An empirical look at the

integration and separation of

skills in ELT
Larry Selinker and Russell S.
Tomlin
By considering a particular problem area in ELT research - the integration1
separation of the four skills - we argue that an increased concern for
empirical methodology will necessarily bring ELT theory into closer con-
junction with teaching practice. In this article we report five case studies
which all aim to show that an empirically grounded and insightful ELT
theory is indeed possible. In so doing, we uncover several hypotheses
which control pedagogical decision-making, but which do not appear to be
explicitly stated, and for which substantialevidence is lacking. One unfortu-
nate result is that other potentially useful strategies for teaching remain
ignored. We argue that increasing the rigour of observations of skill integra-
tion/separation opens the way for more systematic exploration of the prin-
ciples which underlie the material presented in these case studies.
Finally, we note that in these studies, important decisions affecting stu-
dents time and learning are not grounded in fact or in principles that
pedagogical decision makers consciously consider, Nor apparently is the
raising of such questions even contemplated. We note the three types of
non-empirical rationale for current decision-making in the area of skill
integration/separation. We contend that the best pedagogical decisions for
students can be made only by taking into serious account systematic
observations of student performance in specific learning situations in
which differing integration/separation schemes are used.
Introduction Our general motivation in writing this article stems from our concern with
two fundamental questions within English language teaching (ELT) which
seem to invite a great deal of discussion among practitioners:
1 What is the relation to be between pedagogical principles in ELT theory
and the activities occurring within daily teaching?
2 What is the nature of the research and evidence needed to develop an
empirically-grounded and practice-directed set of pedagogical principles
for ELT?
These questions are important because we see in the literature, at
professional meetings, and in informal discussion, continued division
between the concerns of so-called theorists (whose pedagogical prescrip-
tions are regularly criticized as being divorced from the immediate needs of
practising ELT teachers) and the concerns of ELT teachers (whose
ELT Journal Volume 40/3 July 1986 Oxford University Press 1986 227
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pedagogical prescriptions are regularly criticized as unfounded and depen-
dent on anecodotal evidence). We feel that this division is mainly due to
implicit and differing sets of assumptions about the nature of theory and
evidence in research, and their relation to ELT practice.
In this article we are interested in ELT theory. What we mean by this is
a theory of ELT practice. We are especially interested in trying to be
explicit about the principled bases for pedagogical decision making. In this
paper, we first report on some case studies in ELT. Our intention is to show
that an empirically grounded ELT theory is possible, i.e. a theory that
comes from practice and adds to our understanding of practice. We con-
sider some concrete and practical cases in ELT of one traditional and
important theoretical hypothesis, an hypothesis upon which countless
pedagogical decisions have been based: the four-skills hypothesis. This
has two parts:
a that there exist four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking;
b that these skills should be separated in teaching practice.
Part (b) as stated is a particularly strong form of the hypothesis.
Some preliminary In this section, we consider some descriptive data on the integration and
evidence for the separation of the four basic language skills. Clearly, these four tra-
four-ski//s ditionally recognized skills have been used as the fundamental organizing
hypothesis principle for many ELT syllabuses and curricula. We wish to ask: under
what circumstances and to what extent is it useful for the four traditional
language skills to be separated, and under what circumstances and to what
extent is it useful for such skills to be integrated? While it is perhaps
premature to begin experimental studies of skill integration/separation,
this should not deter us from conducting careful empirical studies which
will permit us to build an observational base for ELT theory. Much of the
data which we describe in this section is drawn from two of the graduate
student studies (by Hargreaves et al. and Johnston et 41.) on this topic which
we jointly supervised at the University of Oregon in the Spring of 1982.
Case One: Table 1, taken from Johnston et al. (1982), shows the relation between ESL
The ski//s organization level and skill separation at one particular ELT institute. This table was
of a particular derived from conversation between the investigators and two adminis-
curriculum at an trators at the institute. What can be seen from it is that the lower the level,
intensive institute the more likely it is that skills will be integrated; and the higher the level, the
more likely it is that they will be separated. But until this was expressed in
the form of a diagram, the teachers did not seem to realize that this was the
case.
