Brief
overview of LSRW skills
Name: Minkal Italiya
M.A English semester: 3
Roll no: 19
Batch: 2018-20
Enrollment No: 2069108420190020
Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi,
Department of English, MKBU
Paper no-12 English Language
Teaching-1
Topic : Brief overview of LSRW Skills
Ø Introduction:
English is
known as the world’s most widely spoken language as it to be erected as a means
of communication at international level. There are many languages spoken or
well known across the world but among of all those languages English deserves
to be world language because of its world widely use. Generally we, Indians are
not a native speaker of English language that’s why learning English becomes a
little bit difficult for us. With the help of Listening, Speaking, Reading and
Writing skills we make an essential effort at developing command and control of
the different components of the language; its phonology, its morphology and its
syntax. In a way these four skills helps in becoming all rounded communicator
of English as second language.
Learning a second language is in effect learning the
four skills- listening, speaking, reading and writing. The first two skills are
intimately related to each other, though one is a recognition skill and the
other is a production skill. Also, both skills depend almost entirely on the
learner’s knowledge of the pronunciation of words and the articulation of
sounds in knowledge.
The four major skills of
language learning, listening, speaking, reading and writing provide the right
key to success.
Let’s have look on LSRW- a set of four capabilities
which allow an individual to comprehend and produce spoken language for proper
and effective interpersonal communication.
i)
Listening
Listening is a very first
language skill which we have a need to acquire in our native language. A kind
of familiarity with the English sound system and an ability to articulate
English sounds prepare the students for listening to English utterance with
understanding.
This
skill is also known productive or active skill.
This skills
requires our vocal tract and brains in order to correctly produce language
through sound. Listening is a skill that can be developed through systematic
teaching. This skill often said to be a passive skill while speaking is
described as an active one. But we can’t say that it is whole true as well,
listening is also an active skill as it is more concerned with decoding of
message and understanding of it. Along with it listener has to show that he/she
has or has not understood the message from his response.
In order to
enhance our listening ability, we can be cultivated it through listening
practice, both extensive and intensive.
Extensive listening implies exposure to listen with understanding of
structure and sound. While Intensive listening is more concerned with just one
or two specific points.
The first
one equips the students to listen with understanding to English later in real
life situation. And the other one is a kind of practice which is primarily for
language items as part of the language teaching programme. These both practices
can be done with help of the help of the recordings which the teacher makes
himself as well as with the tapes that accompany texts like Crystal and Davy’s
Advanced Conversational English. In order to acquire this skill students must
have to listen good models as well as this can be found to be most effective
when it is done in preparation for speaking.
In India
many students are hampered in their ability to listen for meaning by certain
weakness. In general these weaknesses are:
1) Inadequate range of words and phrase that are
understood
2) Inability to maintain attention
3) Inability to understand pronunciation other than the
personal or regional pronunciation
4) Inability to understand fast speech
5) Inability to understand against background noise
through electric interference.
The
remedies for these problems lies in various attempts such as students can
improve their vocabulary through reading and by looking up unfamiliar words in
dictionaries or use of dramatic situation and the variety of dialogue combine
to maintain interest and hence attention even over long stretches. We can also
improve our pronunciation with the help of pronouncing dictionary which is
easily can be accessed by internet. Because the correctness of pronunciation
enhance our attention in listening without getting bore. Besides it there are
several remedial devises or exercise which are used by teacher for developing
students listening skill.
ii)
Speaking
Speaking is
a second language skill and also known as productive or an active skill. This
skill requires us to use our vocal tract and our brains to correctly produce
language through sound. As we have seen that practice in listening should
preceded practice in speaking. At the phonological level this is helpful. The
students should be able to recognise a sound before they attain an ability to
produce it. But only listening does not allow us to move naturally on to
speaking English language with fluency in communication. For the oral fluent
communication it requires a practise at the grammatical and lexical level.
There are many techniques used in oral teaching of English , but reading aloud
is famous technique in which teacher makes one of student to read aloud passage
and the others to review his reading critically through interrupting him and
requiring him to repeat a word or phrase. But I don’t think so, it is that much
of interesting as it has objectionable on psychological and pedagogical ground
as well as while one is reading, rest are getting bored. In a way it allows
only few to practise and bored everybody else. But if we are going to deal with short
stretch, we have a great advantage as the practise can quickly move around the
class, and involve the attention and activity of every student. In practising
of this skill, an elementary knowledge
of general articulatory phonetics is also useful to teacher because this
enables him/her to know what is actually going wrong when a faulty articulation
produces a faulty sound.
Intelligibility
and acceptability should be our aims in teaching spoken English. Because of this we have a need to pay
attention on the some drawbacks which we may observe as drawbacks in our
students of second language learner.
