• Home
  • Login
  • Registration
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS
ESLarticle.com
Tweet
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Blog
  • Members
  • Add Article

Top Categories

Teaching 509
Other 210
Classroom Management 138
Career Development 135
Learning Methodology 121
Study Skills 91
E-Learning/CALL 87
English Language Learning (ELL) 78
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) 77
Teaching Methodology 76
English Language Teaching (ELT) 74
English as a Second Language (ESL) 64
Teach in Shanghai
Home / Articles / English Language Learning (ELL) / View Article

Publishing

  • Articles
  • Add Article
  • Articles Archive
  • Latest Articles
  • Popular Articles

Latest Articles

Jan 5, 2019

Metacognition in Reading Competency

As related to the reading process, metacognition can be defined as contemplation concerning one's own thinking processes or knowledge of one's own...

Jan 5, 2019

Mass Media Literacy Reflections for Language Instructions

"You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself." Galileo Galilei Mass media forms thrive today. As development...

Nov 30, 2018

Ideas for the First Class with New Learners

~~The first class with new learners can be an anxious one for all concerned – teacher as well as learners. Below are some tips to make that first...

Nov 19, 2018

10 Amazing Hacks for English Learners

10 Amazing Hacks for English Learners It is estimated that there are over a billion English speakers in the world, including native speakers,...

Nov 15, 2018

Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Hom

Education Today, December 2013 Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Home  Timothy G. Weih University of Northern...

Popular Articles

1113601 Views

5 Creative Ways to Decorate Your Classroom Bulletin Board This Winter

Back to school, fall leaves, Thanksgiving and Christmas all easily lend themselves to great decorating themes, but what to do when those are over...

353019 Views

Three Unique Ideas To Make Your Bulletin Board More Useful

Bulletin boards have long been existent in campuses. They have proven to be such versatile and useful aids in both the learning and teaching...

126633 Views

History of the Chalkboard

Walk into just about any classroom and you will find one: A dark green board on the wall, lined with pieces of chalk and felt erasers. Chalkboards,...

60155 Views

Report Card Comments

For a small minority, writing report cards isn't a big deal. But most teachers generally dread report card writing time. Completing the comment...

39640 Views

The Most Useful American Business Words

The Most Useful American Business Words: Here's a list that will come in handy for any student enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL)...


The Four Language Skills

by Nicole Heusser

Mar 23, 2014 English Language Learning (ELL) 6475 Views

_notregistered/d24b016f61.jpg

To learn a language (in this case English), you must master different language skills.

To communicate effectively, you need to be able to speak, write, read and listen.

Speaking and writing are productive language skills, this means that you have control over what you are saying or writing and the vocabulary you use.

To do this, you use your active vocabulary. These are the words you know, and more importantly, know how to use in context!

Reading and listening on the other hand, are receptive language skills, this means that you receive information and have no control over it.

However, this does not mean that these two skills are less important than speaking and writing, quite on the contrary, you can use them to build and enlarge both your passive and active vocabulary.

For example, you read a text but did not understand every single word in it. But the overall meaning was clear to you. Thanks to your active vocabulary, you were able to understand the main points of the text and it also helped you to guess the meaning of the words you didn't understand.

What is the difference between active and passive vocabulary?

Your active vocabulary are the words you remember and know how to use in context. With your active vocabulary you produce language but it also helps you to acquire more passive vocabulary, especially as your vocabulary becomes larger. Because the more words you do actively know, the more you are able to guess the meaning of the ones you do not know.

I am sure you know the feeling when you stumbled repeatedly over a word in many situations and contexts, and suddenly it becomes clear to you what the word means and how it is used! This means your passive vocabulary has just turned active.

Your passive vocabulary is larger than your active. Usually for a word to become part of your active knowledge, it must first be in your passive vocabulary.

For you as a language learner this means that practising the two receptive language skills are just as important as speaking and writing.

Your active vocabulary can be further divided in controlled active vocabulary and in free active vocabulary.

For example, controlled active vocabulary is produced in cloze exercises:

The dog wags its ____ (tale / tail)

In this example you get two options to choose from, however, a more advanced student would guess the right word even without any of the provided options to choose from.

So, controlled active vocabulary are the words you produce in a controlled environment, like the above exercise or another prompted task.

Free active vocabulary on the other hand, is the vocabulary you produce without a specific prompt.

Examples are free conversations about a topic, writing an essay or a short story, basically anything where you are able to choose your own words and the way you want to say it.

So in order to improve your language skills, it's important to focus on all four skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking) equally!

Sources and further reading:

Books:

Scrivener, Jim, (1994 [2011]) Learning Teaching, Oxford, Macmillan Education

Macaro, Ernesto, (2003) Teaching and Learning a Second Language, New York, Continuum (accessed through Google books on 12.11.13)

 

Article source: http://eslarticle.com/pub/english-language-learning-ell/106994-The-Four-Language-Skills.html

  • General Information
Author Info

Author Name: Nicole Heusser

About Author:

My name is Nicole Heusser and I'm a freelance English teacher based in Ditzingen, Germany. On http://www.discoverenglishblog.de I write about all things English - bite size chunks of grammar, interesting words, how to study effectively, vocabulary etc.

Most Recent Articles

  • Jan 5, 2019 Mass Media Literacy Reflections for Language Instructions by Nicole Heusser
  • Nov 15, 2018 Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Hom by Nicole Heusser
  • Oct 22, 2018 5 Significant Reasons to Learn English Language by Nicole Heusser
  • Jun 16, 2018 Benefits of Using Poetry in Language Learning by Nicole Heusser
  • Dec 9, 2017 How to Scaffold ELLs in Their Pre-Production Phase of Language Acquisi by Nicole Heusser

Actions

  • Print Page

Articles Archive

  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019

Random Articles

English Language Teaching (ELT)

Online Courses for Mexican English Teachers

I have taken several courses and workshops for teachers, but only few online. Four years ago I took my first one. I took it mainly to experiment...

About ESL Article

ESL Article is a private ESL/TEFL site designed and maintained by educators and educational administrators. It was launched in August 2008 with the aim of bringing ESL/TEFL students, parents, teachers and schools information and articles about the teaching profession and learning community.

Icon Group Member

ESL Article is a member of Icon Group Thailand (IGT), a group of ESL TEFL TESOL websites providing educational resources and information to teachers, schools and students around the world. The group was founded in 2003 and now includes 15+ websites covering educational information services, teaching resources and e-learning.

What is ESL?

English as a second language (ESL) is the use or study of English by speakers of different native languages. It is also known as English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), English as an additional language (EAL), and English as a foreign language (EFL).

  • Home
  • Registration
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Help
  • Partner
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
​

© 2019 ESLarticle.com.
Member of Icon Group Thailand - Educating the Future:
TESall All TESOL  Total ESL  ESL Job Feed
TEFL World  TEFL Jobs Overseas  Teach Overseas
Asia TEFL  ESL Powerpoint  Teacher Training