Skill integration is not a prominent feature of the current national curriculum (or of textbooks based on the curriculum).
Middle school students, for example, typically devote 1-2 lessons to 'listening,' then perhaps 1-2 lessons to 'speaking,' then 1-2 lessons to 'reading,' then (maybe) a class to 'writing.' Then repeat.
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Skill integration is the best way to learn and practice language. In a natural setting, listening and speaking are always used together. If not, a converstaion cannot take place. The best approach would be to present either a listening or a reading task, followed by a written response to be handed in to the teacher. After the students have finished their written assignment, students should share their opinions with the rest of the class, thus practicing their speaking skills as well.
ReplyDeleteIn the Academy where I am teaching, skill integration is a very prominent feature in the teaching-learning process. The students are indulge in a variety of lessons using this kind of approach and I found it effective but at the same time stressful to the learners' side. Effective in the since that they are indulge in different kind of activities that broaden their stock knowledge of the language and sharpened their skills to become more curious and inquisitive individual towards the language. On the other hand, stressful because they are exposed to a bundle of tasks that sometimes if they are not properly motivated by the teacher, they tend to withdraw and lleads to a complaining attitude specially those who are slow learner and has low level of interest in learning the language. Notwithstanding to those who are intrinsically motivated students or the fast learners because they do the given tasks religiously without any complains.
ReplyDeleteTo conclude my opinion, whatever methodologies, approaches, techniques will be used and activities that took place in the teaching-learning process, the TEACHER has a vital role. It depends on the teacher's motivation, creativity and management.
These days it seemst that many English teachers are aware of the importance and effectiveness of integrating four skills in their classes. I always say to my students that in learning English if we don't focus on all 4 skills it is like riding a car that only has two or three wheels and by that, we cannot go where we want to go. Even though the textbook is divided into some parts according to the skills mainly dealt with. But it's just for convenience not a mandatory thing and it is for suggesting topics to teach. So teachers should reinterpret and revise things presented in the book and create activities beyond the textbook including 4 skills. Thinking that, here the teacher's role is one of the most important things.
ReplyDeleteSkill integration is a prominent feature of learning English. Especially, writing step is good to ready for speaking in teenager group. However, in public school does not prepare this important skill for English. That's because there is no writing test on Universty test. However, most privite English Institute lay emphasis on writing to complete students' skill of Englsih.
ReplyDeleteI think integrated-skill is a good method. If you want to be good at English, you should be good at all skills ; speaking, listening, reading ,and writing. If you can do well at only speaking, we cannot say you have a good ability in English. So we need to teach four skills in an English class. However, that is not easy. Because we have only 45 mins in English class of a middle school. So unless teachers prepare well, students feel confusing what they learned today's lesson.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in my opinion, integrated-skill is needed in these days, so teachers should prepare the class well organized and make students have a good concentration for 45 mins. And If this integrated-skill repeated in a class, after then, students will think their English ability becomes good.
In my experience, This skill has partly good point. However, Following this method, Students can't focus their attention on each part.
ReplyDeleteThey can't be accustomed to each part.
I teach my students for each part, too. I just change a this method a little.
In Each part, I didn't follow a schedule. I just follow my student's result.
So I waited and gave a chance to understand for my students in each parts.
After that, my students were not afraid of Speaking, Listening etc.
I think Students needs a more time and chance to understand each a part.
If we divide our lesson according to curriculum as mentioned above, we can’t provide our students with maximum learning opportunities (Harmer, p266).
ReplyDeleteTo know a language means to be able to use whole language skills. For the purpose of that, we must observe the way to integrate skills. Inputs and outputs should interact each other, so outputs of students should be turned to inputs. And speaking and reading which we know as productive skills can be an element of inputs as receptive skills do. For example, we can use reading textbooks as resource for preparation of language production. And when we plan for a lesson, it would be better based on Tasks. To accomplish the tasks, we can integrate all skill areas.
Skill integration is essential for language learning because we communicate each other with integrated way in real situation. Some people may think Korean public schools do not teach students in integrated way because the textbooks are divided into four skill sections, for example, first listening, and then speaking, reading, and writing finally. It is true and most of the schools follow the syllubus with this course books. However, when teaching in the real classroom, teachers naturally integrate more than 2 language skills because they communicate with students in the classroom. For example, when the teacher wants his/her students to practice speaking, students should listen to their teacher first to speak something or they also sould read the speaking section in the coursebook. Some of them might take a note for their speaking. This approach has different focuses in different language skill sections. Therefore, I think it is o.k. to use this approach.
