Study a Balance of the 4 Key Skills
(Listening, Speaking,Reading,Writing)
The four main skills for learning any language are listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Most students want to communicate better in English. If this is one of your goals, it is important to study a balance of the four major skills. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are the main (macro) skills you need to communicate in any language. Being very good at only one of these skills will not help you to communicate. For example you need to be able to read well before you can write well. You also need to be able to listen before you can speak. It helps to think of these communicative skills in two groups.
Most students want to communicate better in English. If this is one of your goals, it is important to study a balance of the four major skills. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are the main (macro) skills you need to communicate in any language. Being very good at only one of these skills will not help you to communicate. For example you need to be able to read well before you can write well. You also need to be able to listen before you can speak. It helps to think of these communicative skills in two groups.
Some students want to know which skill is the most important. Since all of the skills rely on each other, they are all important. However, to communicate we do use some skills more often than others. For example, about 40% of the time that we spend communicating we are simply listening. We speak for about 35% of the time. Approximately 16% of communication comes from reading, and about 9% from writing. These statistics are for an average communicator in English. Depending on someone's job or situation, these numbers may vary.
Each of these main skills have micro skills within them. For example, pronunciation is a type of speaking skill that must be practised in order to improve communication. Spelling is a skill that makes understanding the written word easier. Grammar and vocabulary are other micro skills. Micro doesn't mean they are unimportant. Macro skills such as listening are very general, while micro skills are more specific.
For the best results, create an agenda that combines all four areas of study. Allow one type of studying to lead into another. For example, read a story and then talk about it with a friend. Watch a movie and then write about it. This is what teachers in an English class would have you do, right?
Therefor , I will try to help you in next posts to improve these four skills. I think it is useful to start with listening before speaking and reading before writing, as it is the natural development of learning for us. A baby start to listen first and is attracted to sounds and voices around him/her. Then, he/she starts to speak . After that a child starts to learn reading before writing. It is a natural sequence of learning process.
Therefor , I will try to help you in next posts to improve these four skills. I think it is useful to start with listening before speaking and reading before writing, as it is the natural development of learning for us. A baby start to listen first and is attracted to sounds and voices around him/her. Then, he/she starts to speak . After that a child starts to learn reading before writing. It is a natural sequence of learning process.