Teach English in SaihantalA Zhen - Xilinguole Meng — Xilin Gol

To communicate in any language efficiently, people should know the skills of that language. What are these skills? How many skill types are there? Why is teaching these skills in an ESL/EFL classroom important for ESL teachers? These questions will be answered in this summative task. Skills are ways in which people express their ideas in language. Skills improve over time and teachers should take great care into assessing learners’ levels in the first lesson. The types of skills are productive skills and receptive skills. The productive skills are skills the learners are expected to produce. Learners speak and write. The reason why people speak and write is to communicate ideas. Teachers need to create an environment that elicits an interest and this will encourage learners to speak in class. The speaking skills consist of accuracy and fluency. Accuracy is the correct usage of grammar, while fluency is the ability to speak without stopping to think. Accuracy is ordinarily taught during the study stage. This is good because learners can use the language in a controlled lesson before reproducing it in the activate stage. Fluency is taking words taught at the study stage, and creatively expressing them in the activate stage. Both accuracy and fluency are equally important for the learning process. A common problem that occurs in speaking lessons is that some learners are reluctant to speak. They can lack confidence or have no interest in the topic that is being discussed. Teachers can reduce this by using pairwork or making the activities purposeful. Speaking skills are important in the ESL classroom because they allow students to share their ideas verbally. Writing skills are typically more formal than speaking. While speaking, people tend to use words like, can’t or won’t. But in writing, these contracted words are written out into cannot or will not. Moreover, teachers should know how to create lesson plans for writing skills because students can encounter writing in real life. Teachers should expose learners to various forms of writing, for example, an email, creative writing piece or a formal letter. The best way to teach writing skills is to expose students to written examples and also putting students into pairs for writing assignments. Just like speaking, writing can help students express their needs and desires. Receptive skills are how learners receive information. Learners listen and read. Reading is important for two reasons. People read for a purpose, for example, reading instructions on how to bake a cake. Another reason for listening and reading is for entertainment such as, listening to songs or reading a novel. There are various ways of reading. Predictions are made by reading the headline of a newspaper story, and this is called a predictive skill. Often people just want a general idea about a text, so they "skim" through the material. A potential problem a teacher might encounter is using unfamiliar words. The best teachers can do is to pre-teach vocabulary that students will encounter. Teaching receptive skills is important because students can be prepared for situations outside of class. They might have to read English writing outside class or someone speaks to them in English. Teachers should use common sense and be flexible to adapt to unexpected situations. Teaching "skills" in an ESL/EFL classroom is fundamental to the entire teaching and learning process. Take for example the teacher tries to elicit information from the learners, but the learners have no idea how to communicate what they want in English, it will be a frustrating lesson. Through proper teaching, learners will be able to communicate what they want to achieve, inside and outside the classroom. In conclusion, it is clear to see with all the information present, that skills are essential if not the most critical part of teaching ESL.