INTERGRATING THE FOUR LANGUAGE SKILL

It is the application of an integrating approach for the development of communicative skills in the
classroom, in which the four skills in the acquisition of knowledge of a foreign language can be taught in a
coherent way, and practiced together, with a distinction of the importance of one upon the other
For example, the instructor's teaching style must address the learning style of the learner, the learner must
be motivated, and the setting must provide resources and values that strongly support the teaching of the
language. However, if the strands are not woven together effectively, the instructional loom is likely to
produce something small, weak, ragged, and pale--not recognizable as a tapestry at all.
In addition to the four strands mentioned above--teacher, learner, setting, and relevant languages--other
important strands exist in the tapestry. In a practical sense, one of the most crucial of these strands consists
of the four primary skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing. This strand also includes associated
or related skills such as knowledge of vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, syntax, meaning, and usage. The
skill strand of the tapestry leads to optimal ESL/EFL communication when the skills are interwoven during
instruction. This is known as the integrated-skill approach.
By examining segregated-skill instruction, we can see the advantages of integrating the skills and move
toward improving teaching for English language learners.

A. WHY INTEGRATED SKILLS?

There are several reasons:
1. In the pre-Communicative Language Teaching (CUT) days of language teaching, the focus on the
forms of language almost predisposed curriculum designers to segment courses into the separate
language skills.
2. Administrative considerations still make it easier to program separate courses in reading and
speaking, and so on, as a glance at current intensive and university English courses reveals. Such
divisions can indeed be justified when one considers the practicalities of coordinating three-hour-
per-week courses, hiring teachers for each, ordering textbooks, and placing students into the
courses
3. This leads to a third reason that not all classes are integrated. There are certain specific purposes
for which students are studying English that may best be labeled by one of the four skills, especially
at the high intermediate to advanced levels. In an academic setting such as a university, specialized
workshops, modules, tutorials, or courses may be constructed explicitly to improve certain
specialized skills.
Most of the interactive techniques already described or referred to in this book involve the integration of
skills. The following observations support such techniques.
1. Production and reception are quite simply two sides of the same coin; one cannot split the
coin in two,
2. Interaction means sending and receiving messages.
3. Written and spoken language often (but not always!) bear a relationship to each other; to
ignore that relationship is to ignore the richness of language.
4. For literate learners, the interrelationship of written and spoken language is an intrinsically
motivating reflection of language and culture and society.
5. By attending primarily to what learners can do with language, and only secondarily to the
forms of language, we invite any or all of the four skills that are relevant into the classroom
arena. 6.
6. Often one skill will reinforce another; we learn to speak, for example, in part by modeling
what we hear, and we learn to write by examining what we can read.
7. Proponents of the whole language approach have shown us that in the real world of
language use, most of our natural performance involves not only the integration of one or
more skills, but connections between language and the way we think and feel and act.

B. MODELS OF SKILLS INTEGRATION

In order to illustrate a number of possible integrated approaches to language instruction, two of the previous
models (content-based and task-based instruction) will be briefly analyzed here along with some further
concepts that highlight the integration of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Content-Based Instruction
In content-based instruction, students practice all the language skills in a highly integrated, communicative
fashion while learning content such as science, mathematics, and social studies. Content-based language
instruction is valuable at all levels of proficiency, but the nature of the content might differ by proficiency
level. For beginners, the content often involves basic social and interpersonal communication skills, but
past the beginning level, the content can become increasingly academic and complex.
Content-based instruction allows for the complete integration of language skills. As you plan a lesson
around a particular subtopic of your subject-matter area, your task becomes how best to present that topic
or concept or principle. In such lessons it would be difficult not to involve all four skills as your students
read, discuss, solve problems, analyze data, and write opinions and reports.
Task-Based Language Teaching
In task-based instruction, students participate in communicative tasks in English. Tasks are defined as
activities that can stand alone as fundamental units and that require comprehending, producing,
manipulating, or interacting in authentic language while attention is principally paid to meaning rather than
form (Nunan, 1989).
The task-based model is beginning to influence the measurement of learning strategies, not just the teaching
of ESL and EFL. In task-based instruction, basic pair work and group work are often used to increase
student interaction and collaboration. For instance, students work together to write and edit a class
newspaper, develop a television commercial, enact scenes from a play, or take part in other joint tasks.
More structured cooperative learning formats can also be used in task-based instruction. Task-based
instruction is relevant to all levels of language proficiency, but the nature of the task varies from one level
to the other. Tasks become increasingly complex at higher proficiency levels. For instance, beginners might
be asked to introduce each other and share one item of information about each other. More advanced
students might do more intricate and demanding tasks, such as taking a public opinion poll at school, the
university, or a shopping mall.What these various understandings all emphasize, however, is the centrality
of the task itself in a language course and the importance of organizing a course around communicative
tasks that learners need to engage in outside the classroom.
In task-based instruction, the priority is not the forms of language, but rather the functional purposes for
which language must be used. While content-based instruction focuses on subject-matter content, task-
based instruction focuses on a whole set of real world tasks themselves

