Mystery Object Activity

Introduction to the Teaching of the Macro Skills

• The macro skills refer to the primary, key, main, and largest skill set relative to a particular context in language acquisition.
• The four macro skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking.

Features of the Macro Skills

• Listening and reading are called receptive skills because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it.
• Speaking and writing are called productive skills because learners doing these need to produce language.
• Listening and speaking are brain input skills or oral skills, but reading and writing are brain output skills or literacy skills.

Importance of the Macro Skills

• The four skills provide ample contributions to the breadth and depth of communication among people.
• Good language teachers plan lessons, and sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the macro-skills, rather than focusing on developing only one macro-skill at a time.

Current Principles and Concepts in the Teaching of the Macro Skills

• Barrot (2016) explicated that there are already six language macro skills as a result of the proliferation of information technology.
• These macro skills include both the productive skills (i.e. speaking, writing, and representing) and receptive skills (i.e. listening, reading, and viewing).

Speaking

• Speaking is a complex process that involves simultaneous attention to content, vocabulary, discourse, information structuring, morphosyntax, sound system, prosody, and pragmalinguistic features.
• It runs in a continuum from the immediate and most familiar to decontextualized and more formal situations.
• Formal oral communication shares similar features with written communication.
• Teaching speaking involves effective communication strategies, discourse organization and structuring, conversational routines or small talks, speech acts, and conversation formulas like forms of address.

Listening

• Listening is a complex process that involves the understanding of spoken data and involves receptive, interpretative, or constructive cognitive processes.
• L2 listening has three subprocesses namely decoding, comprehension, and interpretation.
• Decoding refers to attending, perceiving speech, recognizing words, and parsing grammar.
• Comprehension deals with activation of schema, representing propositions, and logical inferencing.
• Interpretation refers to matching the meaning to previous expectations and evaluating discourse meanings.
• Variables that influence comprehensibility are speech rate and metrical cadence.### Language Macro Skills
• Listening involves perceiving and interpreting auditory inputs to construct meaning
• The listening process involves decoding, comprehension, and interpretation of spoken language
• Discovery-listening tasks can help learners focus on form and improve comprehension
• Self-assessment is an essential component of the listening process

Viewing

• Viewing refers to perceiving, examining, interpreting, and constructing meaning from visual images
• Critical assessment of audiovisual inputs is crucial in today's digital age
• Media literacy and visual literacy are essential skills for learners to develop
• Media literacy involves accessing, analyzing, and evaluating media information
• Visual literacy refers to the ability to give meaning to and construct messages for visual images

Reading

• Reading is a complex cognitive process involving decoding written symbols
• Reading involves simultaneous application of skills and subprocesses, including identifying author's mood and purpose, recognizing main ideas, and constructing meaning
• Factors influencing reading ability include L2 language proficiency, L1 reading skills, topic interest, prior knowledge, and linguistic complexity
• Reading can be viewed from three perspectives: bottom-up, top-down, and interactive processing
• The cognitive-constructivist view emphasizes that reading involves an active search for meaning, dependent on the reader's schema
• Schema can be divided into content schema and formal/textual schema

Writing

• Writing refers to the act of putting ideas into text, whether print or nonprint
• Writing is a non-linear, exploratory, and generative process that allows writers to reflect on the world around them
• Writing can range from short paragraphs to long essays, and involves different types, such as personal narratives, expository, and argumentative writings
• The role of grammar in writing is crucial, as linguistic accuracy is essential for clear communication
• Approaches to teaching writing include product approach, process approach, genre approach, process-genre approach, and post-process pedagogy

Approaches to Language Learning and Teaching

• Language learning is a complex process that involves linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural factors
• Communication is crucial in the language learning process, and the degree of success depends on how meaning is negotiated in particular acts of communication
• Communicative approaches to language teaching aim to develop learners' communicative competence
• The environmentalist approach to language learning emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology### The Behaviorist Approach to Language Learning
• The behaviorist approach emerged from early learning theorists who described the learning process in terms of conditioning.
• Behaviorists believe that behavior happens in associative stimulus-response chains, and all learning is seen as associative learning or habit-formation, which becomes stronger with reinforcement.
• Three crucial elements are involved in learning: a stimulus, a response triggered by the stimulus, and reinforcement that marks the response as appropriate or inappropriate.
• Behaviorist theory emphasizes the role of the environment and denies the existence of internal mental processes.
• B.F. Skinner's work on animal responses to stimuli led to the development of a system of principles to account for human behavior, including language learning.
• Skinner's approach views language learning as a stimulus-response-reinforcement chain, which leads to the establishment of habits of language use through automatic conditioning processes.

