Most students want to communicate better in English. If this is one of your goals, it is important to study a balance of the four major skills. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are the main (macro) skills you need to communicate in any language. Being very good at only one of these skills will not help you to communicate. For example you need to be able to read well before you can write well. You also need to be able to listen before you can speak. It helps to think of these communicative skills in two groups.
- INput «««
- Listening (in through your ears)
- Reading (in through your eyes)
- OUTput »»»
- Speaking (out through your mouth)It's simple. Think of it this way. First you have input. Next you have output. First you listen to someone ask you a question. Second you speak and give them your answer. First you read a letter from someone. After that you write back to them. These are examples of communicating.
- Writing (out through your hand)
Input and output don't necessarily go in a specific order. Sometimes you speak first and then you listen. Sometimes you write about something you hear. During communication, the person you are communicating with uses one of the opposite skills. Therefore, in order to understand each other, everyone must be skillful in all four areas.
Some students want to know which skill is the most important. Since all of the skills rely on each other, they are all important. However, to communicate we do use some skills more often than others. For example, about 40% of the time that we spend communicating we are simply listening. We speak for about 35% of the time. Approximately 16% of communication comes from reading, and about 9% from writing. These statistics are for an average communicator in English. Depending on someone's job or situation, these numbers may vary.
Each of these main skills have micro skills within them. For example, pronunciation is a type of speaking skill that must be practised in order to improve communication. Spelling is a skill that makes understanding the written word easier. Grammar and vocabulary are other micro skills. Micro doesn't mean they are unimportant. Macro skills such as listening are very general, while micro skills are more specific. (More about input and output)
For the best results, create an agenda that combines all four areas of study. Allow one type of studying to lead into another. For example, read a story and then talk about it with a friend. Watch a movie and then write about it. This is what teachers in an English class would have you do, right? EnglishClub.com has lessons in all 4 key skills (and all minor skills), as well as many outside links to help you study further. (ESL Internet resources)
1. How to learn LISTENING
- Listen to the radio: Don't always have a pen in hand. Sometimes it helps to just listen.
- Watch English TV: Children's programming is very useful for ESL learners. Choose programs that you would enjoy in your own language. Remember that much of what you hear on TV is slang.
- Call Automated Answering Machine recordings: You can find these numbers at the front of telephone books in many English-speaking countries. Before you dial, make sure that you are calling the free numbers.
- Watch movies : Choose ones with subtitles, or one from ESLNotes.com (provides useful notes on popular movies).
- Use Internet listening resources: Every day there are more and more places to listen to English online.
- Talk to yourself: Talk about anything and everything. Do it in the privacy of your own home. If you can't do this at first, try reading out loud until you feel comfortable hearing your own voice in English.
- Record your own voice: This might feel very uncomfortable, but it will help you find your weak pronunciation points. Listen to yourself a few days later. Which sounds do you have difficulty hearing?
- Use the telephone.
- Participate in class
- Learn common idioms
- Understand the sounds that your language doesn't have: For example, many languages don't have the "r" sound. These sounds require extra practice.
- Recognize that teachers are trained to understand you: When you get out into the real world, average people will have a more difficult time understanding you unless you practise speaking slowly and with proper pronunciation.
- Practise minimal pairs
- Study word and sentence stress
- Practice tongue twisters
- Read something every day: Children's books, simplified readers (Penguin), newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, novels, and much much more...
- Read what interests you: Remember that you learn better when you are having fun.
- Read at the appropriate level: You want to learn new vocabulary, but you also want to understand what you are reading. If you are looking up every word, the reading is too difficult.
- Review Who, What, Where, When, Why for each story you read: You can do this for almost any type of reading. Who is it about? What happened? Why did it happen? Where did it take place? When did it take place? This is very useful when you have no comprehension questions to answer. You can write or speak your answers.
- Always have an English-English dictionary nearby: It is a bad habit to always rely on a translation dictionary or electronic dictionary. Think of your English-English dictionary as your life line. Use online dictionaries when you are using the Internet (keyword online dictionary).
- Record vocabulary in a personal dictionary
- Keep this notebook separate from other work4. How to learn WRITING and spelling
- Record vocabulary in alphabetical order (an English address book works well because it has letters of the alphabet)
- Record the part of speech (sometimes there is more than one)
- Write a sample sentence for yourself (don't use the one from the dictionary)
- Review your personal dictionary (especially new entries) every night before bed
- Keep a diary/journal: Don't always pay attention to grammar. Free-writing can be very useful. It can show you that writing is fun. Have fun with the language.
- Write emails in English: Stay in contact with teachers or other students.
- Rewrite your local news in English: This is another exercise that can be done on a daily basis. Remember that regular activities are the best ones.
- Learn important spelling rules: Remember, you won't always have a dictionary or a spell-checker handy, especially when you are writing a test. Even native English speakers need to review the spelling rules from time to time.
- Learn commonly misspelled words
- Learn common English errors
- Get an ESL penpal
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