Language skills has become very important to our learners. Enhancing our skills can be our weapon to this society. Each of the skills have their own purpose as it conveys our emotion, opinion and facts to other people. The students must know the purpose and importance of this skills as we born with the need of communication, verbally or nonverbal. So as a teacher, we aim for the enhancement by teaching and guiding them in order to master their skills.
We believe that everyone can communicates. Every day, even to our family, friends, coworkers, classmates and etc. And this communication can be viewed as an active process in our community. With this, communication provide different forms, style and process in every situation. So, to acquire a good communication, this four language skills can be a key to open many opportunities to the students to experience as well as develop at the same time.
But students nowadays have a hard time to instate this language skills so sometimes they have a misconception when it comes in communicating other people. At certain time we’re not aware that our innate skills have a problem or we are lacking for communicating other people. So there are some articles contain a studies about the skills that the students must possess but there’s a problem about it and that is, the students can’t possess this language skills appropriately. Speaking and listening skills are vital language skills when it comes in English. So with this, a question may come up to us. WHAT SKILLS MUST THE STUDENT POSSESS THE MOST ?
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There are lots of researchers said that this speaking skills is the one most important for the student to possess but speaking is one of the most difficult skills language students have to face. Even though teacher encourage student to develop speaking skills by giving them authentic activities or any speaking activities but still there are lots of factor or barriers that can be a hindrance to develop their skills.
According to the Spanish curriculum, one of the objectives explains that learner should be able to: “Understand and produce correctly complex texts and messages both orally and in writing in daily life situations, using linguistic and non-linguistic resources in order to get a satisfactory and fluent communication”(LOE: 2007). So it means in order to have a fluent communication the students must first understand the basic competences that considered essential to develop in a subject. With this, student must understand the importance of each skills for them. Having a good speaking skills means the audience you may have can understand you clearly and correctly. Students must also have clear and pleasant tone of voice. This makes the audience more attentive to you.
Student must speak confidently to communicate professionally and socially. In some writer of articles said that the student are lacking in oral communication because they do not have confidence to make a presentation and speeches. (Jordan, 1997) list some important speaking skills in oral presentation that such as organizing information into coherent structure, using “signals” to facilitate task of listeners, speaking from notes and achieving greater phonological, grammatical and lexical accuracy. Students must practice oral communication as it is really essential for the future career of a student. In our competitive world, different fields of work seek for communication skills that quality must educated person have. Speaking skills inculcate professionalism in speaking styles, ways of self-expression and attitudes towards others, and these traits would hold students in good stead in their professional lives. (ostler, 1980) states that the ESP students need to improved their speaking abilities and it is considered more important than other skills.
Even though, speaking skills is a number one objective of the language learners. However, listening skills is also one of the important language skills because in order to have a good communication, we should practice to listen. Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and also grasping its meaning. Good listening comprehension first involves building an understanding of individual words and sentences in a story.
However, good comprehends go beyond single word and sentence comprehension to construct a mental model that integrates a story’s multiple propositions (e.g., story elements, sentences) and prior knowledge into a cohesive whole. (Kintsch, 2005). According to J. Willis, there’s a list of micro skills of listening which she can enabling skills. They are: predicting what people are going to talk about, guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking, using one’s own knowledge of the subject to help understand, recognizing discourse markers, understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress. With this, it means that listening is not merely perceiving sounds but it is a distinct process in which we discriminate and recognize words in order to get the message.
In addition, McDonough and Shaw explain that a listener as processor of language has to go through three process using three types of skills: Processing sound/perception skills, Processing meaning/ analysis skills and Processing knowledge and context/ synthesis skills. According to Nunan, (2001: 23) Listening is a six-staged process, consisting of Hearing, Attending, Understanding, Remembering, Evaluating and Responding. These stages occur in sequence and rapid succession. Having a lots of things that we should understand in listening, listening competence is more wider than speaking competence.
Rivers (1966) claimed, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore a primary importance of the communication aim is to be reached”. In addition, According to Lindsay and Knight (2006) , people have four different purposes when they listen:
We listen for a purpose, but this purpose can be very different depending on the situation: listening for specific details, listening for general meaning, listening for the general idea or gist. There is also a difference between listening: for information; for enjoyment or social reasons; to learn new language .
Therefore, I believe that to speak very well, first is to listen well. Listening skill is the good start of communication, it means you start to decode the message and after you receive it you can produce your own speech as you will use is your speaking skills now. Sometimes , just one misunderstanding to message you heard can be start of misconception if you start to communicate.
So I believe that the language skills must the student possess the most is listening skills. After you possess this listening skills, you can achieve high level of comprehension and other skills will follow. By using our listening skills, we can identify different pronunciation or accent in each country and also we can start to be equipped to speak in English language. We should realize that listening have a lots of advantage in order to develop or enhance the other skills. Once you pressure yourself to speak in front can create frustration and tension and can be a reason to delay the process of your proficiency.
References
- Linguapress: English Speaking in the World Today
- Macmillan Dictionary: Useless for Talking or Not Good at Talking?
- Oxford Dictionaries: Language Skills
- BusyTeacher.org: Classroom Activities for Speaking Skills
- The Internet TESL Journal: Teaching Speaking – Communicative Teaching Techniques and Activities for Beginning ESL EFL Classes and Students
