Introduction

Writing skills help the learner gain independence, comprehensibility, fluency, and creativity in writing. If learners have mastered these skills, they will be able to write so that not only they can read what they have written, but other speakers of that language can read and understand it.

Definition
Writing skills are specific abilities which help writers put their thoughts into words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message.

Here are some writing goals as defined by Hampton 1989:

• Writers are independent when they are able to write without much assistance.
• Writers gain comprehensibility when they can write so that it can be read and understood by themselves and others.
• Writers are fluent when they are able to write smoothly and easily as well as understandably.
• Writers gain creativity when they can write their own ideas, not copying what has already been written, so that they can be read and understood.

Here are some kinds of writing skills:

• Comprehensibility skills for writing include understanding that writing is communicating messages or information.
• Fluency skills for writing include:
  
  • recognizing the linear sequence of sounds
  • mastering writing motions and letter shapes
  • recognizing the chunking of words
  • recognizing the need for space between word
  • writing quickly

Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In the communicative competence model, a student's reading level is the level at which that student is able to use reading to accomplish communication goals. This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with purposes for reading.

 

Reading Aloud

A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way that reading aloud requires.

In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: It does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.

However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing" word endings and other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read and look up" approach: Ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more times, until comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the student to process the text, and lets you see the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the student is missing.

 

Comprehension Questions

Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have understood what they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information, comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to understand an opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension questions should ask about those points.

In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.

Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).

 

Authentic Assessment

In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through reading.

• It must have a purpose other than assessment
• It must require students to demonstrate their level of reading comprehension by completing some task

To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that reading a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report, one might decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one might   repeat them to someone else; after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.

Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the text.

Five factors which must consider to improve the comprehension skill of any student.

* Fluency in the language
If the reading material is written in a language which the student is in the process of learning, his comprehension will be limited. If his knowledge of the vocabulary is only basic and he speaks in a halting manner, it will have a negative effect on his comprehension of reading material. He should first be fluent in the spoken language before he attempts to understand any but very basic literature.

* Reading skill
If the child is reading at a primary grade level, he should not be assigned a book suitable for more advanced students. This can discourage him, and affect his outlook on reading in general. It is important to foster a positive attitude and enthusiasm about books and reading in every student. The student needs a good knowledge of phonics and syllabication, and be comfortable reading at that specific level, before he is expected to read and comprehend more advanced material.

* Learning disabilities
If a child is dyslexic, has developmental delays, or suffers from other learning disabilities, it may impede his progress in mastering comprehension skills. He cannot be expected to comprehend written material before he has developed basic reading skills. He should be working with a special needs or remedial teacher who can help him overcome his disability, and achieve his highest possible potential.

* Experience
The student needs experience in an area, before he can fully grasp the significance of an article or book on a specific topic. Children in the tropics will not fully understand the fun and attraction of winter activities in the snow. Students in Alaska, or Northern Canada, will have trouble relating in a meaningful way to the warm, humid environment of a rain forest.

* Interest
Ideally, the student should choose the topic about which he would like to read. It should then be the task of the teacher or librarian to find material on that topic which is suitable for his reading level. Fortunately, children are very curious, and their interest can often be aroused by a spirited class discussion on a specific theme.

Reading is perhaps the most valuable skill a child will gain in school. His ability to read and comprehend will affect his self-respect, his future career success, and the respect he will command from peers and society in future years. Every child should be a competent and avid reader by the time he leaves high school.

It is most important, in every grade, to provide students with appropriate and interesting reading material, written for children at that level of ability. Otherwise, they will be at risk of becoming frustrated, discouraged and turned off reading for the foreseeable future and that is a terrible thing to any young person

Introduction

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.

Micro-skills

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in reading. The reader has to:

• decipher the script. In an alphabetic system or a syllabary, this means establishing a relationship between sounds and symbols. In a pictograph system, it means associating the meaning of the words with written symbols. 
• recognize vocabulary.
• pick out key words, such as those identifying topics and main ideas.
• figure out the meaning of the words, including unfamiliar vocabulary, from the (written) context.
• recognize grammatical word classes: noun, adjective, etc.
• detect sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, prepositions, etc.
•  recognize basic syntactic patterns.
• reconstruct and infer situations, goals and participants.
• use both knowledge of the world and lexical and grammatical cohesive devices to make the foregoing inferences, predict outcomes, and infer links and connections among the parts of the text.
• get the main point or the most important information.
• distinguish the main idea from supporting details.
• adjust reading strategies to different reading purposes, such as skimming for main ideas or studying in-depth.

Macro Skills of Speaking

Macro Skills of Speaking

Here are skills should be implemented in speaking activities:

1. Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals.
2. Use appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatic conventions, conversion rules, floor keeping and yielding, interrupting, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations.
3. Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as focal and peripheral ideas, events and feeling, new information and given information, generalisation and examplification.
4. Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language.
5. Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing  for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you.

Micro Skills of Speaking

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in speaking. The speaker has to:

1. pronounce the distinctive sounds of a language clearly enough so that people can distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions.
2. use stress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough so that people can understand what is said.
3. use the correct forms of words. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, or gender.
4. put words together in correct word order.
5. use vocabulary appropriately.
6. use the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship to the conversation partner.
7. make clear to the listener the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatever means the language uses.
8. make the main ideas stand out from supporting ideas or information.
9. make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what you are saying.

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.

	There are three kinds of speaking situations in which we find ourselves:
	interactive, partially interactive, and non-interactive.
	Interactive speaking situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner. Some speaking situations are partially interactive, such as when giving a speech to a live audience, where the convention is that the audience does not interrupt the speech. The speaker nevertheless can see the audience and judge from the expressions on their faces and body language whether or not he or she is being understood.
	Some few speaking situations may be totally non-interactive, such as when recording a speech for a radio broadcast .

Several external and internal factors prevent proper listening. Environmental, emotional, physical, and personal aspects affect successful listening.

1. Environmental factors hindering appropriate listening include noise (telephones ringing, doors slamming), mechanical sounds (loud car radios and cell phones, jet engines), people sounds (noisy laughter, delighted squeals), and physical conditions of the setting (uncomfortable temperature, poor lighting, or malfunctioning sound systems).
2. Emotional barriers vary with individuals and are harmful to listening success. These barriers are seldom observable and occur within the listener's mind. Emotional obstructions include anger, sadness, and worry. (Schilling, 2005).
3. A person's listening ability can be impaired by internal physical causes, such as poor hearing, fatigue, and illness of the listener - even a slight headache. Hunger and thirst may also affect listening proficiency (Schilling, 2005).
4. Personal aspects can be a detriment to good listening. A speaker's lack of eye contact, mannerisms, voice, and delivery may deter listening, and a speaker's appearance may be distracting and serve as a listening barrier.