Changing Principles and Practices in Teaching Language Skills

Abstract

The outcomes of English being an international language have led to a reassessment of the ways in which receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and writing) skills are taught. Since English is a heterogeneous language used predominantly by multilingual speakers of English, the teaching of listening and speaking skills should go beyond listening to and emulating how “native speakers” speak English. Learners should be exposed to different world Englishes and learn to develop intercultural pragmatic skills. In teaching writing, learners should learn to take into account the social contexts in which they operate and learn to shuttle between communities. Since many ELT texts are not always written using cultural values and semantic phrases with which learners of English are familiar, teachers are encouraged to engage their learners in learning to read “against the grain” as critical readers, as opposed to learning to be assimilated into what is written in the texts.