92-pages-GUIDELINES-FOR-SECONDARY-SCHOOLS-All-Streams-and-Sections

THE TEACHING OF THE FOUR SKILLS
Skills within the standards-based framework
The standards-based approach suggested in these guidelines sets relatively high expectations with regard to
the teaching of the skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. We should work towards creating the
conditions necessary for all learners to meet the desired outcomes. For the teaching of these skills to be
successful, teachers and textbook designers should have the five standards areas (i.e. communications,
cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities) referred to earlier in mind. These skills (i.e. literacy)
need to be addressed earlier with a view to helping learners (i) meet the standards set forth for all levels and
(ii) help learner gradually develop their communicative competence. This encompasses:
o Grammatical competence: the mastery of the language code itself.
o Socio-cultural competence: the ability to understand and use utterances appropriately in
different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors/ clues.
o Discourse competence: the ability to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve
a unified or coherent spoken or written text in different genres.
o Strategic competence: The ability to make use of verbal and non-verbal communication
strategies (a) to make up for breakdowns in communication and (b) to boost the
effectiveness of communication 5 .
Listening and speaking 6
Within this standards-based approach, the aim for the teaching of English in our schools goes beyond the
learners’ ability to know its linguistic components to encompass its authentic real-life uses, as has been
mentioned earlier. This aim can only be achieved through prioritizing their listening and speaking
competencies. These two skills are tightly interrelated and often function interdependently and/
simultaneously in real life situations. A systematic and principled integration of the two is an asset in
fostering effective oral communication. Such integration reflects real-life and purposeful communication. It
is advisable that particular focus be laid upon the strategies that are inherent to each of them. The teaching of
speaking and listening should aim at training the learners for real life communication through helping them
enhance the competencies that are essential to their use of English in different learning or ‘real’ situations
confidently. We should ensure that as learners move along the levels of the English language course, they
gradually acquire the necessary language knowledge 7 and competencies that are crucial in effective and
purposeful communication. A systematic and reasoned approach to the teaching of listening and speaking
5 (See Canale and Swain 1980, and Canale, 1982).
6 Our dealing with these two skills first is of no significance whatsoever. Equal importance is given to the other two
skills.
7 Both declarative knowledge (what to know) and procedural knowledge (know how) are complementary rather than
mutually exclusive within this approach.
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التوجيهات التربوية وبرامج تدريس مادة اللغة الإنجليزية س ت ث ت 2007