Short Paper of

PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATION OF

LANGUAGE SKILL

SURITNAWATY A. (A122 20 008)

HASRIANA (A 122 20 011)
ELNITA (A 122 20 003)

POSTGRADUATE OF
ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM
TADULAKO UNIVERSITY
2021

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 PREFACE

First at all, thank to Almighty God who has given his blessed to us for
finishing this material. Second, we would like to say thank you to
Mrs. Dr. Hj. Rofiqoh as the lecturer of Advanced Language Skills course that
always teaches us and give much related knowledge.

This short paper is composed by group 1 which consists of 3 members

(Suritnawaty A., Hasriana, and Elnita) as the fulfillment of discussion about
“Principles and Application of Language”. Firstly, praise to the Almighty God for
the blessing and mercy given to us during finishing this paper. Secondly, we
would like to express deepest thanks to Mrs. Dr. Hj. Rofiqoh as the lecturer of this
course who has guided us so that we can complete this paper.

To finish this short paper, we are aware of some mistakes would be found,
so that we really hope for some criticism and advice for the better writing towards.
Finally, we hope that this paper can give valuable contribution to the readers.

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE........................................................................................................................
ii
TABLE OF CONTENT..................................................................................................
iii
CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION
A.    Background...............................................................................................................
1
B. Problem Formulation.................................................................................................
1
CHAPTER II : DISCUSSION
A Language Skills......................................................................................................
2
B. Principles of Teaching Language Skills...........................................................
4
C. Application of Teaching Language Skills.......................................................
7
CHAPTER III : CONCLUSION ....................................................................................
8
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................
10

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iv
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background
Language is productive in the sense that there are an infinite number of
utterances we can make by connecting existing words in new ways (Crystal,
2005). Language is not random behavior but is systematic where certain
orderings are accepted as having prescribed meanings.
Language is essentially a skill. It is not a content-based subject like-Science,
Social Studies, Commerce, Mathematics, etc., which aim is to imparting
information and fill the human mind with knowledge. Since language is a skill, it
naturally comes under psychomotor domain.
Any language is difficult and easy. Language serves many purposes.
Absence of language is mere dearth of communication. The role that language
plays is immense, since time embarked. Identified as the need of the hour, the four
necessities in language or commonly known as the four skills-Reading, writing,
listening and speaking plays a vital role in any language learning quest. The four
skills are the pinnacles of language which will take you to greater heights. They
are separate yet bound together with an inseparable bond.

B. Problem Formulation
Refers to the above background, the writer tends to formulate some
problems as follows:
1. What are language skills?
2. What are the principles of teaching language skills?
3. How to apply the teaching language skills?

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 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

A. Language Skills
Language is essentially a skill which aims to deliver information and fill the
human mind with knowledge (Husain, 2015). A skill may be called the ability to
do something well. Since language is a skill, it naturally comes under
psychomotor domain. Language is a complex skill involving four sub-skills,
which are as follows:
Figure 1. Types of Language Skills

(Husain, 2015)
The four and fundamental language skills, may be further classified into two
parts, as follows:
Figure 2. Classification of Language Skills

(Husain, 2015)

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 Speaking and writing are called productive skills because while using skills
a user is not only active but also produces sounds in speaking and symbols
(letters, etc.) in writing. They can be contrasted with the receptive or passive skills
of listening and reading. On the other hand, listening and reading are considered
as receptive skills because a learner is generally passive and receives information.
Often, the process of learning new language, learners begin with receptive
understanding of new items then later move on to productive use (Masduqi,
2016). The following table gives a better idea of these skills:
Language Skills Oral Written
Receptive Listening Reading
Productive Speaking Writing
The same idea can be through a flow chart given below:
Figure 3. Classification of Language Skills

(Sreena & Ilankumaran, 2018)

Furthermore, language skills are also can be subdivided into proper and
casual skills based on their usage as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Division of language subskills based on usage

(Bharathi, 2016)

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 Proper skills (i.e. listening and speaking) are frequently used by all, whereas
casual skills (i.e. reading and writing) are used casually (Bharathi, 2016). One can
live without reading and writing, but not without speaking and listening. This
indicates the importance of listening and speaking in the process of language
learning (Paliwal, 1998). So, in order to enhance one’s communicative abilities,
one should have good acquaintance with all four language skills.

