Basic Language Skills for Acquisition and Development

This paper explores the place and importance of the basic language skills for acquisition and development. These language skills are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. To accomplish this, a literature review was conducted. Subsequently, this paper will also present the importance of each skill towards language acquisition and it's development. Lastly, I shall demonstrate my personal reflection and experience on how I have used these skills in the past years of my development. However, it is first necessary to look at the meanings of these important terms and concepts: language skills, language acquisition and language development.

Understanding what “language skills” are can be made easier by finding the meanings of each word separately and then realizing a consolidated definition. Merriam-Webster(2005) states that language is “the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other”. The Columbian Encyclopedia(1993. pp 1526) defines language in the following way:

Language is systematic communication by vocal symbols. It is a universal characteristic of the human species. Nothing is known of its origin, and scientists generally hold that it has been so long in use that the length of time WRITING is known to cover (7,900 years at most) is trifling by comparison. Just as languages spoken now by peoples of the simplest cultures are as subtle and as intricate as those of the peoples of more complex civilizations, similarly the forms of the languages known (or hypothetically reconstructed) from the earliest records show no trace of being more “primitive” than their modern forms. Because language is a cultural system, individual language may classify objects...

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...nd development. The above argument that this language acquisition is most effectively done using literature which the student finds most enjoyable is also worth noting for academics and instructors alike as often times in the class room setting, instructors resort to using materials which some students might find incredibly dreary. As such, that might rob the learner the opportunity to truly engage with the content.

Works Cited

Ballenger Bruce. 2001. The Importance of Writing Badly. Heinemann:

pd.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/0574/chapter8.pdf (accessed: 16th March

2014)

Baugh Albert C., Cable Thomas. 1993. A History of The English Language - Fourth Edition

TJ Press. Padstow, Cornwall;

Bettger, F. 1986. “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. Simon &

Schuster, Inc. New York, NY;