Introduction
This introductory discussion prefaces the chapters in this volume by surveying some key theoretical and practical insights into the teaching of the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, a sequence that we choose deliberately in this book for its well-recognised reflection of how language acquisition takes place in the ‘real world’ of naturalistic communication. Our aim is not to provide a comprehensive review of the literature but to reflect some of the current strands of theoretical thinking about the topic of this book, and to complement these ideas with what can be gleaned about how skills are taught in different language programmes and contexts from the contributions of the various authors.
Fundamental Considerations
Most English language teachers around the world, and readers of this book, will immediately recognise the widely used concept of the four ‘macro’ skills in language teaching. This concept has stood the test of time, not only as a way of categorising and conceptualising these ‘core’ areas of communication, but also frequently as a way of labelling and naming how language teaching is programmed and assessed in innumerable institutional contexts. Readers are likely to be very familiar with labels such as ‘conversation’, ‘academic writing’, ‘reading comprehension’ or ‘listening skills’ to describe classes and courses that segregate and focus on a particular language skill area. Moreover, language is often assessed on an individual skills basis, as in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) Speaking or Listening Tests, or in standards frameworks such as the increasingly internationally adopted Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), which may also often underpin decisions to teach skills in separate classes. In the field of language teaching research, too, there are innumerable theoretical and practical publications focusing on one or other of the four skills, and we ourselves as editors of this volume are ‘guilty’ of adopting this singular stance in our own work (e.g. Goh and Burns 2012; Siegel 2015).
It needs, of course, to be recognised that much recent thinking contests the idea of the separation and segregation of the four language skills , on the self-evident basis that communication simply does not occur in this way in the real world. One has only to consider daily tasks, such as conducting a transaction at a bank, going to a movie, interacting with friends or colleagues or using social media where listening, speaking, reading and writing skills are intimately connected and dynamically employed, to know that the divisions are artificial.
One well-known move away from this segregation into separate skills in the field of language teaching is the widespread idea that, collectively, listening and reading may be described as ‘receptive’ skills (those to do with receiving communication), while speaking and writing are often explained as ‘productive’ skills (those to do with producing communication) (e.g. Harmer 2015; Scrivener 2012). Another is the idea that listening–speaking, and reading–writing, are ‘reciprocal’ skills (e.g. Nation 2009; Nation and Newton 2009) that interact in actual use, and therefore should be considered as complementary and interconnected in second language teaching (e.g. Grabe and Zhang 2013; Hirvela 2013; Newton 2016; Rost 2001). While in the past listening and reading were sometimes described as ‘passive skills’ and speaking and writing as ‘active skills’, it is now more widely recognised that all language skills are ‘active’, in the sense that they require different types of cognitive and social processes, that are used in different ways (Richards and Burns 2012).
However, even more significant than these various perspectives, is the view that the teaching of listening, speaking, reading and writing should be ‘integrated’ (e.g. Hinkel 2006, 2010). This idea is not particularly new, even though it may still seem quite revolutionary in some quarters of language teaching (Nation and Newton 2009). As far back as 1978, drawing on a discourse-based perspective on language and communication, Widdowson argued for the integration of skills teaching, particularly in the case of English for specific purposes. This view was preceded by the ‘situational approach’ that had characterised earlier teaching principles between the 1950s and 1970s, that had recommended that, although the emphasis should be on speaking, all four skills should be taught (Hinkel 2010).
The situational approach highlighted real world contexts, such as ‘at the post office’ or ‘at the restaurant’, where functional language for particular purposes could be identified and taught. This approach was accompanied by the ‘PPP’ , or presentation–practice–production teaching method, which is still alive and well today in many classrooms worldwide. The emergence of communicative language teaching from the late 1970s changed the predominant focus on language learned as form followed by function to one where meaning and use should be the main drivers for new learning that could be transferred to the world beyond the classroom. It set the scene for a challenge to the concept of isolated language skills teaching, with its emphasis on pattern drills from the lens of native speaker norms that still survives to this day. A more recent manifestation of methodological arguments for integrating skills and seeking meaningful production of language is the move towards task-based teaching and learning (e.g. Ellis 2003; Nunan 1989; Willis 1996). Rost and Wilson (2013) note both advantages and disadvantages of integration. One advantage is that it allows different skills to interact to strengthen language acquisition, and meet students' own learning styles and preferences. Another is that it creates variety and relieves the concentration required to focus on only one skill. On the other hand, non-integration can provide intensity and greater depth of learning, as well as allow for focusing on a skill where learners may have a weakness and need more concentrated attention to areas such as grammar, vocabulary, accuracy or fluency (see Hinkel 2010).
Nonetheless, as we noted earlier, the categorisation of the core language skills into four major areas persists, and is likely to continue. It is for reasons of convenience, not to mention accessibility and practicality, that we therefore conceptualised the various sections and chapters in this book in relation to these four skills areas. Our assumption in doing so is that many readers will want to dip into examples and illustrations of practice for a particular skill that they may be able to adapt to their own teaching contexts. Readers will notice, however, as they progress through the book that many of the authors also refer to the importance of integrating other skills, even as they focus on one in particular, and they often provide illustrations of how the innovations they describe integrated in actual practice with more than one skill. Our own position in this debate is that, while not denying the importance of integrating skills, it is valuable to pay detailed attention to practices that carefully and thoughtfully promote the learning of one particular skill.
Skills of Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing
Considerable advances have been made in understanding the knowledge, skills, strategies, products and processes that are characteristic of the different skill areas. Here, we have scope to touch only very briefly on some of the main findings and practical implications for each, as a backdrop for the chapters that follow.
Listening
The importance of paying systematic attention to listening development, in comparison with reading and writing, ‘or even speaking’, has often been overlooked in language teaching and in instructional materials (Vandergrift and Goh 2012: 4), as it may be assumed that if learners ‘listen a lot’ they will learn by osmosis (Cauldwell 2013; Richards and Burns 2012). Attention needs to be paid to both top-down and bottom-up listening speech perception processes (Newton 2009), although Lynch and Mendelsohn argue that ‘if…top-down listening is important, bottom-up listening is indispensable’ (2010: 184), and note that attention to the need for bottom-up listening has increased in recent years. Top-down processes refer to global or contextual knowledge and to previous experiences that enable a listener to infer the overall messages and meanings of incoming speech, as well as familiarity with the way language is structured in different genres of discourse. Bottom-up processes, on the other hand, relate to how a listener makes sense of the continuous stream of connected speech, including sounds, word boundaries, linked elements, reduced forms and prosody, or patterns of stress and intonation (Field 2008; Lynch and Mendelsohn 2010; Rost 2001).
Newton (2016: 431) reminds readers that ‘skilled listening is of course, more than successfully segmenting the speech stream’. He cites Vandergrift (2007: 193) who notes that learning to listen in another language involves ‘the skillful orchestration of metacognitive and cognitive strategies’. Indeed, over the last two decades more attention has been paid to the development of metacognitive and cognitive strategies (Vandergrift and Goh 2012). Metacognitive strategies involve thinking about how to manage the processes and skills of listening through planning, monitoring comprehension, paying focused and selective attention to certain language features, and evaluating and checking interpretations, while cognitive strategies are directed towards thinking that involves predicting and inferencing, contextualising and elaborating, translating, transferring and summarising.
Field (2008) critiques what he sees as a pervasive ‘comprehension approach ’ to teaching listening, whereby learners are required to identify the ‘correct’ answers to comprehension questions. This approach is likened to testing listening rather than teaching listening as it requires learners to focus on memorising rather than interpreting and responding to incoming information. He recommends a ‘diagnostic approach ’ which involves pre-listening , listening , and then post-listening where intensive micro-listening activities focused on bottom-up processing are introduced to bridge ...