B. Principles of Teaching Language Skills

After reading about the discussion above about language skills, here are
discussed principles and applications of teaching the language skills. The theories
are taken from a book by Lander & Brown (1995).

1. Principles in Teaching Speaking skill

a. Focus on both fluency and accuracy depending on the objective. Make
sure the tasks have a linguistic (language-based) and seize the opportunity
to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language.
b. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques. Appeal to students’ ultimate
goals and interests, to their need for knowledge, for status, for achieving
competence and autonomy, help them to see how the activity will benefit
them.
c. Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. It takes
energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful
interaction, but with the help of a storehouse of teacher resource
materials, it can be done.
d. Provide appropriate feedback and correction. It is important that you take
advantage of your knowledge of English to inject the kinds of corrective
feedback that are appropriate for the moment.
e. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking speaking and listening.
The two skills can reinforce each other. Skills in producing language are
often initiated through comprehension.

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 f. Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication. Part of oral
communication competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to
nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversation, and to change
the subject.
g. Encourage the development of speaking strategies. Speaking strategies
asking for clarification (what?) asking someone to repeat something
(pardon me?) using fillers (uh, I mean) to get time to process using
conversation maintainance cues (uh-huh, right, yeah, OK, Hmm) getting
someone’s attention (hey, say, so) paraphrasing for structures one can’t
produce appealing for assistance from the interlocutor using formulaic
expressions using mime and non-verbal expressions.

2. Principles in Teaching Writing skill

a. Understand the students’ reasons for writing. The greatest dissatisfaction
with writing instruction comes when the teachers’ goals do not match the
students’, or when the teachers’ goals do not match those of the school or
institution in which the student works. It is important to understand both
to convey goals to students in ways that make sense to them.
b. Provide many opportunities for students to write. Writing almost always
improve with practice. Not every piece of writing needs to be corrected or
graded. We do not keep score when we are practicing free throws, so
teachers should not grade “practice writing”. When practice writing
sessions are integrated regularly into your syllabus, students will become
more comfortable with the act of writing. Practice writing should provide
students with different types of writing as well. Short responses to a
reading, journal entries, letter writing, summaries, poetry, or any type of
writing the teacher finds useful in the class should be practiced in class.
c. Make feedback helpful and meaningful. Students crave feedback on their
writing, yet it does not always have the intended effect.
d. Clarify for yourself, and for your students, how their writing will be
evaluated.

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3. Principles in Teaching Listening skill
a. Include a focus on listening in an integrated-skills course. Teachers
sometimes incorrectly assume that the input provided in the classroom
will always be converted into intake.
b. Use techniques that are intrinsiccally motivating. Since background
information (schemata) is an important factor in listening, take into full
account the experience, goals, and abilities of the students as the lessons
designed.
c. Use authentic language and contexts. Authentic language and real-world
tasks enable students to see the relevance of classroom activity to their
long-term communicative goals.
d. Carefully consider the form of listeners’ responses. We can only infer that
certain things have been comprehended through students’ overt responses
to speech.
e. Encourage the development of speaking strategies like strategies in
looking for key words, looking for onverbal cues to meaning, predicting
speaker’s purpose by context of discourse, activating one’s background
knowledge (schemata), guessing at meanings, seeking clarification,
listening for general gist and various test-taking strategies for listening
comprehension.
f. Include both bottom-up & top-down listening techniques. Bottom-up
processing proceeds from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to
lexical meanings, etc., to a final message. Top-down techniques are
concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving meaning of
spoken discourse.
4. Principles in Teaching Reading skill
a. Exploit the reader’s background knowledge.
b. Build a strong vocabulary base.
c. Teach for comprehension.
d. Work on increasing reading rate.

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 e. Teach reading strategies. predicting, skimming, scanning, inferring,
guessing meaning from the context, summarizing, etc.
f. Encourage reader’s to transform strategies into skills.
g. Build assessment and evaluation into your teaching.
h. Strive for continous improvement as a reading teacher.

