Important macro-skills in teaching a particular language: speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing

The five macro-skills in communication are the most important skills in teaching a particular language. Each of them is indispensable in the learning process and teaching performance on behalf of the learners and mentors. These skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing will use as the main vehicle to obtain definitely a certain language and to serve as a conduit to encompass widely the interrelated realms of communication and global community.

An interesting feature of early language acquisition is that children seem to depend more on semantics than on syntax when speaking. Furthermore, the acquisition of language facility is one of the most interesting but perplexing phenomena in learning. The learners’ ability to speak is marvelous and his mastery in other areas of learning such as listening, reading and writing gives a clear indication that he has the distinct opportunity of being a learner of a fantastic classroom teacher.

The communication skills in language teaching are as follows:

1.      Speaking is the act of talking to someone, of making an utterance with intentional and unintentional dealings, or of a discourse of a person who really speaks. It refers also to literary works and artistic communications that are composed of daily recitations, as ancient poetry and oral literature regardless of a language spoken by the people worldwide. Oral communication is a vicious cycle which always involves two persons or more: a decoder and an encoder; the message, the channel and the feedback. The teachers should create situations in which the learners could exercise their ability of oral expressions. Besides, in a blog release published online, it said speaking is one of the most direct and useful forms of communication. It said also two people can speak with each other yet still not be able to communicate anything - they could be speaking different languages. Speaking is used mainly when people are having face-to-face communication, but it can also be over the phone and now over technology such as webcams and video calling.

2.      Listening is the most important skill in communication. It is a mental operation involving processing sound waves, interpreting their meaning, and storing their meaning in memory. It is a communication technique that requires the listeners to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they hear of. It paves the way for other skills to tower communicatively over the others because of its significance in terms of speech, confabs and freedom of expression. They serve as an approach to make everybody comprehend which is originally derived from the given talk or utterance. It is closely related to speaking and it enables the persons to soak in any information that is given to them; consequently, the information can be passed on to another party later on after the conversation. On the other hand, students will develop prediction and anticipation skills in listening. They will recall previous savvy or experience about the topic of the listening text before to the text, and will recall the cause-effect relationships in the listening text. Without listening, communication can also be crippled. It is vital and should be part mainly in communication.

3.      Reading is another important skill in communication. It is a multifaceted process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency and motivation. Reading is the way a person gets information from written letters and words. Reading approach is also based on the philosophy and theories concerning the meaning, nature, and structure of reading. Further, it consists of a set of decisions to carry out an objective that results in a plan and its wise implementation. Many people think of reading as a skill that is taught once and for all in the first few years of school. Reading enables man to ponder the mysteries of the world, explore accumulated knowledge, and contemplate the unknown. All the enigmatic symbolisms will be divulged through reading. No one can question it because it gives emphasis to the importance of global communication. In the past, books and newspapers were the most commonly read items; now emails and text messages form a lot of normal day's communication activities.

4.      Writing is a skill that needs t0 practice at all times. You know why? By all accounts, writing means much more than using orthographic symbols. It is a thinking process which is characterized by a purposeful selection and organization of experience. It is an act of discovery, of communication, of joy. It connects us to work, to culture, to society, to existing knowledge, and to the meanings of our lives. Without it, poor communication will occur as far as written communication is concerned. It is the act of putting sentences together in connected discourse, but the main focus is on basic communicability. It is designed to give beginning learners the feeling that they are able to write and that what they write has a profound value. Most people rely on writing because they can’t express themselves and it is better for them to write in order to fulfill their wishes to the persons they love or long for in order to communicate effectively. Writing is closely linked to reading as, like speaking and listening, they really work in harmony to ensure successful communication. Again language can be a potential barrier with writing. Writing activities consist of exposing the learners to diverse rhetorical forms through extensive reading and providing intensive practice in the actual writing or compositions. In conclusion to this, good writing can be taught by teachers who provide frequent and challenging chances or opportunities for writing to enable the learners to develop their skills and confidence.

