UNIVERSITY ON THE NIGER

COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH 1
GST 111

By
Edadi Ilem Ukam, Ph.D.
 Learning Objectives
At the end of the lecture, students should be able to:
LANGUAGE SKILLS

1. Define language skills, listening skills, speaking skills,

reading skills and writing skills

2. Describe the components of listening skills

3. Classify the different types of listening, speaking, reading and

writing skills
 What are Language Skills
Language skills are skills that will enable you to express and communicate your thought
comprehensibly and intelligibly with others.

For one to communicate effectively, he needs a proficient knowledge of the skills

required in the language.

The skills give learners and users opportunities to fix in every context they find
themselves if they must exchange ideas with others.

Not only do they need the skills in the Communication in English, they also need them
in all the courses they offer in school for better performance and appropriateness, and
especially for academic discussions.

When learners acquire the skills properly, they would be confident of themselves,
 TYPES OF LANGUAGE SKILLS

There are four skills in every language, even though some other skills
(like the study skill) have also been included in the classification of
language skills:
listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Whereas listening and speaking skills are mostly acquired, reading and
writing skills are learnt.

Also, while listening and reading skills are referred to as passive skills,
because both are received and understood without production,
speaking and writing skills, known also as active skills, are classified as
productive skills, since both require some form of language output.
 Listening Skills
Listening skill is the first and foremost language skill.

Although one can be exposed to a great deal of sounds, one’s perception

of these sounds and the extent to which he can make meaning out from
them depends on how efficient his listening habits are.

By definition, therefore, listening skill means the psychological process

of receiving messages, attempting to construct meaning from them,
responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages, and actively
involving on the conversion.
 Listening Skills (contd)
listening remains the primary way of combining what someone is saying and psychologically
as well as actively involving with the person during the process of communication.

This is because listening involves a high level of concentration and energy, and that is why it
is different from hearing, which is a passive process, function or power of perceiving sounds
through the ears.

Three key things are involved in listening: a sender, a message and a receiver.

The sender is the speaker during the course of communication, the message is the
information passed across from the sender to the listener, and the receiver is the actual
person listening to the message from the speaker.

One does not only listen through the ears as we assume, listening takes place by both your
ears and your eyes.
 Listening Skills (contd)
While listening skill takes place, the listeners should be able to:

• Discriminate between sounds, that is, they should be able to differentiate one sound from
another, and particularly, differentiate between vowel and consonant sounds.

• Recognise words and understand their meanings.

• Identify grammatical groups of words like phrases, clauses and sentences that act to create
meanings.

• Connect linguistic cues to non-linguistic and/or paralinguistic cues.

• Using background or previous knowledge to predict, and to confirm meaning.

• Recalling important words and ideas.

 Components of Listening Skills

For listening to take place, one must undergo the following components:

• hearing
• understanding
• remembering
• interpreting
• evaluating
• responding
 Components of Listening Skills (contd)
Hearing
It is the physical response caused by sound wave. The listeners must hear
to listen, but particularly, they need to listen to hear.

Understanding
The listeners are to analyse the symbols they have heard or seen. The
words, sentences, applauses or extra-linguistic features used for
successful interpretation in communication are very necessary. Therefore,
the listeners must understand the intended meaning and the context
assumed by the sender.
 Components of Listening Skills (contd)
Remembering and Interpreting
The listeners need to express their ideas about the intended meaning in
different ways.
We need to listen so as to remember the key points of the message
whenever necessary and try to give a number of meaning to it.

Evaluating
The listeners should, at this stage, be capable to weight evidence, sort fact
from opinions and determine the present or absence of bias or prejudice in
the message. It is only an active listen who judges.
 Components of Listening Skills (contd)
Responding
This stage requires that the listener or receiver completes the process
through verbal and/or non-verbal feedback, because the speaker has no
other way to determine if a message has been received. As such, this
stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender may determine
the degree of success in transmitting the message.
 Types of Listening

There are two types of listening:

1. active listening
2. passive listening.