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Table I
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After seeing Table 1, there was some conflict among the teachers over
whether the diagram actually reflected what went on at the institute at the
time. We are willing to grant that it may not reflect it, since the empirical
result we are interested in is based on the opinions, and the underlying belief
systems, of the two administrators as described in conversation. We feel
that this is a good starting point for exploring the situation.
This raises the further question of how decisions of the sort reflected in
Table 1 are made, quite apart from whether or not they seem to be good
ones. In this case, important decisions seem to have been made on the basis
of a curriculum plan that was not clearly articulated: the issue of skill
separation versus skill integration was never actually faced.
Examination of the curriculum plan in Table 1 suggests several hypoth-
eses about integration-separation of skills in ELT. First, it suggests (at least
for practitioners in this ESL context) that skill integration is more impor-
tant to learning at earlier stages than at later ones. Second, it implies that
skill separation becomes more useful or important at later stages of learn-
ing, especially where students are preparing for academic work (as they are
in this particular institute).
There is not, of course, any evidence available to us that will address such
hypotheses. But our main points then become clearer:
1 ELT pedagogical decisions do entail adoption of some hypotheses or
points of view about skill integration and skill separation, whether they are
explicitly stated or not.
2 The lack of substantial evidence to underpin such pedagogical decisions
makes them seem unprincipled.
3 Studies such as Johnston et al. (1982), in which pedagogical decisions are
investigated by considering the beliefs of the decision makers, begin to
make explicit the underlying hypotheses and putative principles, rendering
them available for more explicit investigation later.
Case Two: We present below an extract from an interview with an Institute director
Focus - an informal and a curriculum developer, reported by Johnston et al. (1982). In the
technical term course of the interview they used the term focus to describe their attempts
to integrate skills in a separated curriculum. (I = Investigator; D = Direc-
tor; C = Curriculum Developer.)
I: ... Do you help teachers integrate the four skills?
D: To suggest that one could allow teachers to integrate one skill area with
another is looking at it sort of backwards. Language itself is not
[separate]; its hard to separate it. You realize its virtually impossible
to really separate it . . . so you dont allow teachers to integrate things.
Language is integrated among all these skill areas. Its like dividing
water: it flows back together again. You have these separate little
islands for the sake of convenience, but were not separating. We focus,
you might say. Thats a catchword this term. It allows us to concen-
trate on one area. But you cant separate: its impossible. You dont go
into a listening classroom and only listen; you cant go into an oral
conversation classroom and only speak; you cant go into a reading
classroom and only read; thats impossible. You cant pull one piece of
water here and one piece of water there; it flows back together again.
But we can focus on different areas in different classrooms. I find it
The integration and separation of skills 229
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230
c:
D:
c:
funny to talk about the four skills anyway, because its a convenience
and a way of categorizing but certainly nobody believes they are
actually ever separated.
Yeah, and I think theres kind of a historical development there,
because, when I was in graduate school in the late 1960s I think you
could honestly say that the four skill areas were [divided] - at least,
there was an attempt to completely divide them; in the sense that you
went into a listening comprehension class and you only listened. You
did exercises to tapes, you filled out little things, and you honestly only
listened.
But you had to listen to something.
What Im saying was that at that time there was more of an attempt to
deliberately compartmentalize these things, to split the jello. And I
dont think - well, of course, Im speaking locally - my guess would be
that that has changed a great deal throughout the country. I dont
know about language schools overseas, whether it has changed as
much there as it has here. But I would say that in this country surely it
has changed a good deal.1
A point worth noting here involves the two metaphors used by the
administrators in this conversation: dividing water versus split the jello.
These metaphors, used here as arguments, but without empirical ground-
ing, are indicative of the strong view that absolute separation of skills is a
pedagogical artifact. The curriculum developer notes the historical truth
that in the 1960s there was an attempt to completely divide them. This
speaker correctly observes that the separation of skills in the 1960s was
more than a slogan: it was a belief about the way language is organized.
