Integrated skills Approach

Question 1

What are the advantages of integrated skills?

Answer 1

Carols (1990, pp. 73-74) and Kebede (2013) :

Skills integration provides continuity in teaching-learning/program.

Activities can be designed to provide input before output.

It provides realistic learning.

It provides chances to know and redeploy the language learned by students in different contexts and modes.
Increases confidence in a weaker or less confident learner.
It brings variety into the classroom.
It provides exposure to authentic language learning environment.

Question 2

Why should we use this method?

Answer 2

When we communicate, we often use more than a single language skill.

Integrated approach helps to build new knowledge and skills on to what students already know and can do.

Integrating the skills allows you to build in more variety into the lesson because the range of activities will be wider.

Integrating the skills means that you are working at the level of realistic communication, which provides all-round development of communicative competence in English.

Question 3

What are the characteristics of the integrated skills approach?

Answer 3

The integrated-skill approach exposes ESL/EFL learners to authentic language and challenges them to interact in the language.
Learners gain a true picture of the complexity of the English language as employed for communication.

The approach states that English is not just an object of academic interest, instead, English becomes a real means of interaction and sharing among people.
It allows teachers to track students’ progress in multiple skills at the same time.
It also promotes the learning of real content, not just the dissection of language forms

Question 4

What the stages of the integrated skills?

Answer 4

Pre-task:
Introduction to the topic and task.
The task circle:
Task
Planning
Report
Postask listening
Language focus
: 
Analysis
Practice

Question 5

The approaches of the integrated skill approach

Answer 5

Content based: According to Oxford (2006), in content-based teaching, “students practice all the language in a highly integrated, communicative fashion while learning content such as mathematics, science, and social studies.” (p.19)
Task based:
Students participate in communicative tasks. These activities “can stand alone as fundamental units and that require comprehending, producing, manipulating, or interacting in authentic language.” (Oxford, 2006)