knowledge will prepare
them , motivate them, and build their interest.

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Approaches to use :
The teacher may open a discussion, role-
o Pre-teach vocabulary related to the texts topics.
play, or ask them to summarize the text
o Ask your students about what they know about the topic
and give their opinion about the topic. Here
o Prediction using the texts titles or visual aids.
teachers can integrate many skills like
o Use the star game on pictures to elicite information from
writing, speaking, and listening.
students.
Post-reading activities depend on the level
- While-Reading : While-Reading Activities are defined
of the students. If they are advanced
as activities that help students to focus on aspects of the text and
students give them summarizing or
to understand it better. The teacher here gives the text to
paraphrasing tasks. And if they are
students and asks them to read it silently and check their
beginners give them competing tasks or
predictions (this process is called skimming). Then the teacher
giving opinion tasks.
asks them to read again to answer the comprehension questions
(this Process is called scanning).
Comprehension questions need to be in chronological order
from easy to difficult to the most difficult this way you’ll have all
your students participate.
Order to follow :
o Multiple choices questions.
o True/False questions.
o Wh/questions.
o Complete the sentences tasks.
- Post-Reading : Post-reading activities help students
understand texts further, through critically analyzing what they
have read.

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2 o Accuracy : It refers to how correct
the speakers' use of the language system is,
Teaching Speaking skill including their use of grammar,
Speaking skill is the ability to communicate effectively. This pronunciation, and vocabulary.

skill allows us to convey our message in a passionate o Summarizing : Is stating the main

thoughtful and convincing manner. Speaking skill also helps ideas and findings of a text into students'
to assure that we will not be misunderstood by those who are own words.

listening. o Paraphrasing : Is changing the

words and phrasing of an original text, but
❖ What is not speaking ?
keeps the original meaning of that text.
- Asking students to read.
- Asking students from the start with no pre-vocabs When you're teaching speaking, your
taught, brainstorming, or prediction. objective is to meet the needs of your
- Using the mother tongue. students, if they are in need to improve
- Correcting students while speaking; teachers should Accuracy or Fluency, you must design
take notes of students' mistakes and correct them activities to help them improve what they
later. need. So the principal objective of teaching
- TTT is high and STT is low speaking is to strike a balance between
❖ What are the speaking subskills ? Fluency and Accuracy
- Pronunciation : Is the way in which a language or a ❖ How to teach speaking ?
particular word or sound is pronounced. There are three stages the teacher should
- Fluency : It is the quality of being able to speak or follow to teach speaking :
write a language, easily, well, and quickly.

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 - Pre-speaking : This stage prepares the students for - Post-speaking : Here the teacher
the context of the speaking and makes it much more gives the students some tasks which help
understandable for the students through: them produce their own language like:
o Lead-in questions. o Roleplay
o Visual Aids. o Debate
o Context (a conversation / text / ...). o Writing a story
o Predicting (title / pictures / ...). o Discussions
o Pre-teaching vocabulary. Or the teachers can have students reflect
- While-speaking : The teacher here assigns tasks to upon their performance and give their
students in chronological order from easy to difficult to the feedback and correct the mistakes that were
most difficult, in order to practice the language. noted before and shed light on some of the
o Task 1: Matching features of spoken language, among which
o Task 2 : Gap filling. are intonation, stress, and others.
o Task 3 : Complete the conversation.
Another possible way is: the teacher divides students into
groups and assigns them a communicative activity to help
them practice speaking skills. The role of the teacher here is to
give his feedback on their performances.
o Roleplay activities are very important because they give
students an opportunity to practice communication in
different social contexts and in different social roles.
o Games
o Students practice speaking by discussing some aspects of
a subject.