Here, that belief is explicitly denied, with important consequences for the
curriculum involved. A key theoretical term, focus is introduced to
explain the administrators decisions, but it is left undefined, paving the
way for misunderstandings in the daily teaching situation.
It is apparent that these two administrators have wrestled with a rather
tricky pedagogical problem. On the one hand, they seem not to believe that
skills are in principle separable (lines 3-5). On the other hand, they seem
also to believe that their curriculum demands compartmentalization of
some sort (presumably for administrative reasons, though this is not spelt
out).
The term focus is created, therefore, to provide a reasonable explana-
tion to resolve the implicit conflict caused by the clash between two largely
unexplored areas. It may be that the idea of focus in skill separation or
skill integration. is a valuable one, but it needs careful definition and
evaluation in settings such as this one if it is to be more than a plausible
rationale for resolving administrative/pedagogical conflict.
Case three: Figure 1 shows the activities that a typical student engaged in each day
Time gaps in lecture while attending a course. Each evening students would read material in
comprehension anticipation of a lecture. The following day they would attend the lecture,
and that evening review and revise their notes.
This raises the issue of the time gaps, as Johnston et al. call them,
between the various activities. Unlike many ELT classroom activities, the
regular academic efforts of these students were distributed over two days,
with many hours intervening between reading, listening, and writing. On
Larry Selinker and Russell Tomlin
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Before class: reading chapter
During class
After class: re-reading for missed
details, filling missed notes
Key: R=reading; L= listening; I= interpreting; W=writing
Figure 1
the surface, then, this gives the appearance that these language skills are
separated, for surely they are not used simultaneously here. On the other
hand, consider this set of activities:
a reading the evening paper;
b watching a science programme on television the next morning;
c writing a personal letter in the evening.
The students time gaps seem quite different from these. Unlike this
random set of activities, the students use different skills to solve a single
communication problem: understanding a lecture in a particular course on
a given day. We would define this as integration, and, because the skill
uses are consecutive, it is serial integration. This is important because it
provides a way of distinguishing this sort of situation from more random
series of language-using behaviours.
This case also raises the issue of skill definition. Johnston et al. (1982:5)
also consider skill integration at each stage in the two days of academic
activities. During class, students write as they listen; after class, they write
as they read. The authors contend that listening and writing are more
intimately integrated in such cases than are reading and writing. This is
because listening and writing are carried out almost simultaneously under
the communicative stress of lecture comprehension. This sort of case
forces one to consider more carefully what the skill of writing entails, for the
writing of notes in each setting appears to be a vastly different kind of
interaction.
Case Four: Hargreaves et al. (1982) present a detailed discussion of the use of one set of
Ski// integration in ESL materials in a particular class of migrant workers. The students were
materials use required to answer the following question:
What day of theweek does Mrs Nelson usually go to thesupermarket? What day did
shego to thesupermarket last week? What day will shego to thesupermarket next
week?
Hargreaves first presents a fragment of talk to illustrate the ideal flow of
conversation, based on the coursebook in use in the classroom:
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Teacher Student
(Boundary exchange)
Aha, good. Pedro, do number 3.
(Reads question from text)
What day does Mrs Nelson go to the
supermarket?
(Answers question from text)
Mrs Nelson goes to the super-
market on Tuesday.
(Boundary exchange)
Very good. Viviano, try number
4.
This is contrasted with a fragment of an actual communicative transaction.
Teacher Student
OK . . . Oscar, why dont you
read the first question, number 1.
Le leo? (Should I read it?)
And use, use, your name, use
somebody elses name, like
Viviano.
Ah.
What day of the week does Mr Viviano
usually go to thesupermarket?
What day did she go to the supermarket
last week?
OK, wait a minute What day will . . .
Just, just the first sen . . . the
first question. mm . . ., can you
answer that question . . . What day
of the week does Viviano go to the
supermarket?
Ah, answer the question ...
you answer it?
What day of theweek does Mr Viviano go
to thesupermarket?
can
Just, just make something
La sigo leyendo? Le digo la con-
testacin? (Should I keep on read-
ing? Should I tell you the answer?)
up.
Yes.
Whatever you want to say . . .