1) Misplaced stress on syllables and words or absence
of stress at all
2) The major drawback is confusion between sound with
meaningful contrast
3) Omission to distinguish between long and short vowels
or driphthongs
4) Interference of the phonological system of the mother
tongue of the learner
5) Production of the harsh sounds /r/ in words like
‘wonderful’, ‘far’…
6) Misapplication of lexis and idioms
In
nutshell, this skill could be enhanced by understanding para-linguistic
attributes such as volume and tone, articulation, pronunciation, voice
modulation, voice quality and so on. Further it also be developed with the help
of debates and discourses.
iii)
Reading
Reading is a third language skill, as with listening,
it is also known as receptive or passive skill as it requires our brain and
eyes to comprehend the written equivalent of spoken language.
Reading like listening is a decoding process rather it
is more complex process which involves many physical, intellectual and often
emotional reactions.
It is one of the two artificial language skills as not
at all natural spoken languages have a writing system. In the reading skills
there are three components which plays a very vital role; these are
i)
The recognition of the graphic marks
ii)
The correction of these with formal linguistic elements
iii)
The correction of these with meanings
From this we can say that only if we get the meaning
behind the graphic symbols than and than only it can be meaningful. There are
two kinds of reading skills;
i)
The skill of reading aloud
ii)
The skill of reading silently
Primarily reading aloud is an oral matter which is
more closer to pronunciation than to comprehension. It is a good if students cultivated a habit
of reading aloud but the major drawback is that only a few people are required
to read aloud as a matter of daily routine, newscasters, teachers, actors,etc.,
are some of them who should cultivate the skills but the huge majority do not
have to read aloud except on occasions. The greatest amount of reading that is
done in the world is silent. The skill of silent reading is however varies from
person to person as well as depends on several factors including each person’s
requirement. The second language teacher should pay special attention to silent
reading as it allows the students to read a lot with knowledge of language.
Besides it reading becomes easy to the students if
he/she is trained to comprehend the patterns of relationship between words-
“the semantic patterns of the lexical items.” And the mechanism of reading must
be taught to the students. In order to
be an efficient reader one should have to possess the following skills;
i)
Ability
of faster reading and good comprehension in the easy language text as well in
tougher one.
ii)
Ability
to read slowly but with excellent comprehension, technical and academic
subjects in which one have a special interest and requires specialised
knowledge.
iii)
Ability
to skim and dip
iv)
Ability
to use work of references
v)
Ability
to size up a book quickly
iv)
Writing
Writing is a
fourth skill, along with speaking skill it is also known as productive skill or
active skill as it requires us to use our hands and brains in order to produce
the written symbols which represent our spoken language. It is more artificial
language skill rather a natural one.
Writing is a thinking process and is much more than an
exercise in transcription or copying.
Writing is different from speaking in that it aims at
compactness and precision in expression as well as grammatical, idiomatic and
orthographical accuracy and that conventions of writing tend to be less
flexible than those of speech. Since composition or writing involves both
accuracy and fluency and we should aim at both of these elements. There are
three following stages of writing.
i)
Controlled
writing
ii)
Guided
writing
iii)
Free
writing
Generally the controlled stage concerns itself with
the production of accurate language in context, the guided stage with
organisation of material which is given and the free stage with the production
by the students of both content and language. Basically the main agenda behind
it to train students in a such way that they can express themselves effectively
in good English. For that it must include
all kinds of letter writing, report writing and also a diction as an effective
teaching device in form of written exercise. While doing whatever kinds of
exercise for the students, following are some guidelines which are useful;
i)
The
composition course should cover the widest possible range of kinds of writing
ii)
Grammar
teaching which can be done should be relevant to the needs of composition
iii)
All
composition must be based on student’s own experience
iv)
The
teacher should not to do anything for a student that he can do for himself
v)
The
students should be encouraged to write a draft of the exercise first after that
revise it and at last review it
In this, the student’s written work should be gone
through by teacher as it will allows teacher to assess the student’s level of
achievement and preparer for the tasks ahead. While doing a composition
correction in assessment, the most important factor is student’s active
participation. After assessment or after the teacher’s explanation students are
asked to correct their mistakes by writing it in full form. There are several
weakness such as inadequacy of lexical range, grammatical faults, miss
spellings, faulty pronunciations and use of outdated words are observed among
ELT students. The teacher should take practical steps to cure this weakness
which generally observed in a composition class.
Works Cited
Blog,
Wordsworth. Teaching of LSRW for Enhancing Communication Skills.
<http://www.wordsworthelt.com/blog/teaching-lsrw-for-enhancing-communication-skills/>.
Englishmate. Developing The Four Essential
Skills–Listening, Speaking, Reading & Writing.
<http://www.englishmate.com/blog/developing-the-four-essential-skills-listening-speaking-reading-writing/>.
Verghese, C.Paul. "Teaching anglish as a second
language ." C.Paul.Verghese. 1989.
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