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- Language Skills
Four Main Language Skills
While learning English or other foreign language, four main language skills should be obtained and trained: reading, writing, listening and speaking. These are vital components of human communication processes. In order to learn English, English language skills practice is required on the regular basis. In this part of EnglishVille you'll find articles about these four language skills, the ways they can be trained and improved, and useful links to the according lessons, worksheets and exercises.
Both teachers and British scientists agree that reading is an essential part of learning a language. You can't tell that you have acquired a language until you read in that language. Reading widens one's vocabulary, a person becomes easily aware of new structures that are used in the language, and gets "live" examples of the language.
Reading Comprehension skills include decoding, translating, understanding the strusture of the sentence and understanding a word's meaning in a context. What is the best way to improve Reading Comprehension sklills? The answer is easy: just read! Also, translating and writing down unfamiliar words could help you to memorize them and enrich your vocabulary. Don't use too complicated texts. It is always better to start with easy texts that are interesting and readable for you, and at the same time include new words and expressions. Step by step, try more advanced reading texts. Modern literature textbooks are divided into levels by their difficulty - try to find a reading level that is suitable for you, and choose the book you really like. That's the way your learning will be interesting and enjoyable.
Here are some tips to improve your reading comprehension in English:
- Most important, the reading must be pleasant and enjoyable for you. Thus the learning process will be your pleasure, not hard work.
- Vocabulary is important as well. Take the new words you find in the text, and try to compose new sentences with the same words. Use the words in a different context.
- In order to memorize new sentence structures and expressions, you can retell the story or a part of the text that you have just read. It will also help you to check whether you completely understand the meaning of the text.
- Answer comprehension questions, if you have them after the text. If not, make up your own questions - you won't have to answer them.
- Find more information on the subject or topic that caught your attention during reading. You will find the same vocabulary in a different context, and this reading won't be too hard for you.
Writing is considered to be the most complicated action required from the new language learner. It demands basic vocabulary, knowledge of word order in a sentence, of sentence structure and correct language usage, without mentioning general understanding of the language's principles and grammar rules. For teachers, writing assignments are an invaluable source of student's mistakes, which show the weak points that need to be improved. Those assignments and tasks are the best indicator of the language acquisition.
How can an English language student improve his writing skills? There are many ways to succeed in writing tasks, but they all are united under one general rule that says: the more you write, the better you write. Learn from the examples - read more to get used to the language forms in different kinds of written texts. Try to analyse the text you are reading from the point of writing the same text: in a letter, find a beginning, a greeting and an ending. Remember introductions and general phrases, question words and phraseologisms. You can even make up your own table of adverbs that might be used while composing sentences or performing some other writing task.
These are some examples of writing assignments that are used to improve writing skills in English:
create an ID card for celebrity / singer / movie star;
rewrite sentences in other words;
add two more adjectives to every noun in the sentence, expand the sentence;
use your new vocabulary to build few sentences with each word;
make a short summary of the text;
give your extended opinion or discuss pros and contras;
written project, article or essay on the given topic;
One delicate point among the students and the teachers is that people tend to use Google translator more and more in their writing assignments. Of course, this tool is very convienient and looks professional in its work, but nevertheless it cannot be used to complete writing tasks. Translations made by automatic translators like Google Translator tools still have to be proofread by a person who is fluent in this language. Only then the outcome text becomes "readable". And the strongest argument is: you don't really learn anything when you just copy-paste and automatically translate the text. So, what's the point?