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　　【Abstract】Reading, writing, listening and speaking are considered to be four important language skills in language learning. Each skill has its own unique features, but meanwhile all the skills are correlated with each other. As receptive skills, reading and listening are seen as the input of language knowledge; as productive skills, writing and speaking are the output and measurement of language knowledge. Teachers should pay attention to these relations and differences, and employ approaches to help students to improve these skills.
　　【Keywords】Language skillsRelationsProductive skillReceptive skillReadingWritingSpeakingListening
　　
　　Introduction
　　Language is defined in linguistics as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Note that there are some implicit assumptions involved in this definition: language equals a system of symbols and language is for communication. As for language learners, the purpose of learning a language is to know or master the system of symbols and realize the communicative function of the language. Hence, the four language skills are divided in the process of learning a language.
　　Listening, reading, speaking and writing are four correlated language skills. They are inseparable from each other. Listening and speaking are considered to be receptive skills whereas speaking and writing are considered to be productive skills. Listening and speaking are in the oral modes while reading and writing are in written modes. The following table shows us the relations of the four skills.
　　
　　Generally speaking, the receptive skills precede the productive skills in the language learning process. As we all know, listening comprehension precedes and serves as a basis for speaking. A similar relationship exists between reading and writing. Now, let’s take a separate look at these skills.
　　1. Listening
　　Listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. When we speak of listening what we really mean is listening and understanding what we hear. In our first language, we all have the skills and background knowledge we need to understand what we hear, so we probably aren’t even aware of how complex a process it is. But here we will briefly describe some of what is involved in learning to understand what we hear in a second language. For the second language learners, listening comprehension is composed of the ability to distinguish all the sounds, intonation patterns, and voice qualities in the foreign language and to discriminate between them and similar sounds in the native tongue, the perception of an entire message produced by a speaker, the ability to decode what the speaker has said and the ability to use the message in the foreign language.
　　2. Speaking
　　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. And more importantly, the communicative function of a language is mostly performed by talking. Speaking involves many parts: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, one’s knowledge etc. As a productive sill, speaking has to be based on listening, namely, the understanding of the other side. In this way, a successful conversation can be conducted. For some Chinese students, speaking is still a big obstacle for their English study although they may have a large vocabulary and the ability to write well. The root of this problem lies in too much emphasis on the productive skills and the negligence of the receptive skills.
　　3. Reading
　　Reading is the receptive sill 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 building vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later stages, particularly. In order to be a good reader, students need to know some of the helpful skills. First, students are expected to have the ability to establish a relationship between the meaning of the words and the written symbols. Second, students can pick out key words, such as those identifying topics and main ideas. Third, students can take all the methods to figure out the meaning of words, including unfamiliar vocabulary, from the written context. Forth, students can use both knowledge of the world and lexical and grammatical cohesive devices to make the forgoing inferences, predict outcomes, and infer links and connections among the parts of the text. As a basic skill in foreign language learning, reading should be focused in language teaching.
　　4. Writing
　　Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. It, too, is more complicated than it seems at first, and often seems to be the hardest of the skills, even for native people of a language, since it involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way. As we all know, writing should begin with the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. So English writing should begin with the study of the two parts. As for the further development of writing, students need to accumulate more knowledge and have more practice, so that they are able to write wonderful English passages.
　　From the analysis of each language skill, we see the language arts― reading, writing, speaking and listening― are unique because they are processes that students use to learn and make sense of their world. But meanwhile, they are correlated with each other as a part of English. Now, we are facing a question: should we teach English as a whole or divide it into these four parts and teach them separately? Many scholars have been arguing on this question. As far as I’m concerned, although it’s important to teach the language skills separately, it’s more importantly to tech them combined for it’s impossible to teach students one skill without the basis of another. Can you see a learning of speaking without listening? Or have you ever tried the teaching of writing without reading? No. But now, many English teachings are focused only on grammar, vocabulary, and phrases without explaining to the students how to put them together. In teaching, teachers should take different approaches to develop student’s each skill and avoid unbalanced development. So, it’s necessary to notice the relations among these skills and take these relations into consideration in English class.
