QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY

DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun, 3401 Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

LESSON 12: Teaching English in an Integrated Way

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of the lesson, the learners should be able to:
1. adopt understanding on teaching English in an integrated way;
2. describe the strategies in teaching English in an integrated way; and
3. develop a lesson plan teaching English in an integrated way.

Feeding the Mind!

Integrating skills in English language classes

The integrated skills approach emphasizes that interaction is both the

means and the essential goal of language learning. Therefore, learning
activities should be directed to enable the students to communicate the
message in terms of its meaning, instead of concentrating exclusively on
grammatical perfection or phonetics. In relation to this, the students’ mastery of the
language they are learning is evaluated in terms of how much they have developed their
communicative abilities and competencies. To enable the students to develop their
communicative abilities and competencies, the language components and skills must not
be separated. Hinkel (2010) accentuated that a language may need to be broken into parts
to study it. However, to use the language, we need to integrate the skills and components.
In line with this, Harmer (2007) accentuated that both of the receptive skills and the
productive skills are two sides of the same coin. They cannot be separated because one skill
can reinforce another in various ways.

Advantages of Integrated Skills Teaching

The implementation of an integrated skills approach offers some advantages. Carols

(1990, pp. 73-74) described five advantages.

1. Skills integration provides continuity in teaching learning/program because in this

approach tasks are closely related to each other.
2. Activities in the integrated skills approach can be designed to provide input before
output.
3. It provides realistic learning as skills integration allows for the development of four
skills within a realistic communicative framework.
4. It provides chances to know and redeploy the language learned by students in
different contexts and modes and it can be valuable for motivation because it allows
for the recycling and revision of language which has already been taught.
5. Skills integration increases confidence to a weaker or less confident learner

Kebede (2013) listed seven advantages of integrated skills teaching.

1. Language skills integration provides more purposeful and meaningful learning at
all proficiency levels.
2. It contributes to consistent teaching and to better communication.
3. It brings variety into the classroom, which enables teachers to enrich classroom
instruction by integrating language skills cooperatively.
4. It makes language learning comes nearer to the way we do in real life. The language
skills integration enables students to learn to manage the language and to easily
transfer the acquired knowledge of the other areas. Thus, it promotes language
learning and affects the new language knowledge of learners positively.
5. Language skills integration helps students develop their communicative
competence (grammatical/linguistic competence, strategic competence,
sociolinguistic competence, and discourse competence).

VISION MISSION
The leading center for academic and technological excellence Develop competent and morally upright professionals and generate
and prime catalyst for a progressive and sustainable Quirino appropriate knowledge and technologies to meet the needs of Quirino
Province and Southern Cagayan Valley. Province and Southern Cagayan Valley.

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

Page | 1
 QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun, 3401 Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

6. It provides exposure to authentic language learning environment so that students

can interact naturally with the intended language.
7. It assists students to develop their critical thinking so that they can analyze,
synthesize and evaluate information better. This enables them to learn language
skills in a better way and be successful academically. Seventh, it creates motivation
in students by avoiding a routine practice of forms of the language that often
creates dullness in students. Eighth, it provides student-centered and humanistic
approach to language teaching in a classroom.

INSTRUCTIONAL SEQUENCE

1. Activating Prior Knowledge

The contemporary theory believes that the learner's mind possesses meaning making
and pattern-seeking functions (Diaz-Rico & Weed, 1995). This supports instructional
approaches that actively engage learners in the learning/thinking process. Focusing
on prior knowledge can increase learners' familiarity with the new materials, and
eventually enhances their level of understanding. During the learning process, learners
should have ample opportunities to talk about the topic, seek meaning through various
means such as pictures, manipulatives and props, and produce output. The
combination of interactive techniques enables learners to internalize the concept, and
practice using the vocabulary before putting their thoughts in writing.

2. The Teaching-Learning Cycle

Hammond, Burns, Joyce, Brosnan, and Gerot (1992) propose an instruction model
called the Teaching-Learning Cycle. This model consists of four stages. The first stage
is "Building knowledge of the field". Its objective is to prepare learners for the new
learning. It includes sharing prior experiences, developing vocabulary, and practicing
grammatical patterns that are relevant to the topic. Learners experience a variety of
meaning-making strategies to understand the content of the study. Examples include
the use of visuals (i.e. photographs, video, charts, and diagrams), hands-on activities
(i.e. skit, role play), communicative activities (i.e. sharing, discussing, or arguing about
the topic), a wide range of verbal and written genres, and reading strategies (i.e.
predicting, skimming, and scanning). This is an important stage in building the
learners' foundation in learning the materials. The second stage is "Modeling the genre
under focus", which is characterized by the teacher's modeling of language structures
such as set phrases, vocabulary and dialogues. Schematic structures are outlined.
Learners can observe the genres that are being used, identify the purposes of the
genres, and analyze their schematic structure.

Two Forms of Integrated-Skill Instruction

Both of these benefit from a diverse range of materials,
textbooks, and technologies for the ESL or EFL classroom.

Content-Based Instruction. Students practice all the

language skills in a highly integrated, communicative fashion
while learning content such as science, mathematics, and
social studies. Content-based language instruction is valuable
at all levels of proficiency, but the nature of the content might
differ by proficiency level.

At least three general models of content-based language instruction exist:

1. Theme-based - the language class is structured around topics or themes, with
the topics forming the backbone of the course curriculum.
2. Sheltered - content courses taught in the target language by a content specialist.
Target language learners are sheltered from native speaking students of the
language.
VISION MISSION
The leading center for academic and technological excellence Develop competent and morally upright professionals and generate
and prime catalyst for a progressive and sustainable Quirino appropriate knowledge and technologies to meet the needs of Quirino
Province and Southern Cagayan Valley. Province and Southern Cagayan Valley.

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

Page | 2
 QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun, 3401 Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

3. Adjunct - students are enrolled concurrently in two linked courses, a language

course and a content course. Learners are sheltered in the language course, but
integrated in the content course.

Task-Based Instruction

Students participate in communicative tasks in English. Tasks are defined as activities

that can stand alone as fundamental units and that require comprehending, producing,
manipulating, or interacting in authentic language while attention is principally paid to
meaning rather than form.

The task-based model is beginning to influence the measurement of learning strategies.

In task-based instruction, basic pair work and group work are often used to increase student
interaction and collaboration. For instance, students work together to write and edit a class
newspaper, develop a television commercial, enact scenes from a play, or take part in other
joint tasks.

INTEGRATING THE LANGUAGE SKILLS

In order to integrate the language skills, consider taking these steps:

1. Learn more about the various ways to integrate language skills in the classroom
(content-based, task-based, or a combination).
2. Reflect on their current approach and evaluate the extent to which the skills are
integrated.
3. Choose instructional materials, textbooks, and technologies that promote the
integration of listening, reading, speaking, and writing, as well as the associated
skills of syntax, vocabulary, and so on.
4. Even if a given course is labeled according to just one skill, remember that it is
possible to integrate the other language skills through appropriate tasks.
5. Teach language learning strategies and emphasize that a given strategy can often
enhance performance in multiple skills.

Progressive Functional Skill Integration

The four macro skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) are all part of normal language
proficiency and use. They can also work together in language acquisition, and the phrase
integrated skills is commonly used to describe curricula that develop the skills in parallel
fashion.

FOCAL SKILLS integrate the skills in a particularly effective way: by exploiting certain
skills as tools for developing others. Progressive Functional Skill Integration refers to the
logical, systematic integration of the skills in accordance with their potential uses in the
classroom.
These considerations lead to the following principles:
1. Students should have good listening comprehension before working on reading,
writing, and academic skills.
2. Students should have good reading comprehension before working on writing and
academic skills.
3. Students should have good writing ability before working on academic skills.
4. Speaking should be encouraged throughout the process of acquiring English,
especially after good listening comprehension has been attained

The disciplined order of development set forth in these principles intensifies the
efficiency of language acquisition, since students are always working on their weak skills
from a position of strength.

A focal skill is a language skill that a student is currently working on.

VISION MISSION
The leading center for academic and technological excellence Develop competent and morally upright professionals and generate
and prime catalyst for a progressive and sustainable Quirino appropriate knowledge and technologies to meet the needs of Quirino
Province and Southern Cagayan Valley. Province and Southern Cagayan Valley.

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

Page | 3
 QUIRINO STATE UNIVERSITY
DIFFUN CAMPUS
Diffun, 3401 Quirino

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Supporting skills are language skills that can be used to support work on a focal skill.
As outlined above, listening can be used to support work that is focused on all other skills;
reading supports work focused on writing; and so on. A skill that has developed to the
supporting level can normally continue to develop through regular use, and no longer
requires focused attention.

An emergent skill develops to some extent as a consequence of work focused on some

other skill. For example, speaking and reading both improve somewhat as a result of
progress in listening; and writing improves as reading improves.

Remember!
Upload your output in the online platform that we use in this class.

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY
I can do this!

Develop a detailed lesson plan integrating the English macro -skills in one lesson.

You will be assessed based on this rubric:

Criteria Rating
Completion 10 pts 7 pts 4 pts 0 10.0
of Task All of the Most but not all 50% of the Did not
questions from of the questions questions from submit the
the instructions from the the instructions worksheet.
have been instructions have been
answered. have been answered.
answered.
Total points 10.0

REFERENCES

Integrating the four skills. https://sites.google.com/site/effectiveteachingtips/integrating-

the-fourskills
Murthy, Palavarapu Krishna and Ram, M.V. Raghu. 2015. Integrated Approach To English
Language Teaching In L2 Classroom: A Conceptual Framework. Veda’s Journal Of English
Language And Literature (JOELL). http://joell.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Integrated-
Approach-to-English-Language-Teaching.pdf

VISION MISSION
The leading center for academic and technological excellence Develop competent and morally upright professionals and generate
and prime catalyst for a progressive and sustainable Quirino appropriate knowledge and technologies to meet the needs of Quirino
Province and Southern Cagayan Valley. Province and Southern Cagayan Valley.

“Molding Minds, Shaping Future”

Page | 4