How can we integrate the linguistic skills in teaching English?

English language is a basic need to the individual and professional development of the students. An actual English teaching process should mean to some students a great opportunity to obtain a successful job, in which they can acquire everything, what they have dreamed. In other cases, like in the educative cases at schools or universities, it could be like an important tool in the student’s development, in order to deepen in different knowledge areas.

English teaching must be based in eclectic principles; it means that teachers should apply several kinds of methodologies, which teachers have to have learned and practiced across learning process and teaching experiences. Teaching a language cannot be right; teachers should take into account the student’s need, their cultural, social and personal context during the learning process, so in this way the four communicative skills are interconnected.

An effective teaching process must gather the four linguistics skills in a whole didactic unit which have to be integrated all of them instead of work them in a separate way. Of course, in this educational process should exist a progressive development in learning-teaching procedure, owed to the different academic levels of the students, which could vary since basic or elementary level to advanced one. In other words, when people start their English studies they cannot use their productive abilities with a low English level, in a better way, they should begin with a basic level of oral comprehension (listening) and some written activities. This happen in a natural process like in the mother tongue; According to Chomsky’s innatist view led to the notion of the meaning-seeking mind and the concept of a natural approach to language learning. In a natural approach, the learner works from an internal syllabus and requires input data to construct the target language system.

Some years ago, applied linguists began to recognize that listening was the primary channel by which the learners gain access to L2 data, that listening therefore serves as the trigger for acquisition. “Initial methodology research suggested that listening first methodology" such as those proposed by Asher (total physical response), Postovsky, Nord and Winitz (the comprehension approach) would be much more successful than methodology that did not have an explicit or consistent role for listening.

After oral comprehension, students could have the capacity to make an oral production, and at the same time or parallel, reading comprehension and written production (according to their learning levels).

Much research into the global aspects of speech production has traditionally been subsumed under sister discipline of applied linguistics, such a pragmatics, socio linguistics or ethno linguistics. These disciplines share a common interest in the relationship between language and social interaction.

The main goal in teaching the productive skill of speaking will be oral fluency. This can be defined as the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too much hesitation (otherwise communication may break down because the listeners loses interest or gets impatient). “To attain this goal, we have to bring the students from the stage where they are mainly imitating a model of some kind, or responding to cues, to the point where they can use the language freely to express their own ideas…” it was mention by (Byrne, 1986: 9-10).

The future of the learners is in our hands (teacher’s hands) and in the way in which we develop the teaching process to the English students. This teaching should go since the receptive skill to the productive actions and in the same way, we as teachers have to plan or put in order our lesson plans, what this mean that we cannot mix the linguistic skills without a chronologic plan.

Reading comprehension is remarkably complex, involving many processing skills that are coordinated in very efficient combinations. Because we read for different purposes; reading to search for simple information, skim quickly, learn from texts, integrate information, critique texts, for general comprehension, write or search for information needed for writing (THE NATURAL FOR READING ABILITIES). The reading process needs some previous knowledge in order to decoding and comprehends what we read, for this reason, it requires the teachers guide and an actual chronologic plan. Gough, Hoover and Peterson (1996, p. 3) argue that Skilled reading clearly requires skill in both decoding and comprehension. A child who cannot decode cannot read; a child who cannot comprehend cannot read either. Literacy – reading ability – can be found only in the presence of both decoding and comprehension. Both skills are necessary; neither is sufficient.

The material used by teaching English is very important in the process and it should has some particulars characteristics in order to obtain effective results and goals of students and teachers; First, this material has to be easy to see, read and listen, also it has to motivate students to learn more and more according to the student’s level and their goals. The material should be effective and progressive, which is going since activities controlled by the teacher to open activities in which students could be more creative in order to produce their knowledge freely (communicative approach). In addition, I have to say that we cannot delay the productive activities in Basic English learning process, because the students challenge is learning English in all their dimensions, and we as a students know about the anxiety to be fluency and the need to express what we feel in English.

In order to come to an end, it is important to add that learning – teaching process in a second language, teachers and students have to participate in two specific roles. First, in the elaboration of a syllabus, where teachers had been a previous knowledge of the students English level, and second, the student interaction in a great socio-cultural context.

REFERENCES

Michael Rost (2001). Teaching and researching listening. Lodman person education.
Rebecca Hughes (October 2002). Teaching and researching speaking. Lodman person education.
Ken Hyland (2002). Teaching and researching writing. Lodman person education.
Wiliam Grave and Fredricka L. Stolen (2002). Teaching and researching reading. Lodman person education.

ALEX ARTURO DOMINGUEZ CARVAJAL