Escuela normal superior oficial de Guanajuato

Licenciatura en educacin secundaria

Especialidad lengua extranjera (Ingls)
Ciclo escolar 2015- 2016
Mnica Montserrat Manrquez Galvn

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FOUR SKILLS

In this essay I will talk about why it is important to teach English as a
second language in secondary school, what are the four skills and their
characteristics and how to relate the receptive and productive skills.
It is well known that in this days we are invaded of new living styles and
that globalization has now come to rule our society. This is a real
meaning fact that has come to show up in our educational system too.
For this reasons we have been obligated to follow those living styles and
in our society now is necessary to be in pair with all this changes. This
implies communicating with others from different countries and cultures.
English is a global language that now is necessary to know.
According to PNIEB (2011), the purpose of English language teaching in
Basic Education is for students to get the necessary knowledge to
engage in social practices with written and oral language to interact with
native and non-native English speakers by means of specific
competencies with the language.
To teach a second language I consider basic and fundamental to always
have in mind the four teaching skills. This skills are very important when
we want to learn or teach another language because in order to practice
this language we need to go through this four skills. This skills are:
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening and reading are
known as receptive skills while speaking and writing are known as
productive skills.
As stated by Al-Jawi (2010), Receptive skills are the ways in which
people extract meaning from the discourse they see or hear, for
example when students watch TV, read a story or a magazine, listen to
the news, or speak about something; they employ their previous
knowledge and deploy a range of receptive skills in order to develop the
intellectual capacity and fulfill with the purpose.
The productive skill focuses on speaking and writing, because students
need to produce the language and communicate their ideas with others.
Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral
mode. When we speak of listening what we really mean is
listening and understanding what we hear.
Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the
other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and
involves more than just pronouncing words.

Reading is the receptive skill in the written mode. It can

develop independently of listening and speaking skills, but
often develops along with them, especially in societies with a
highly-developed literary tradition. Reading can help build
vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later
stages, particularly.
Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. It, too, is
more complicated than it seems at first, and often seems to
be the hardest of the skills, even for native speakers of a
language, since it involves not just a graphic representation
of speech, but the development and presentation of
thoughts in a structured way.
As stated by Nasr (1994) in the process of language learning, it is of
significance to note that, looking at the four skills backwards (or from
the bottom up), it would not be difficult to realize that writing anything
would be much easier if one has read it and seen it first, that reading
anything (aloud) would be much easier if one has spoken it first, and
that speaking anything would be much easier if one has heard it first. In
other words, the four skills in the process of language learning are
dependent upon each other in that order.
For example one way of teaching the listening skill is by dictation. This is
a difficult task but it will also improve in our writing skill. Like I mention
above this skills work together and we often combine them. Listening to
any audio, conversations, or even songs could also be a way of
practicing the listening skill and we could later develop the speaking
skill.
In conclusion these skills offer a significant curricular contribution for the
English learning process. From my point of view they are very important
for students in order to improve their level.