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When we think of English skills, the «four skills» of listening, speaking, reading, and writing readily come to mind.

Of course other skills such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling all play a role in effective English communication. The amount of attention you give to each skill area will depend both the level of your learners as well as their situational needs. Generally beginners, especially those who are nonliterate, benefit most from listening and speaking instruction with relatively little work on reading and writing. As fluency increases, the amount of reading and writing in your lessons may also increase. With advanced learners, up to half of your lesson time can be spent on written skills, although your learners may wish to keep their focus weighted toward oral communication if that is a greater need.

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing
• Grammar
• Vocabulary

Listening

Students can improve their listening skills through a combination of extensive and intensive listening material and procedures, is especially important since it provides the perfect opportunity to hear voices other than the teacher’s, enables students to acquire good speaking habits as a result of the spoken English they absorb and helps to improve their pronunciation

Teaching Listening (chapter 18) -Jeremy Harmer

Extensive listening will usually take place outside the classroom: in the student`s home, car or on personal MP3 players as they travel from one place to another.The motivational power of such activity increases dramatically when students make their own choises about what they are going to listen to.

The best way to learn is by playing, here is a small game that will help you recognize the importance of listening: https://TopgradeApp.com/playQuiz/about-listening

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the set of words that are part of a specific language or language, known by a person or an other entity. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read in other language, and it is key to reading comprehension.

Here I leave an excellent app where you can learn a lot of vocabulary and have a lot of fun while you advance in the levels: https://es.duolingo.com

Here is a small quiz where you can test some of your knowledge: https://topgradeapp.com/es/quizzes/vocabulary-41

Writing

Writing is the painting of the voice.

-Voltarire.

Writing is the act of using letters and punctuation to communicate thoughts in a readable form, so it is a complement to spoken language. Good writing skills allow you to communicate your odeas with clarity.

As Penny UR says: «The purpose of writing, in principle, is the expression of ideas, the conveying of a message to the reader; so the ideas themselves should arguably be seen as the most important aspect of the writing. On the other hand, the writer needs also to pay some attention to formal aspects: neat handwriting, correct spelling and punctuation, as well as acceptable grammar and careful selection of vocabulary». It means that other English skills are necessary for writing.

Reading

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Reading is the process of understanding that type of information or ideas stored in a medium and transmission through a type of code, usually a language, which can be visual or tactile.

Reading is the most effective way to open your mind, it is the best thing you can do to grow your knowledge.

To continue you can see the importance of reading to learn English

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Speaking

Speaking is an act of making vocal sounds that means to converse and expressing thoughts or feelings in spoken language. It involves more than just pronouncing words because this skill will give you the ability to communicate effectively.

If you want to develope this skill correctly, you should get some abilities like be an active listener, be a quick organiser of thoughts and structure your speech in your mind. Here, you have an explanation of each one:

• Be an active listener: You have to listen carefully and giving your attention to the words, tone, emotion and logic behind what the other one is saying.

• Be a quick organiser of thoughts: The trick is to adopt some frameworks or models to structure new information into coherent ideas.
• Structure your speech in your mind: Thinking before speaking is important for us to add value in terms of communicating our thoughts. So, when you are going to express an idea, think about the three parts of the sentence (open, body, conclusion), organise them quickly and you will be ready to speak.

There are some special skills that will allow you to speak correctly and with security at the time to say an information to a lot of people.

In the first place, you have to be prepared, the more you know what you want to say, the better you’ll get at it. Practice your speech over again!

Knowing your audience will be useful for you to be connect with the people who are listening you, in this way, they are going to be interested on what you are saying.

You will be able to speaking with sincerity and passion if you are true to yourself and your topic as you speak. Don’t be afraid to inject enthusiasm into the speech as well.

Last but no least, we have the fluency. It should be the main goal of your speech and you will get it if you remember that you don’t have to know many complex grammatical structures on your mind, if you have practiced before and you know what you want to communicate, fluency will come to your speech naturally.

Next to have read the most important about speaking, you are ready to practice your knowledges with this funny game, let’s try it!

https://TopgradeApp.com/playQuiz/english-skills-speaking

Here, you haved a short video that will help you to continue improving your speaking skill. Review it!