Application of Teaching Language Skills

The language skills teaching practice has been developed over time. When we
want to have the students engaged in receptive skills (listening and reading)
learning activities, it is inseparable with the learning of the productive skills
(speaking and writing). In teaching the receptive skills, extensive/intensive
reading as well as listening techniques are commonly applied. The extensive
technique puts the students’ preferences and pleasure in concern. While intensive
one works on a sequence of set activities.
In teaching productive skills, teaching writing focus could be on the process
of writing and the output or product. Applying this strategy, students will be
directed to do some matters like brainstorming, making drafts, elaborating the
words into idea and writing it into sentences or paragraph, keeping one paragraph
coherent with the others, drawing a conclusion and editing before the final writing
done. In the other hand, the focus in teaching writing can be about genre. People
often consider a lot about what the genre of the text is going to be written. In this
case, students of writing class will be asked to read various kinds of texts. The
other technique is through creative writing, in which students are encouraged to
write imaginary writing like poetry, stories, or play (Harmer, 2007)

The next, the goal of learning a language is, of course, to be able to speak the
target language fluently. Person is considered as one language speaker if he
masters it well either in spoken or written. In learning speaking skill, students are
often reluctant to speak up due to a concern about doing mistakes. Therefore,
teachers need to carry out suitable technique or strategy in conducting the
speaking class. Like conducting small discussion, story telling, through games,
and etc.

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 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSIONS

Language is a complex skill involving four sub-skills, namely listening,

reading, speaking, and writing. Speaking and writing are called productive skills
because while using skills a user is not only active but also produces sounds in
speaking and symbols (letters, etc.) in writing. They can be contrasted with the
receptive or passive skills of listening and reading. On the other hand, listening
and reading are considered as receptive skills because a learner is generally
passive and receives information.

There are several principles and applications of teaching the language skills
proposed by Lander & Brown (1995), as follows:
a. Principles in Teaching Speaking skill: focus on both fluency and accuracy
depending on the objective, provide intrinsically motivating techniques,
encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts, provide
appropriate feedback and correction, capitalize on the natural link between
speaking speaking and listening, give students opportunities to initiate oral
communication, and encourage the development of speaking strategies.
b. Principles in Teaching Writing skill: understand the students’ reasons for
writing, provide many opportunities for students to write, make feedback
helpful and meaningful, clarify for yourself, and for your students, how their
writing will be evaluated.
c. Principles in Teaching Listening skill: Include a focus on listening in an
integrated-skills course, use techniques that are intrinsiccally motivating, use
authentic language and contexts, carefully consider the form of listeners’
responses, encourage the development of speaking strategies, and include both
bottom-up & top-down listening techniques.
d. Principles in Teaching Reading skill: exploit the reader’s background
knowledge, build a strong vocabulary base, teach for comprehension, work on

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 increasing reading rate, and encourage reader’s to transform strategies into
skills.

In teaching the receptive skills, extensive/intensive reading as well as

listening techniques are commonly applied. The extensive technique puts the
students’ preferences and pleasure in concern. While intensive one works on a
sequence of set activities. In teaching productive skills, teaching writing focus
could be on the process of writing and the output or product.

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 REFERENCES
Bharathi, A. V. (2016). Communication Skills–Core of Employability Skills:
Issues & Concerns. Higher Learning Research Communications, 6(4).
https://doi.org/10.18870/hlrc.v6i4.359
Crystal, D., How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning,
and Languages Live or Die (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005), 8–9.
Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching Fourth Edition. In
Cambridge: Pearson Longman.
Husain, N. (2015). (PDF) Language and Language Skills.
Lander, J. A., & Brown, H. D. (1995). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive
Approach to Language Pedagogy. Language. https://doi.org/10.2307/415773
Masduqi, H. (2016). Integrating Receptive Skills and Productive Skills into a
Reading Lesson | Masduqi | Proceeding of the International Conference on
Teacher Training and Education.
Sreena, S., & Ilankumaran, M. (2018). Developing Productive Skills Through
Receptive Skills – A Cognitive Approach. International Journal of
Engineering & Technology, 7(4.36), 669.
https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i4.36.24220

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