Page 237 - Beyond Methods

CHAPTER 10
Integrating Language Skills
“It’s like dividing water; it flows back together again.”
—DIRECTOR OF A LANGUAGE INSTITUTE,
on separating language skills (Cited in Selinker and Tomlin, 1986, p. 229)
In the previous chapter, we learned that there exists a deep and in- separable connection between language use and the context in which it is embedded. A different kind of connectedness exists in the way we use the primary skills of language identified traditionally as lis- tening, speaking, reading, and writing. In the practice of everyday life, we continually integrate these skills. Rare indeed is the day when we only listen, or only speak, or only read, or only write. Just think how artificial and tiresome it would be if, for some peculiar reason, we decide to separate these skills and use only one for a specified period of time.
Such an artificial separation of language skills, however, is quite normal in most language schools. In North America, as in several other countries, language institutes in colleges and universities offer classes based on isolated skills and proficiency levels with course ti- tles such as Beginning Reading, Intermediate Listening, or Advanced Writing. Curriculum designers and textbook writers have long been using the separation of skills as a guiding principle for syllabus con- struction and materials production. They even try to narrowly link a particular skill with a particular set of learning strategies. They thus talk about reading strategies, listening strategies, speaking strategies, and writing strategies. Such a linkage is misleading; for, as Oxford (2001, p. 19), who has done extensive research on learning strate- gies, asserts, “Many strategies, such as paying selective attention, self-evaluating, asking questions, analyzing, synthesizing, planning and predicting are applicable across skill areas.”
There is, luckily, a clear disjunction between what curriculum designers and textbook writers prescribe, and what teachers and