5.4.4. The relationship between different stages

There is a clear relationship between the introduction and practice stages while the relationship between communicative activities and the introduction and practice stages is not so clear.

If teachers introduce new language they will often want to practice it in a controlled way. After an introduction stage, therefore, they may use one of the practice completely manipulative techniques to give the students to chance to use the new language in a controlled environment. However, the practice stage will often not follow the introduction stage immediately. Other activities might intervene before students again work at the same language.

By the nature of communicative activities, they are not tied to the other stages since they are designed to elicit all and any language from the students. Two points can be made, though:

• Firstly, teachers listening to a communicative activity may notice that a majority of students find it difficult to use the same language. By noting this fact the teacher is in a position to design a subsequent class in which the language the students could not use is focused on. There is, therefore, a natural progression from communicative activity to the introduction of new language.

• In another case, the teacher may have been working on a certain area of language that will be useful for a future communicative activity. Thus, if students have been looking at ways of using functions, e.g., inviting, they will then be able to use that knowledge in a communicative activity that asks them to write each other letters of invitation.

It will of course be the case that while not all presentation activities fall exclusively an the non-communicative end of the continuum, neither will all the activities have exactly the characteristics of communicative activities, although in general they will be followed.

It is probably true that at the very early stages of language learning there is more introduction of new language and practice than there are communicative activities. This balance should change dramatically as the standard of students’ English rises. Here one would expect there to be a heavier emphasis on practice and communicative activities than on presentation. However, this balance is often more the result of decisions about what the students need on a particular day in a particular situation than it is a decision about the interrelation of stages. It should be remembered, too, that beginners should receive a large amount of roughly-tuned input.

5.5. Integrating skills

We have discussed briefly the four main language skills. It would seem clear that in a general class it is the teacher’s responsibility to see that all the skills are practised. This suggests that in some way the skills are separate and should be treated as such. On one day students will concentrate on reading and reading only, on the next – speaking and only speaking, etc. In fact this position is clearly ridiculous for two reasons:

• Firstly, it is very often true that one skill cannot be performed without another. It is impossible to speak in a conversation if you do not listen as well. People seldom write without reading – even if they only read what they have just written.

• Secondly, though, people use different skills when dealing with the same subject for all sorts of reasons. Someone who listens to a lecture may take notes and write a report of the lecture. The same person might also describe the lecture to friends or colleagues and follow it up by reading an article that a lecturer suggested.

In cases like this the same experience or topic leads to the use of many different skills. In our teaching we will try to reflect this. Where students practise reading we will use that reading as the basis for practising other skills. Students involved in an oral communicative activity will have to do some writing or reading in order to accomplish the task which the activity asks them to perform. Students will be asked to write, but on the basis on reading, listening or discussing.

Often our activities will have a focus on one particular skill. It will enable them to concentrate on this very skill (reading abilities, for example) at a certain stage. But the focus can later shift to one or more of the other skills. The principle of integrating skills determines the use of a previously focused-on skill as a basis of practising in another skill.