Theme-Based Instruction
Theme-based instruction is not the same as content-based. In order to distinguish the two, let's think of the
former as a "weak" version of the latter. In the strong version (content-based), the primary purpose of a
course is to instruct students in a subjectmatter area, and language is of secondary, and subordinate interest.
The examples of content based instruction mentioned earlier in this chapter are good illustrations of the
strong version. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at the university level, for example, gathers
engineering majors together in a course designed to teach terminology, concepts, and current issues in
engineering. Because students are ESL students, they must of course learn this material in English, which
the teacher is prepared to help them with. Immersion and sheltered programs, along with programs in
writing across the curriculum, are similarly focused.
While the curriculum, to be sure, is organized around subject-matter area, both students and teachers are
fully aware that language skills don't occupy a subordinate role. Students have no doubt chosen to take a
course or curriculum because their language skills need improvement, and they are now able to work toward
that improvement without being battered with linguistically based topics. The ultimate payoff is that their
language skills are indeed enhanced, but through focal attention to topic and peripheral attention to
language.
Consider just one of an abundance of topics that have been used as themes through which language is
taught: environmental awareness and action. With this topic, you are sure to find immediate intrinsic
motivationwe all want to survive! Here are some possible theme-based activities:
1. Use environmental statistics and facts for classroom reading, writing, discussion, and debate.
Here are some modes of performance based on such material (coded for each of the skills):

[for intermediate to advanced students] [for beginning students]

(R) scan [reading selections] for particular
information
(W) do compare-and-contrast exercises
(R) look for biases in statistics
(L,S) use statistics in argument
(W) use the discourse features of
persuasive writing
(W) write personal opinion essays (L,S)
discuss issues
(L,S) engage in formal debates
(S,W) use imperatives ("Don't buy aerosol
spray cans.
(S) practice verb tenses ("The ozone layer is
vanishing.
(L,S,R,W) develop new vocabulary
(S,W) use cardinal and ordinal numbers
(L,S) practice simple conversations/dialogues

2. Carry out research and writing projects. When your ESL syllabus calls for a research project, an
intrinsically motivating assignment is to research an environmental topic. Libraries, bookstores,
newsstands, television and radio programs, and even political campaigns are fruitful sources of
information. While individual projects are suitable, you can also encourage students to work in
pairs or teams, each assigned to a different aspect of an issue.
3. Have students create their own environmental awareness material. Whether you are teaching adults
or children, beginning or advanced students, you can get a great deal of language and content
material out of a language experience approach (see next section, below) in which students create
leaflets, posters, bulletin boards, newsletter articles, or even a booklet that outlines practical things
they can do to "save the Earth.
4. Arrange field trips. These could involve a pre-trip module (of perhaps several days) of reading,
researching, and other fact-finding, and a post-trip module of summary and conclusions.
5. Conduct simulation games. A number of simulation games are being created that use the
environmental crisis as a theme around which to build various scenarios for the gaming process.
It should be apparent from the foregoing that all four skills intertwine in these types of activities in the
language classroom, and that it would be difficult not to involve several skill areas.

Experiential learning
Experiential learning gives students concrete experiences through which they "discover" language
principles by trial and error, by processing feedback and by building hypotheses about language. Teachers
do not simply tell students about how language works; instead, they give students opportunities to use
language as they grapple with the problem-solving complexities of a variety of concrete experiences.
Experiential learning techniques tend to be learner-centered such as hands-on projects, field trips and other
on-site visits, role plays and simulations, cross-cultural experiences (camps, dinner groups, etc.), etc.
Experiential learning tends to put an emphasis on the psychomotor aspects of language learning by
involving learners in physical actions in which language is subsumed and reinforced.
One specialized form of experiential learning that has been quite popular in elementary school teaching for
several decades is the Language Experience Approach (LEA) (Van Alien & Alien, 1967), an integrated-
skills approach initially used in teaching native language reading skills, but more recently adapted to second
language learning contexts. The benefit of the LEA is in the intrinsic involvement of students in creating
their own stories rather than being given other people's stories. As in other experiential techniques, students
are directly involved in the creative process of fashioning their own products, and all four skills are readily
implied in carrying out a project.
The episode hypothesis
Language presentation is enhanced if students receive interconnected sentences in an interest-provoking
episode rather than in a disconnected series of sentences. Language learning material presented in episodes
can appeal to learners since it stands a good chance of intriguing or captivating learners. Most of our
textbooks have many communicative dialogs, which illustrate certain grammatical or discourse features in
meaningful ways, but they do not always grip the learner with suspense. Episodes can be presented in either
written or spoken form and students, in turn, can respond to them by speaking or writing. Students can be
encouraged to write their own episodes, complete an episode whose resolution or climax is not presented,
or dramatize written episodes.
C. ADVANTAGES OF THE INTEGRATED-SKILL APPROACH
The integrated-skill approach, as contrasted with the purely segregated approach, exposes English language
learners to authentic language and challenges them to interact naturally in the language. Learners rapidly
gain a true picture of the richness and complexity of the English language as employed for communication.
Moreover, this approach stresses that English is not just an object of academic interest nor merely a key to
passing an examination; instead, English becomes a real means of interaction and sharing among people.
This approach allows teachers to track students' progress in multiple skills at the same time. Integrating the
language skills also promotes the learning of real content, not just the dissection of language forms. Finally,
the integrated-skill approach, whether found in content-based or task-based language instruction or some
hybrid form, can be highly motivating to students of all ages and backgrounds.

D. INTEGRATING THE LANGUAGE SKILLS

In order to integrate the language skills in ESL/EFL instruction, teachers should consider taking these steps:

Learn more about the various ways to integrate language skills in the classroom (e.g., content-
based, task-based, or a combination).
Reflect on their current approach and evaluate the extent to which the skills are integrated.
Choose instructional materials, textbooks, and technologies that promote the integration of
listening, reading, speaking, and writing, as well as the associated skills of syntax, vocabulary, and
so on.
Even if a given course is labeled according to just one skill, remember that it is possible to integrate
the other language skills through appropriate tasks.
Teach language learning strategies and emphasize that a given strategy can often enhance
performance in multiple skills.