5.      Viewing  is one of the most important skills in communication because it is a way of portraying information in the database, thus giving more emphasis to the importance of mental faculty that allows a perceiver to delineate or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to time, distance or shielding. Of all the skills in communication, viewing can help the global audiences watch their favorite shows either in movies or in televisions, as well as other forms of viewing devices. According to Center for Media Literacy, the literate reader, however, does not stop with converting printed words into ideas. He/she contemplates those ideas, and carries on an internal dialogue with the author, congratulating the latter for brilliant insights or condemning him/her for outrageous opinions. The literate TV viewer carries on a similar dialogue with the creators of a program, congratulating or condemning them for everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. At this point, reading and critical viewing, literacy and television literacy, become synonymous. Both the reader and the viewer learn to be active - to challenge, analyze, react, explore, and understand the medium, whether it's a printed page or an illuminated TV set.

 All human beings bring into the world an innate faculty for language acquisition, language use, and grammar construction. It is the internalization of the rules of grammar in one’s first language from a more or less random exposure to various utterances. The language learners are very able to construct new, grammatically acceptable sentences from material they have already heard. Unlike the parrot in human society, they are not limited to mere repetition of utterances.

Language acquisition could not take place “through habit formation” because language is far too complicated to be learned in such a manner, especially given the brief time available. There is an innate capacity of human beings who get possessed and predisposed them to look for fundamental patterns in language. People could create utterances they could not have possibly encountered in a language that was spoken to them.

In first-language acquisition, young children have certain innate characteristics that predispose them to learn a language. These characteristics include the structures, which enable the children to make the sounds used in language, and the ability to understand a number of general grammatical principles, such as the hierarchical nature of syntax. Children acquire whatever language is spoken around them, even if their parents speak a diverse language.

Constant practice under the proper guidance of the teachers makes the students feel at home with any language. The teacher sees to it that the learner can imitate and speak the correct English patterns that are taught to him in the classroom. It is a psychological fact that young people can learn a new language easily and idiomatically. In the language lessons, exercises take the forms of repetition, pattern drills and accompanied reinforcements by the teachers just to learn the language.

It is not a facile undertaking to simplify a process in the four walls of the classrooms an atmosphere of self-confidence and enthusiasm in learning a language. It is energy-consuming and time-consuming. It involves failures and successes. It involves an acceptance of individual’s strengths and weaknesses – including one’s own. The teacher needs to face the exciting and creative experience in the classrooms while in the process of teaching the language. Errors should be avoided. If an error is committed, quick correction is desirable in order to prevent the establishment of bad habits.

The presence or manifestation of various teaching strategies for use in the field has perplexed a lot of public secondary English teachers whose students come from different educational backgrounds. These students come from exclusive schools which have different English books and students come from the remote or far-flung barangay elementary schools which have dearth of learning materials and limited learning experiences. The teachers are cynical whether or not the methods they use in their classes could keep up with the standards of a good and effective teaching procedure considering a mixture of students they have in the classroom.

Teaching should be adjusted to the needs of the learners. Because of this, it is imperative to determine first their difficulties and needs so that whatever materials a teacher purports to design should be in accordance with these needs. This is what is known as directional teaching. This means an assurance of more achievements in teaching than mere teaching without any sound basis.

The researcher has resorted to this study for the purpose of predicting public science high school’s first year selected students’ learning performance utilizing the macro-skills of structured lessons in English.

Communication is something that can bridge you between the unknown world and the known world with sufficient information to dish out. Likewise, it’s about expressing and conveying your thoughts, emotions, notions and concepts with another human beings.

The ideal outcome of the event will animadvert upon itself and it will boomerang to the concerned persons if things are not properly addressed. It reciprocates best communication skills that can aid in keeping one’s head and confidently taking charge of unfamiliar situations.

 People are more likely to listen to you, whatever you have to utter, if you can express yourself well, and this is particularly useful in influencing and negotiating significant personal, social and business matters.

Communication is the key progress and advancement in continuing to learn things more accurately and effectively. Without communication nothing would get done and the world would pretty much stand still. All five macro skills of communication are indispensable in everyday life and should never be underestimated.