An active listener paraphrases and understands the content of the message,

and therefore, reflects it back to the sender. A passive listener, on the other
hand, is genuinely interested in hearing, but stays passive: he does not
verify nor give feedback.
 Factors of Poor Listening Habit

• Fatigue
• Emotional Problems
• Lack of Motivation and Absence of Readiness
• Uncomfortable Environment
• Poor Articulation of Sounds
• Failure to Accept Instruction, etc.
 How to Improve Listening Habit

• Pay adequate attention to the message and not the style or the manner of the
speaker.

• A listener should listen patiently till the end.

• The listener should be ready to take note of vital points from the speaker.

• Every speaker should be judged after listening to his presentation.

• The listener should also understand each speaker’s method of presentation in

order to follow the discussion accurately.
 Listening to Lectures

Listening to lectures requires most of the skills we have mentioned

earlier. You need to take note of the following in addition:

• Use abbreviations and symbols to enable you to meet up.

• Put down the main points and the supporting details.

• Ask for clarification where you do not understand.

 Speaking Skills
Speaking skill deals with selecting, organising and producing the
language sounds according to our thoughts, feelings and observations.

According to Ogayi and Chima (2005), to have a good understanding

and knowledge of how the sound system of the language operates, is to
acquire a good vocabulary.

There is, therefore, need for one to pronounce words, phrases, clauses
and sentences correctly and clearly in all syntactic, phonological and
contextual positions.
 Speaking Skills (contd)
Speaking skill is made up of the following:

1. Unit of sounds (vowels and consonants)

2. Stress patterns (word, sentence and emphatic)

3. Intonation (falling, rising, falling-rising and rising-falling)

unit of words (parts of speech or word classes)

4. Unit of sentences (simple, compound, complex, etc.)

 Speaking Skills (contd)

The most important concern of speaking skill is that individual sounds,

stress and intonation patterns should be well mastered and understood
because they are traditionally difficult to be pronounced by most
Nigerians and other second language users.

Most English consonants and vowels, for example, are not found in the
inventory of indigenous languages, resulting to mispronunciation.
 Reading skills
Reading skill deals with the ability to perceive and understand writing
symbols, that is, seeing and recognising how textual elements such as
letters are combined to form other units like words, phrases, clauses and
sentences (Ogayi & Chima, 2005).

While the writer is regarded as the encoder, the reader is referred to as the
decoder.

Whereas the writer ties up his message, the reader reads and interprets the
message.

The writer writes using graphological signs and symbols, but it is the duty
of the reader to read as well as interpret the signs and symbols.
 Reading skills (contd)
Students require the following reading skills if they will succeed in their academic pursuit:

• The ability to recognise the letters of the alphabet.

• Reading group of letters as words.

• The ability to understand the relationship between words and phrases, phrases and clauses, and
clauses and sentences in a text.

• The ability to understand the grammar of a sentence.

• When different styles are used in writing, it is necessary to understand the effects of those styles
used.
 Reading skills (contd)
• Recognising the organisation of a text as well as making inferences.

• Skimming to get the overall message.

• Scanning for specific information.

• Use the right reading style.

• Use note-taking techniques.

• Increase your reading speed

 Types of Reading
• Silent Reading: This is reading without audible noise. Although we can read
differently depending on the situation of reading, but in an academic situation, silent
reading is the most appropriate.

• Reading Aloud: This is the direct opposite of silent reading: it involves reading with
audible noise. This type of reading is particularly required during speech presentation.

• Intensive reading: This is a reading to get specific detailed information. It is also

known as slow-careful reading – a method used to read a small amount of difficult
text.

• Extensive Reading: This method of reading is also used to get information. But it is
used to gain general knowledge of many topics and subjects. Here, we read many
books, journals and other reading materials. It is also regarded as free reading,
because it involves reading a large number of texts for a considerable length of time.
• Other types of reading are: creative reading (to solve a particular problem), critical
reading (reading to reach to what is good or bad depending on the meaning you get
 Handicaps or Dangers of Reading
Vocalisation: This practice refers to the habit of pronouncing each word
aloud as you read. It may sometimes take the form of whispering (speaking
softly) or moving your lips or moving your tongue or throat.

