Integrating language skills in a foreign language: from a traditional to an online perspective

Abstract

Since the wide acceptance of the traditional conceptualization of the four skills in EFL methodology – that is listening, reading, speaking and writing – in the 1960s and 1970s, it has become clear that the framework for foreign language skill instruction requires further professional modification. In fact, over the years a range of questions have been put forward in order to explain potential relationships between them and suggest their ordering, coordination, integration or interdependence in working out practical solutions. The undertaken debates have contributed to launching the use of the terms of ‘integrating language skills’ or ‘integrated skills’. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of evolving standpoints taken by ELT specialists on the issue of integrating language skills, primarily referred to the four language skills. However, since the audiolingualists’ support given to the traditional model of the four skills, both theoreticians and practitioners have brought about into the forefront a range of new ideas, many of them connected with the growing significance of ICT and online activities implemented in L2/FL teaching and learning. The considerations of language skills integration have proved crucial for materials and course designers as well as practicing teachers responsible for lesson planning and task construction. A recently proposed division of language skills into reception, production, interaction and mediation (Council of Europe, 2001, 2018) has reduced the status of the traditional conceptualization of the four language skills and offered a broader, more comprehensive view of language skills and the links holding between them.