If your aim is to self-learn and master a language, any language you need to understand a bit about how languages work. The reason we need language is to be able to communicate.
In order to communicate, we need to be able to understand what someone is saying to us, in other words, the information shared with us orally or in written format needs to be decoded in our brains to make sense to us. These are also called input or reception skills.
After having received some information we may need to respond to it by producing some language ourselves. Again, we may do that either in writing or orally. These skills are called production or output skills.
All in all, every language would have 4 Macro skills, two of which help in receiving information, i.e. Listening and Reading and two skills which help in the output of information, i.e. Speaking and writing. The graphic below helps us understand this further.
Similarly, English, like any other language also has these four Macro-Skills. These Macroskills of English are related to each other depending upon two factors of the communication taking place. These two factors are:
The Direction of Communication (Receiving Information or Giving Information i.e. Input or output)
The Method of Communication (Spoken Language or Written Language)
Written Input is in the form of Reading, for example, A newspaper, an article on the internet, etc. Written Output is in the form of Writing, for instance, Writing a text message, an essay, etc.
Spoken Input is in the form of Listening, i.e. Listening to a YouTube video, Listening to the radio, etc. Spoken Output is in the form of Speaking, for example, Talking to a friend, Talking to the camera to create a video, etc.
The image below better explains this correlation. However, Macro-Skills alone cannot help us in communicating in our choice of language because how well we can communicate using Marco-skills actually depends on the Microskills of the language.
What are the Micro-Skills of a language?
Simply put, Microskills refer to things like grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation in a language. Language micro-skills can be a component of one or more macro skills, for example, spelling is a component of writing and reading. Pronunciation is a component of speaking, etc.
As your micro skills in the English language improve, so do your macro skills and vice versa. So is it possible to have very good reading skills without mastering spelling, nope!
How does this knowledge help you?
Well, knowledge without any wisdom to apply it doesn't amount to much. If you're a teacher or a parent/guardian here's how this helps you:
Knowing the correlation helps you plan activities/lessons that build on the science behind learning languages, meaning a better learning experience for your child or your student.
This knowledge helps you identify learning gaps so you can target and fill those gaps. This can be especially confusing for parents/guardians and even new teachers.
If you're a self-studying student, then here's how it's useful for you to know this:
With this knowledge, you can avoid falling into the pit of "I'll just learn speaking or reading only". Now, you know that good speaking is an inevitable result of good Listening combined with speaking practice and good writing is the obvious result of good reading along with writing practice.
You also understand that just learning lots of grammar or isolated words from the dictionary will NOT help you become a fluent and coherent communicator. So you'll know better. Now that you know better, you'll do better.
Happy Learning!
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