ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of trends and practices in the teaching of the four individual skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Attention will be paid to relevant research that elucidates how second language (L2) learners can develop those skills and how they can benefit from particular instructional techniques designed to help improve the four skills across different domains and communicative contexts. The chapter considers the overall relationship between L2 knowledge and skills as a point of departure for the subsequent review of each skill and corresponding instructional approaches. As a multifaceted construct, language consists of two fundamentally distinct but overlapping domains: mental representations and language use skills. Similar to reading, listening constitutes a skill area in performance, as well as a means of acquiring the target language. Reading is generally understood as a multifaceted, goal-oriented, active, and mental process of meaning construction.