Counting of Words: Most learners count a number of words before reading.

This is because they are very lazy to read. This method is bad, because it
will slow the speed of your reading, making you not to cover a maximum
number of words or pages within a space of time.

Finger Pointing: This is a situation where readers use biro or finger to tract
the line or point as they read. The practice is also bad, because the finger
cannot move as fast as the eyes. It is a practice used by children, and not
adults.
Handicaps or Dangers of Reading (contd)
Head Movement: This is a practice of moving your head from side to side when you are
reading. When you move your head side to side, you might not concentrate, because you will
be attracted from other issues elsewhere. To avoid this bad habit, you should always hold your
head tight with your hands so that you can concentrate with your eyes whenever you are
reading.

Daydreaming: This practice is also bad: it involves thinking of other irrelevant things that are
not related to the reading. To break this habit, you should always have a purpose for your
reading; especially you should make notes as you read so that you can concentrate very well.

Memorisation: It is the ability of reading with the aim of storing what you have read
(cramming). Memorisation is a bad form of reading, because you stand the danger or risk of
inability to recall what you have read because of psychological tension, especially during
examination. Students are required to constantly review their notes which will become part of
them rather than cramming.
 WRITING SKILLS
Some authorities have classified this particular type of skill as the most
complex of all other skills, because writing skill requires, among other
things, correct grammar, spelling and punctuation marks, if you will
communicate in such a way that those reading your work will understand
it with less difficulty.

Writing skill can be defined as the act of expressing ideas through written
words. Ogayi (2005) defines writing skill as the “skilful use of language
symbols to express thoughts and ideas on paper or any other writing
surface” (p. 2).
 WRITING SKILLS (CONTD)
With writing skill, therefore, you need not to meet your audience face to
face before you can communicate with them; all you need do is your ability
to write meaningful sentences and passages in a language to enable you pass
your message across.

It is a very complex exercise that starts from the ability to recognise letters
of the alphabet to spelling of words, followed by elementary sentence
making, even before the learner will move on in constructing compound,
complex and multiple constructions.

As a writer, it is, therefore, advisable to reread your document before you

send it out. For instance, you are advised to reread your works either in
continuous assessment or in examination before the final submission.
 WRITING SKILLS (CONTD)
This will help you not only in checking the wrong spellings you have made
earlier, but will also help you to check wrong grammatical constructions as well.

Of importance is that as you are rereading your work, you should do that very
carefully, double-check it, and sometimes hire an expert to help proof-read your
work for you, because, whether you like it or not, research has shown that our
brains work faster than our hands.

As such, you are likely going to make some errors when you are writing. Going
through your work for the second or third times, or even giving it out to a
superior trained person to proof-read for you will actually make your work
better, cleaner and easier to understand by those reading it.
 How to Improve Writing Skills
Reading: You need to read extensively, intensively and regularly, because
as you read, you can come across new vocabularies as well as good
presentations with different styles which will improve your writing skill.

Audience: You need to write with your audience in mind. Whenever you
have your audience in mind, you will write a good composition. It is
wrong, for instance, to use informal words when writing a document
meant for official matters. And it is also wrong to use formal words when
writing to those who are less educated
How to Improve Writing Skills (contd)
Knowledge of Written Conventions and Tone: You need to have good
knowledge of written conventions such as spelling and punctuation marks,
among others, if you are likely going to improve in your writing skill.

Maintain Different Sentence Types: It is equally advisable to use varieties of

sentences when writing. A good knowledge of the traditional sentence types –
simple, compound, complex, compound-complex and multiple sentences –
will help you to improve your writing skills. It sounds monotonous to use only
one variety type in writing.

Unity and Cohesion: To improve your writing, you need to make sure that every
other element in the work contributes to one central idea, that is, you should
make your sentences to support this main idea.
 ASSIGNMENT
1. Discuss why listening and speaking skills are classified as passive or
receptive skills, and reading and writing are classified as active or
productive skills.

2. Discuss the components of listening skills.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING