Integrating skills
Integrating the four skills ... we might start with an article by Rebecca Oxford, Integrated Skills n the EFL/ESL classroom.
BBC Idiom Dialogues
A set of sixty dialogues, each ending with an idiom was created for a BBC radio English teaching program in the early 1990s. This website has a page dedicated to this.
Using online activities to develop the skills
The following four links are to some interactive exercises created in Hot Potatoes. They all use video and were created in Hot Potatoes. They are best watched in IE.
In Domesticity, students watch a video and put the events in order. They then do a collocation matching activity using the items in the events. Finally the students complete a letter using the same phrases. This could be followed up with a speaking activity: the actor could tell the story that is in the letter to people he has different types of relation with. For example, he could tell the same story to his girl/boyfriend, to his parents, to his agent, etc. so as to practice register. Of course, he might elaborate or lie.
Another speaking activity might be telling the story to someone but putting the events in the wrong order, adding or omitting events. The listener(s) have to correct it.
Using Video to develop the skills
Running Dictation
Put the students in groups.
Put several copies of a text on the wall. Normal size text.
One student from each group runs to the text, memorises a chunk/clause/sentence and returns to the group and dictates.
Students take it turns to do this until everyone has a complete version of the text.
Note:
The text can be a film synopsis, a news story, a song, a dialogue and of course, "etc."
There is no need to introduce the text: one aspect of running dictations is that the world the text creates gradually emerges as the text is built.
Make sure that there the running tracks are clear. We do not want students falling or tripping.