Assignment on Four Skills of language; Listening skill, speaking skill, Reading skill, Writing skill

Name : Chauhan Hetal M

Course: M.A English

Paper No. :09

Paper Name : Modernist Literature

Semester:03

Roll No.:14

Email Id: hetalchauhan137@gmail.com

Submitted To: Dr. Dilip Barad,Smt.S.B.Gardi,Department Of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji, Bhavnagar University.

v  Listening skill, speaking skill, Reading skill, Writing skill

Why are the four skills useful?

In-order to become a well-rounded communicator one needs to be proficient in each of the four language skills. These four skills give learners opportunities to create contexts in which to use the language for exchange of real information, evidence of their own ability (proof of learning) and, most important, confidence. Listening and reading are the receptive skills because learners do not need to produce language, they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. The productive skills are speaking and writing because learners are applying these skills in a need to produce language. They are also known as active skills.

Ø  Listening

Listening is a receptive language skill which learners usually find the most difficult. This often is because they feel under unnecessary pressure to understand every word. The listener has to get oriented to the listening portion and be all ears. The listener is also required to be attentive.  Anticipation is a skill to be nurtured in Listening. In everyday life, the situation, the speaker, and visual clues all help us to decode oral messages. In due course of listening, be in a lookout for the sign post words. Thirdly one should be able to concentrate on understanding the message thoroughly. Listening Skills could be enhanced by focusing on making the students listen to the sounds of that particular language. This would help them with the right pronunciation of words. To equip students with training in listening, one can think about comprehending speeches of people of different backgrounds and regions. This intensive listening will ultimately help a student to understand more on the accents to be used and the exact pronunciation of words.

Background

Listening in language teaching has undergone several important influences, as the result of developments in anthropology, education, linguistics, sociology, and even global politics. From the time foreign languages were formally taught until the late nineteenth century, language learning was presented primarily in a written mode, with the role of descriptive grammars, bilingual dictionaries and 'problem sentences' for correct translation occupying the central role. Listening began to assume an important role in language teaching during the late-nineteenth-century Reform Movement, when linguists sought to elaborate a psychological theory of child language acquisition and apply it to the teaching of foreign languages. Resulting from this movement, the spoken language became the definitive source for and means of foreign language learning. Accuracy of perception and clarity of auditory memory became focal language learning skills. This focus on speech was given a boost in the 1930s and 1940s when anthropologists began to study and describe the world's spoken languages. Influenced by this anthropological movement, Bloomfield declared that 'one learns to understand and speak a language primarily by hearing and imitating native speakers' (Bloomfield 1942). In the 1940s American applied linguists formalized this 'oral approach' into the audio-lingual method with an emphasis on intensive oral-aural drills and extensive use of the language laboratory. The underlying assumption of the method was that learners could be 'trained' through intensive, structured and graded input to change their hearing 'habits'. (Nunan and Carter)

Ø  Speaking

Language is a tool for communication. We communicate with others, to express our ideas, and to know others’ ideas as well. We must take into account that the level of language input (listening) must be higher than the level of language production. In primary schools elocution and recitation are main sources to master the sounds, rhythms, and intonation of the English language through simple reproduction. The manifestations of the language in games and pair work activities are encouraging source to learn to speak the language. This assists the learners to begin to manipulate the language by presenting them with a certain amount of choice, albeit within a fairly controlled situation. This skill could be improved by understanding para-linguistic attributes such as voice quality, volume and tone, voice modulation, articulation, pronunciation etc. This could also be further enhanced with the help of debates and discussions.

Background

Disabling as a branch of teaching emerged for last two decades. Earlier there was not much importance of spoken discourse. There are three reasons for this.

First is traditional grammar translation method of language teaching. Teachers just teach grammatical rules and translate the words in native language. There is no scope for learner to speak language.

The second is technology: only since the mid-1970s has tape-recording been sufficiently cheap and practical to enable the widespread study of talk - whether native speaker talk (Carter and McCarthy 1997: 7) or learner talk - and use of tape recorders in the language classroom. Due to the difficulty of studying talk, it was easier for teachers, methodologists, applied linguists and linguists to focus on written language than spoken language (for nearly 20 years the TESOL convention has run annual colloquia on the teaching of reading and writing, but not on speaking or listening).

The third reason for its peculiar development might be termed 'exploitation': most approaches to language teaching other than grammar-translation (the direct method, the audio-lingual approach) as well as more marginal approaches (such as the Silent Way, Community Language Learning and Suggestopedia) exploited oral communication centrally as part of their methodology: not as a discourse skill in its own right, but rather as a special medium for providing language input, memorization practice and habit-formation. (Nunan and Carter)

Reading
Reading is a learning skill. It helps you improve all parts of the English language – vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and writing. It helps to develop language intuition in the corrected form. Then the brain imitates them, producing similar sentences to express the desired meaning. Using skimming or scanning technique to read quickly is highly effective. While reading underlining of key words is a must. Reading Skills help the students grasp the content and draw conclusions. The students should also make it a point to familiarize themselves with the jargons and new words by making reading a habit be it reading newspapers, articles, books, magazines etc

READING AS A SOCIAL PROCESS: CRITICAL READING

More recently there has been interest in reading as a social, critical process (Wallace 1992a; Baynham 1995). This strand of enquiry pays greater attention to social and ideological factors which mediate in readers' access to text. Critical reading is concerned less with the individual author's communicative intent than with ideological effect: the claim is that readers need not accept the words on the page as given, but that a range of interpretations are legitimate, providing that textual warrants are offered. L2 readers, in particular, may bring different kinds of cultural and ideological assumptions to bear on L2 texts, thereby offering, it is argued, fruitful challenges to mainstream or conventional readings.  (Nunan and Carter)

Writing

Writing provides a learner with physical evidence of his achievements and he can measure his improvement. It helps to consolidate their grasp of vocabulary and structure, and complements the other language skills. It helps to understand the text and write compositions. It can foster the learner’s ability to summarize and to use the language freely. To write flawless language one should excel in the Writing Skills with the help of various methods. Importance should be given to composition and creative writing. One should also focus on coherence and cohesiveness when it comes to writing a language.

Background

In the 1970s many English L2 language programme writing classes were, in reality, grammar courses. Students copied sentences or short pieces of discourse, making discrete changes in person or tense. The teaching philosophy grew directly out of the audio-lingual method: students were taught incrementally, error was prevented and accuracy was expected to arise out of practice with structures. In the early 1980s, as teachers became more aware of current practices in NES composition, there was a shift from strictly controlled writing to guided writing: writing was limited to structuring sentences, often in direct answers to questions, or by combining sentences - the result of which looked like a short piece of discourse. (Nunan and Carter)

With these four skills addressed equally while learning English, the learners can be assured of having good communication skills, a great necessity in today’s competitive world.

Work sited: Nunan, David and Ronald Carter. Full text of "The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages". 26 October 2017 <https://archive.org/stream/ilhem_20150321_1654/[David_Nunan,_Ronald_Carter]_The_Cambridge_guide_t_djvu.txt>