Unit 4 - Techniques to teach the macro-skills

Teaching English with the four macro skills 

When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, then to read, and finally to write. These are called the four "language skills": 

Macro skills are most commonly referred to listening, speaking, reading and writing in English language. 

Listening: This is a communication technique that requires the listener to understand, interpret and evaluate what he or she hears. Listening effectively improves personal relationships through the reduction of conflict and strengthens cooperation through a collective understanding while speaking is vocalization of human communication. Being able to express an idea, concept or opinion through speech is essential in the communicative process and languages are about communication. 

A good language teachers plan lessons, and sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the macroskills, rather than focusing on developing only one macro-skill at a time. Listening is the most important skill in communication. It is a mental operation involving processing sound waves, interpreting their meaning, and storing them in memory. It is a communication technique that requires the listeners to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they hear. It paves the way for other skills to tower over the others because of its significance in terms of speech, discussion and freedom of expression. They serve as an approach to make everybody comprehend which is being said. It is closely related to speaking and it enables the persons to soak in any information that is given to them; consequently, the information can be passed on to another party later on after the conversation. 

On the other hand, learners will develop prediction and anticipation skills in listening. Without listening, communication will be crippled. It is vital and should be a main part in communication. Second language (L2) listening comprehension is a complex process, crucial in the development of second language competence. Listeners use both bottom-up processes (linguistic knowledge) and top-down processes (prior knowledge) to comprehend. Knowing the context of a listening text and the purpose for listening greatly reduces the burden of comprehension. This will help students learn how to listen and develop the metacognitive knowledge and strategies crucial to success in listening comprehension. Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input. 

Top-down strategies are listener-based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include listening for the main idea predicting drawing inferences summarizing Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include listening for specific details recognizing cognates recognizing word-order patterns Research has demonstrated that adults spend 40-50% of communication time listening (Gilman & Moody 1984), but the importance of listening in language learning has only been recognized relatively recently (Oxford 1993). Since the role of listening comprehension in language learning was taken for granted, it merited little research and pedagogical attention. Although listening played an important role in audio-lingual methods, students only listened to repeat and develop a better pronunciation (for speaking). 

Beginning in the early 70's, work by Asher, Postovsky, Winitz and, later, Krashen, brought attention to the role of listening as a tool for understanding and a key factor in facilitating language learning. Listening has emerged as an important component in the process of second language acquisition (Feyten, 1991). This research base provides support for the pre-eminence of listening comprehension in instructional methods, especially in the early stages of language learning.