The Innatist Approach to Language Learning

• The innatist approach emerged in the 1960s with the development of generative linguistics, which emphasized the creative nature of human language.
• Noam Chomsky's theory of Transformational-Generative Grammar posits that language has a deep structure (essential meanings) and a surface structure (particular way of stating ideas).
• Chomsky argued that language acquisition is an innate ability, and children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that enables them to learn language.
• Innatist theory emphasizes the role of internal mental processes and the child's output in language learning.
• Chomsky's theory was critiqued for focusing on the product of acquisition rather than the process, and failing to account for the functions of language.

The Interactionist Approach to Language Learning

• The interactionist approach emerged in the 1970s, combining insights from linguistics, psychology, and sociolinguistics.
• Interactionists emphasize the role of both internal and external factors in language learning, including the linguistic environment and the child's innate predisposition.
• Halliday's systemic grammar views language as a system of choices that enable people to create meaning in social contexts.
• Interactionist theory highlights the importance of context, function, and cognitive processes in language learning.

Communicative Approach to L2 Teaching

• The communicative approach emphasizes the development of learners' communicative competence in L2 teaching.
• Canale and Swain's (1980) model of communicative competence includes four components: grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence.
• Savignon's (1983) model adds the concept of pragmatic competence and emphasizes the interrelatedness of the components.
• Bachman's (1987) model includes language competence, strategic competence, and psychomotor skills, with a focus on pragmatic competence and the four skills.

Introduction to the Teaching of the Macro Skills

• The macro skills refer to the primary, key, main, and largest skill set relative to a particular context in language acquisition.
• The four macro skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking.

Features of the Macro Skills

• Listening and reading are called receptive skills because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it.
• Speaking and writing are called productive skills because learners doing these need to produce language.
• Listening and speaking are brain input skills or oral skills, but reading and writing are brain output skills or literacy skills.

Importance of the Macro Skills

• The four skills provide ample contributions to the breadth and depth of communication among people.
• Good language teachers plan lessons, and sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the macro-skills, rather than focusing on developing only one macro-skill at a time.

Current Principles and Concepts in the Teaching of the Macro Skills

• Barrot (2016) explicated that there are already six language macro skills as a result of the proliferation of information technology.
• These macro skills include both the productive skills (i.e. speaking, writing, and representing) and receptive skills (i.e. listening, reading, and viewing).

Speaking

• Speaking is a complex process that involves simultaneous attention to content, vocabulary, discourse, information structuring, morphosyntax, sound system, prosody, and pragmalinguistic features.
• It runs in a continuum from the immediate and most familiar to decontextualized and more formal situations.
• Formal oral communication shares similar features with written communication.
• Teaching speaking involves effective communication strategies, discourse organization and structuring, conversational routines or small talks, speech acts, and conversation formulas like forms of address.

Listening

• Listening is a complex process that involves the understanding of spoken data and involves receptive, interpretative, or constructive cognitive processes.
• L2 listening has three subprocesses namely decoding, comprehension, and interpretation.
• Decoding refers to attending, perceiving speech, recognizing words, and parsing grammar.
• Comprehension deals with activation of schema, representing propositions, and logical inferencing.
• Interpretation refers to matching the meaning to previous expectations and evaluating discourse meanings.
• Variables that influence comprehensibility are speech rate and metrical cadence.### Language Macro Skills
• Listening involves perceiving and interpreting auditory inputs to construct meaning
• The listening process involves decoding, comprehension, and interpretation of spoken language
• Discovery-listening tasks can help learners focus on form and improve comprehension
• Self-assessment is an essential component of the listening process

