Language teaching and language learning focus on four skills:
Reading comprehension, Aural Comprehension, Writing and
Speaking. Most course books authors organize their materials so
as to teach these skills in an integrated way. This seems
eminently reasonable, but is it? Have you ever had a class
wanting/needing to improve conversational skills on the post-
intermediate level and chosen an integrated skills course book
for them – only to find yourself getting bogged down in long
texts for pre-discussion work? Have you ever had a class
wanting/needing to improve writing skills on the pre-
intermediate level and chosen an integrated skills course book
for them – only to find yourself tied up with audio materials to
present the topics? The reason for this is that the underlying
assumption of the integrated skills approach to language
learning: That all four of the learners’ skills are equal to
each other at the beginning of a course and they progress at the
same pace during a course. Not long ago, a (non ESL) tea