 Primary
language skills have always
been essential for achievements in
academic and professional life.
 During a long period of history linguistic
scientists considered reading, writing,
listening and speaking as separated
language skills. They were included in
the language learning process as
the distinct parts of the lesson. Therefore
there weren’t any efforts to integrate these
four skills to make students achieve
higher level of language knowledge and
develop their communicative skills.
The situation has changed from the 1970’s
when most professionals noticed that “the
teaching of language skills can’t be
conducted through separate and discrete
structural elements.
(Corder, Kaplan, Stern)
 Language
should not be taught in the
discrete chunks of reading, writing,
speaking and listening, but as a whole.
 Students
need to be exposed to a large
amount of language in order to develop
their language skills.

If students use the four skills in the
process of solving problems and
completing tasks, they will develop these
skills better than if the skills are isolated.
 A supportive
environment is important
for the full development of language
proficiency.
 Two
types of integrated-skill instruction
are content-based language instruction
and task-based instruction. The first of
these emphasizes learning content
through language, while the second
stresses doing tasks that require
communicative language use.
 Objectives:
Meaningful communication
The development of
learners 'communicative competence
The ability to read, write, speak and
listen makes the learners productive
members of society

Listening: The learner hears a new item
(sound, word, grammar feature, etc.)

Speaking: The learner tries to repeat the
new item.

Reading: The learner sees the new item
in written form.
 Writing: The
learner reproduces the
written form of the item.
 It is appropriate for listening to precede
speaking and reading to precede writing
to provide comprehensible input.
 The
activities used by teachers in the
integrated approach are real life activities
and situations (radio ,e-mail , movies ,
telephone conversation, role play) and
thus create an interactive learning
environment.
 learners
are engaged in real life
communications rather than mechanical
practice of skills.
 They interact with each other by
evaluating their colleagues’ exercises .
 Each student is encouraged to respond
to other students 'work.
 Teach
students how to practice
language skills independently.
 Make learners aware of learning
strategies, with a focus not only on
language, but also on the learning
process itself.
 Develop
and use exercises and
activities involving active
participation, interaction and
collaboration.
 Connect productive and receptive
performance / Include several skill
areas.
The instructional materials play an essential role
in the learning process.
 Using realistic materials such as: articles from
newspaper and magazines ,emails, movie scenes
to involve the students in real life situations.
 Give the opportunities to students to interact with
each other.

 The
teacher introduces a topic by playing
a tape or reading about it.
 Students will discuss what they
understand with their teacher.
 After making sure that everything is
clear for the learners, the teacher gives
them an article about that specific topic
to read
 Students
read the article and share their
ideas about it together .
 The teacher asks them to write a similar
article about another topic after making
sure that they get the writing structure
and techniques of an article
 The
integrated-skill approach exposes
English language learners to authentic
language and challenges them to interact
naturally in the language.
Learners rapidly gain a true picture of
the richness and complexity of the
English language as employed for
communication.
 This approach stresses that English is not
just an object of academic interest nor
merely a key to passing an examination;
instead, English becomes a real means of
interaction and sharing among people.

This approach allows teachers to track
students' progress in multiple skills at the
same time.
 Integrating the language skills also
promotes the learning of real content, not
just the dissection of language forms.
 The integrated-skill approach, whether
found in content-based or task-based
language instruction can be highly
motivating to students of all ages and
backgrounds.

Integrating the four skills:
 Can be demanding of the teacher to
understand discourse and to use the
instructional materials flexibly.
 Can be time-consuming, requiring a lot of
preparation.
 Not all classes are integrated because every
student feels the need to improve one certain
skill

Integrating skills approach is essential for
communicative competence that is the main aim
of learning foreign language. It improves and
enhances all the basic skills all at once.