Viewing

• Viewing refers to perceiving, examining, interpreting, and constructing meaning from visual images
• Critical assessment of audiovisual inputs is crucial in today's digital age
• Media literacy and visual literacy are essential skills for learners to develop
• Media literacy involves accessing, analyzing, and evaluating media information
• Visual literacy refers to the ability to give meaning to and construct messages for visual images

Reading

• Reading is a complex cognitive process involving decoding written symbols
• Reading involves simultaneous application of skills and subprocesses, including identifying author's mood and purpose, recognizing main ideas, and constructing meaning
• Factors influencing reading ability include L2 language proficiency, L1 reading skills, topic interest, prior knowledge, and linguistic complexity
• Reading can be viewed from three perspectives: bottom-up, top-down, and interactive processing
• The cognitive-constructivist view emphasizes that reading involves an active search for meaning, dependent on the reader's schema
• Schema can be divided into content schema and formal/textual schema

Writing

• Writing refers to the act of putting ideas into text, whether print or nonprint
• Writing is a non-linear, exploratory, and generative process that allows writers to reflect on the world around them
• Writing can range from short paragraphs to long essays, and involves different types, such as personal narratives, expository, and argumentative writings
• The role of grammar in writing is crucial, as linguistic accuracy is essential for clear communication
• Approaches to teaching writing include product approach, process approach, genre approach, process-genre approach, and post-process pedagogy

Approaches to Language Learning and Teaching

• Language learning is a complex process that involves linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural factors
• Communication is crucial in the language learning process, and the degree of success depends on how meaning is negotiated in particular acts of communication
• Communicative approaches to language teaching aim to develop learners' communicative competence
• The environmentalist approach to language learning emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology### The Behaviorist Approach to Language Learning
• The behaviorist approach emerged from early learning theorists who described the learning process in terms of conditioning.
• Behaviorists believe that behavior happens in associative stimulus-response chains, and all learning is seen as associative learning or habit-formation, which becomes stronger with reinforcement.
• Three crucial elements are involved in learning: a stimulus, a response triggered by the stimulus, and reinforcement that marks the response as appropriate or inappropriate.
• Behaviorist theory emphasizes the role of the environment and denies the existence of internal mental processes.
• B.F. Skinner's work on animal responses to stimuli led to the development of a system of principles to account for human behavior, including language learning.
• Skinner's approach views language learning as a stimulus-response-reinforcement chain, which leads to the establishment of habits of language use through automatic conditioning processes.

The Innatist Approach to Language Learning

• The innatist approach emerged in the 1960s with the development of generative linguistics, which emphasized the creative nature of human language.
• Noam Chomsky's theory of Transformational-Generative Grammar posits that language has a deep structure (essential meanings) and a surface structure (particular way of stating ideas).
• Chomsky argued that language acquisition is an innate ability, and children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that enables them to learn language.
• Innatist theory emphasizes the role of internal mental processes and the child's output in language learning.
• Chomsky's theory was critiqued for focusing on the product of acquisition rather than the process, and failing to account for the functions of language.

The Interactionist Approach to Language Learning

• The interactionist approach emerged in the 1970s, combining insights from linguistics, psychology, and sociolinguistics.
• Interactionists emphasize the role of both internal and external factors in language learning, including the linguistic environment and the child's innate predisposition.
• Halliday's systemic grammar views language as a system of choices that enable people to create meaning in social contexts.
• Interactionist theory highlights the importance of context, function, and cognitive processes in language learning.

Communicative Approach to L2 Teaching

• The communicative approach emphasizes the development of learners' communicative competence in L2 teaching.
• Canale and Swain's (1980) model of communicative competence includes four components: grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence.
• Savignon's (1983) model adds the concept of pragmatic competence and emphasizes the interrelatedness of the components.
• Bachman's (1987) model includes language competence, strategic competence, and psychomotor skills, with a focus on pragmatic competence and the four skills.