巧妙设计活动优化课堂教学培训2.doc

2 Analysing language skills 2.1 Introduction Before we proceed, in Chapter 3, to consider in more detail the com- ponents of a language learning task, we need to draw together what we know about language use. We shall do this by looking at recent research into the nature of what we may call the four macroskills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. We have already noted that a conventional approach to syllabus design has been to produce specifications or inventories of discrete linguistic items to build into composite items in the learning programme. These specifications have variously taken the shape of lists of forms, or functions, or notions, or particular skills. It is the last of these categories, with its emphasis on language behaviour, which we shall find most useful in helping us to chart those language activities which will help us make up our language learning tasks. When in Chapter 3 we construct a framework for designing and monitoring tasks, we shall be considering all the skills conjointly as they interact with each other in natural behaviour. In real life as in the classroom, most tasks of any complexity involve more than one macroskill. There are occasions, certainly, when one is simply listening, speaking, reading or writing to the exclusion of the other skills: examples might be watching a soap opera on television, reading a novel, giving a lecture, or writing a letter to a friend. But there are many other examples where a number of skills are interwoven into a complex language activity. I would like us therefore to get away from the notion that general language programmes can be constructed from separate components concentrating on separate macroskills. Where possible these skills should be integrated, though this is not to say that there cannot be specialised components focusing on one or two of the skills to the exclusion of others. Nevertheless, for convenience our starting point in this chapter is the discrete macroskills and what res