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3
- Pre-listening : This stage enables
the students to gain knowledge that is
needed for the listening task. This gained
knowledge gives the students confidence
that is necessary for successful listening.
Teaching Listening skill Two types of pre-listening tasks: bottom-up

Listening is the act of hearing attentively, which means being and top-down.

able to engage and later recall specific details without needing o Bottom-up listening refers to

information repeated. Without this ability of listening to the focusing on grammar and vocabulary in

messages effectively, they are usually misunderstood. order to understand the listening track, so a
bottom-up pre-listening activity would be
❖ Difficulties of teaching listening.
pre-teaching some vocabulary or grammar
o Students are trying to understand every word. that is central to the listening text.
o Students go back trying to understand what a previous o Top-down listening refers to using
word meant. background knowledge to understand a
o Students have problems with different accents listening text, so a top-down pre-listening
o Students are distracted. activity would involve asking students to
❖ What are the listening subskills ? recall what they know about the topic of the
listening track.
- Listening for gist (skimming).
- While-listening: This is the stage
- Listening for specific information (scanning).
where students listen and do a task. Many
- Listening for details
coursebooks feature tasks, such listening for
❖ How to teach listening ?
gist, listening for main ideas, making
inferences, and summarizing.

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Assigning a task can help students focus and develop
important strategies for language learning.
o Listening for gist : This means listening to get the
main idea, topic, or theme of the listening track.
o Listening for detail :This means listening to get
specific information.
o Making inferences : Here’s where students are
listening to get information not explicitly stated on the track.
Ideally, you should play the listening track 2 or 3 times, setting
a different task each time, going from easier to more difficult.
- Post-listening : It consists of tasks which main aim is
to check if the students have understood what they needed to
understand and evaluate development of listening abilities or
the practical use of selected listening strategies.
These are some example of Pre-Listening Activities
o Summarizing : Asking students to summarize the
information they heard, usually orally, sometimes in writing
to to check their understanding
o Discussions : The teacher can ask students to have a
short discussion about the topic from the listening task. This
may be done in pairs or groups.
o Detect problems : Get students to discuss what
problems came up during the listening; such as unknown
vocabulary.

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4
Pre-writing gives students the chance to
explore their ideas and plan how they are
going to address the writing topic.
Two popular pre-writing activities are:
o Brainstorming ( Discussion/
Teaching Writing skill Debates – Questioning –

Writing skills include all the knowledge and abilities related Interviewing)

to expressing ideas through the written word. These skills o Planning ( Orgnizing Ideas).

allow you to communicate your message with clarity and ease. - While-writing : In this stage,
students get asked to write their first draft
❖ What are the writing subskills ?
and tackle the ideas that were agreed upon
- Punctuating Correctly in the first stage. With beginner classes,
- Planning some clear modeling by the teacher is often,
- Linking (using linking words) required to help students transition
- Paragraphing effectively from Stage 1 to Stage 2. One way to
- Using the appropriate layout (structure) do this for your class is to take the sketches,
- Proofreading notes, and ideas one of the students has
❖ How to teach listening ? produced in Stage 1, and use them to model
writing a draft. This can be done as a whole
- Pre-writing : This is the planning phase of the
class shared writing activity. Doing this will
writing process, this is when students gather their
help your students understand how to take
information, by brainstorming, researching, and outlining
their raw material and connect their ideas
ideas, and begin to organize them into a cohesive unit, using
and transition between them in the form of
diagrams for mapping out their thoughts.
an essay.

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Then comes Correction and this can be self-correction or peer
correction and students, who identify their mistakes, may
proofread or edit their writings to finalize them.
- Post-writing : In this last step of the writing process,
the final writing is shared, the teacher may ask the students
to read their writings to the whole class, in groups or in pairs.
This helps students practice listening to and speaking about
their writing.

When you teach writing there are two ways to teach it based
on the level of your students:
o As a Product: This is a traditional approach, in
which students are encouraged to mimic a model text, which
is usually presented and analyzed at an early stage. With this
approach there is no creativity, there is only imitation.
o As a Process: This approach tends to focus more on
the varied classroom activities which promote the
development of language use: brainstorming, group
discussion, re-writing. With this approach there is creativity.

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