ReplyDeleteYour points about korean national curriculum based on separated language skills is true, which have been not integrated 4skills what language itself is. sometimes students take English for listening, sometimes, it for speaking, when they take exams, English become just reading and grammar.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate Korean EFL student learning in the public school don't have enough time to express their integrating skills of English such as presentations, portfolio, essay and feedback from peer and teachers, performance for play. recite a poem and other stories, knowing enough literatures of English or Korean in English. furthermore, of course little chance discuss about the some issues they are interested in.
As we all know these rare chances to integrate cause Korean EFL learners improficience than the EFL learners of other countries and the students after high school they restart to learner english again to use english for their academy or job place or english using life.
Emphasizing to assess English shouldn't be language forms as Korean curriculum are asking, and evaluate the skill of English in the field of expressing their ideas and opinions in discussing topics, writing essay,
and sometimes encourage how creative the students are when they use foreign language.
I have been working as an afterschool English teacher for about 4 months at a middle school. What I was told by the manager teacher at the beginning of the semester was to choose appropriate grammar books for each class(I have two different levels of classes) and to give grammar lessons. So what I have been doing in classes is giving lectures usually focusing on grammar explanation, drills and some preparation for mid-term and final exams. The grammar books were chosen by me but class contents(lectures concentrating on grammmar explanation) weren't chosen by me but by the curriculum at the specific school. I don't think regular curriculm would be the same as mine. Nevertheless, I am almost sure that it is not quite different from the afterschool curriculum. We should do something about this or the situation where we are at the moment-for example, Koreans' average TOEIC scores range quite high but their speaking abilities are not considered to reach that high - will not change with a great deal in the near future. Current national curriculum should be changed step by step focusing on skill integration for our next generation.
ReplyDeleteI believe that English must integrate four skills of listening,speaking,reading,and writing.In my case, I learned separately four sections.Thus I had a hard time using that
ReplyDeleteorganic connection.So even if I have a good knowledge of English in my head ,unless I do not practice it enough it is not easy to clearly express my opinion at a proper time. thus I am used to reluctant to talk to me and meet foreigners in the street.
And also English skill is not always good because hearing unreasonably a lot.To speak
English well,we should be based on appropriate level of knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.
Thus during the school hours,the teacher handout materials on some topics. Through this process, learners can learn efficiently some grammar, idioms and vocabulary in materials. Then learners try to use it based on their class’s experiences.
Spending 1-2 lessons on each skill isn't really integration, unless your lessons are all connected by the same or similar content. Honestly, I can see spending every lesson focusing on 2 areas: speaking and conversation as one (EVERY class, even if only for the first 10 minutes of class if the lesson is to focus on a different skill) and writing, reading, or listening as the second area.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, students who are paying attention engage their listening skills regularly so perhaps this area can be focused on with one formal lesson per week. Writing and reading can be mixed together in a lesson. And if this is the case, then truly you can touch on all four areas in one class period.
Language learning largely consists of four skills: listening, reading, writing, speaking. To master language people should master all of them. While in previous language classroom four skills was taught separately, recently it is more preferred to integrate four skills in language classroom. I will go through the necessities of integrating skills and the way to apply it to our language classroom.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the integration of four skills is necessary for enhancing communication competence. The ultimate goal of language learning is communication. In real- world communication, we don't use the skills separately. We need to speak with listing or write with reading. If learners are taught through the curriculum which deal with the skills separately, they can have some difficulties. In applying it to communication in real world. They can be perplexed in conversations with natives because they are not accustomed to use all the skills they have learned simultaneously
Second, this approach is effective to stimulate students' intrinsic motivation. Combining four skills will enable students to participate more actively their classes. because they can have various kinds of interesting activities. For example, in most listening and reading classes students can easily feel boring as these classes deals with receptive skills, In this case, if teacher combine the receptive skills with more productive ones, speaking and writing, students will feel more interesting in their classes. Role-plays, skit drama, group discussion or creating new stories are good activties to motivate students to take part in.
Third, learners will learn language more meaningfully through that approach. Students can connect the language form and meaning naturally in the process of learning. For instance, in task-based instruction, the typical form of skill-integration when students are assigned to complete drills in the use of frequency adverbs, primary focus is the task completion, not the frequency adverbs. In the process of dealing with task, they realize the usage of the grammatical items and meaning.
As seen above, the integrated -skill approach would give leaners various benefits; enhancing communicative ability, intrinsically motivated, learning meaningfully. The teacher needs to make continuous efforts to apply it in our language classroom properly and flexibly .