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Integrating language skills 229
the most effective writing practice, and the most generally useful, will have a close connection with what is being practiced in relation to other skills.”
In addition to these theoretical insights, there is yet another ad- vantage for replicating the natural integration of skills in the class- room. As we saw in the chapter on learner autonomy, various learn- ers bring various learning styles and strategies to class. Integration of language skills has the potential to offer “different opportunities for different types of learners, for example, the extroverts who like to speak a lot, the introverts who prefer to listen or read, and the an- alytically or visually oriented learners who like to see how words are written and sentences constructed” (Paul Davies and Eric Pearse, 2000, p. 75). While, as Selinker and Tomlin (1986) rightly urge, more classroom-oriented research is required to determine the full im- pact of integration and separation of skills, all available theoretical and experiential information stress the need to integrate language skills for effective language learning and teaching.
Reflective task 10.3
Pause here for a minute and think about all the ways in which you can inte- grate language skills in your class. If possible, brainstorm with another col- league and make a list.
Integrating Language Skills
In the last fifteen years or so, several types of classroom activities have entered the field of L2 learning and teaching. There are, as mentioned in the previous chapter, interactive scenarios (Di Pietro, 1987) and problem-solving tasks (Prabhu, 1987; Nunan, 1989; Willis, 1996). In addition, there are content-based activities (Crandall, 1987), project-based activities (Legutke and Thomas, 1991), whole- language activities (Goodman, 1986; Freeman and Freeman, 1992), and experiential activities (Kohonen, et al., 2001). All these classroom activities have one thing in common: they stress interactive lan- guage use that requires a synthesis of various language skills and various language components. Additionally, these integrated activi-