　　1. Reading is the basic skill in English learning.
　　In English teaching, the improvement of the reading and listening comprehension is the key to cultivating comprehensive English competence. Reading and listening are receptive skills, which are seen as input of the knowledge. Compared with other three skills, reading is often placed in a dominant position. As a matter of fact, students do not read “reading”, but they read about history, science, literature etc, and during this process, they learn the knowledge of English, such as grammar, structure, vocabulary, reading skills etc. Moreover, reading lays foundations for writing, speaking and even listening. In Kenneth Chastain’s idea: “The teacher should be aware that it is the students’ knowledge of the phonology, semantics, and syntax in listening that is cultivated to produce speech, and that it is the knowledge of semantics and syntax in reading that is activated to produce written communication.” Reading trains students the skills of predicting, grasping the main idea of a passage and inferring the implications which are also needed in listening. As for the vocabulary and grammar knowledge learned in reading process, they will be a great help when students are listening, writing and speaking. When cultivating students’ reading competence, the teacher should choose reading materials that students are likely to show their interest in. This is very important as students will be reluctant to read if the reading material is boring, and you cannot expect them to show their interest in it. In order to combine reading with speaking and listening, the teacher can start lesson with discussing topics relating to the reading material or listening to the material. Based on what they have discussed and learned in class, students are assigned compositions to reinforce their writing ability.
　　2. Listening and speaking can not be taught separately.
　　Since language is a medium of communication, listening and speaking should be attached great importance onto in teaching. As the two means of conducting communication, speaking and listening are always combined. So we often speak of listening and speaking. When students are listening, they have to try to grasp the phonetic symbols and get used to the pronunciation and intonation of the speaker(s) since these are the basis of listening. Through the repeated practice, students will unconsciously imitate the pronunciation, intonation and speed of the speaker(s). That’s the reason why a teacher’s pronunciation will to some extent affect his students. In addition, what students hear in listening will help enlarging vocabulary, learning native oral expressions and expanding their horizons, which will help them a lot in speaking. Similarly, a student’s pronunciation and knowledge will affect his listening comprehension. It’s not strange that a student with poor pronunciation has difficulty in listening. In my class, I usually recommend my students some good movies which can both improve their listening and speaking skills. So how should teachers do to improve students listening and speaking? We know the largest difference between mother language learning and foreign language learning is the environment. For a foreign language, we can meet it only in some special places or classes. Otherwise, we can hardly have a chance to meet it. So what teachers should do is to try to let the students be in a language environment. In addition to good listening and speaking materials, teachers should pay attention to the oral skills, including stress, strong form, weak form, intonation incomplete plosive consonant, affricate consonant, syllable and so on. What’s more, it’s important to enlarge the students’ knowledge about English and encourage them to talk about them in class.
　　3. Writing is closely related to reading.
　　Reading is the basic skill for all the other three skills, but it has the closest relation with writing. Both of them are in written mode, but different skills. As a receptive skill, reading builds students vocabulary, grammar knowledge and some writing skills. Also, as a productive skill, writing requires students to organize and synthesize all his knowledge to express his idea clearly. Therefore, writing provides a student with physical evidence of his achievement and becomes a course whereby he can measure his improvement. Also, it helps to consolidate the students’ grasp of vocabulary and structure, and complements the other language skills. In class, teachers can begin teaching writing with translation, and then sentence pattern exchanging, and text shortening and rewriting, and finally passage writing.
　　Conclusion
　　While training these four skills, the teacher should make full use of his teaching instrument and use varieties of ways to stimulate the students" interests. Generally speaking these four skills can"t be separated. People often say "First listening and speaking, then reading and writing". That"s right. But I think this way of saying is fit for the beginning stage. For a senior middle school student, reading and writing are more important.
　　
　　参考文献
　　1 束定芳、庄智象.现代外语教学――理论、实践与方法[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社
　　2 石欧.我们从素质教育那里期望什么――素质教育研究之一、二[J].湖南师范大学社会科学学报
　　3 魏玉燕.促进学习者自主性:外语学习新概念[J].外语界. 2003(3)

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