Like, ... OK, OK, Ill do the
first one for example. For
example you say, What day of the
week does Viviano usually go to the
supermarket? And then you say,
Viviano usually goes to the
supermarket on Friday. OK, so
you just make up an answer, any-
thing you want to say. There is no
correct answer. So, lets see,
try . . .
There is clearly a big difference between what we believe the mater
ials
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writer intended as ideal classroom performance when constructing these
exercises, and what actually happened in this ESL classroom. The
materials writer had in mind an idealized interaction, suggested in the
introduction to the textbook, in which the student will read each individual
question and then give an appropriate but complete oral answer to that
question. This would represent an instance of serial integration: the
student engages first in a reading activity and then shifts his or her attention
to oral production.
However, when transcripts of a recording of a particular class using these
materials are examined, one sees activity that is much more complicated in
terms of skill integration than the materials writer intended. (See
Hargreaves et al. 1982: Appendix for additional fragments.) The classroom
conversation is very much alive, and contains talk about the particular
situation being imagined, and rich meta-discussion, sometimes in
Spanish, of the learning activity itself. In all of this, listening and speaking
skills are in parallel integration, with reading taking a distinctly secondary
role. Hargreaves et al. contend that learning for these students seems to
occur more in this discussion, which is not based on the materials, than in
response to the exercise itself. They conclude this not so much from
empirical observation of the learning that has occurred, as from the premise
that better communicative activity offers better learning opportunities. The
integration question perhaps provides some support for that premise, for
perhaps parallel integration in conversation is the best example of the kind
of communication that students require for learning. The crucial point is
that if we increase the rigour of observation of skill separation and integra-
tion, we will open the way for more systematic exploration of the principles
which underlie the judgements of Hargreaves et al. concerning these
materials.
Case Five: The following is another fragment from the interview with the institute
Resolving conflict director and curriculum planner reported in Johnston et al. (1982). In this
about skill separation1 instance, the curriculum planner considers directly the investigators ques-
integration tion about how skills are integrated in the institutes curriculum.
And also one thing weve run into - theres always debate among teach-
ers as to how these should be divided. Should it be reading and writing,
should it be grammar and writing, should it be grammar all by itself,
should it be grammar with oral skills? So theres always conflict among
the teachers, and we have taken the position, no matter what the conflict
is, that we are not going to isolate anything completely . . .
There are two fundamental points to be made here. First, the pedagogical
decision about how to integrate or separate certain skills in this curriculum
was made without any apparent recourse to empirical observation. That is,
important decisions affecting students time and learning potential are not
based on facts and principles which these administrators consciously con-
sider. Nor is the raising of such questions apparently even contemplated.
Second, while there appears to be no principled resolution to this prob-
lem, there is none the less a resolution. It is to take a middle-of-the-road
position, accommodating the various opinions of individual teachers in an
ad hoc manner. This has the positive effect of promoting temporary harmony
among staff, but it does not ensure that the best pedagogical decision has
been made for the students. We contend that the best pedagogical decisions
for these students can be made only by taking into serious account the
The integration and separation of skills 233
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systematic observation of student performance in specific learning contexts
in which differing integration/separation schemes are used.
234
Conclusions Widdowson argues convincingly (1978, 1983) that there is no coherent
theory which governs pedagogical decision-making in ELT. But he also
argues that ELT decisions are inherently highly theoretical, in that teach-
ing techniques and materials must ultimately be related to underlying
principles (1978: 163). This holds true even when one adopts an eclectic
perspective, for the principles underlying choices made in an eclectic
approach must also be made explicit (cf. Widdowson 1984:89). One should
attempt to make explicit the principles which underlie all pedagogical
decisions and decision-making, for ultimately the learner, too, has only
limited time and resources to devote to language learning, and must make
most efficient use of those resources.
In beginning empirical investigation of skills and how and when they
should be separated or integrated, we find ourselves agreeing fully with
Widdowson. But we believe more is needed. In our own experience, but
more importantly in empirical evidence such as that provided above, we
find that pedagogical decisions about skill integration or separation in ELT
are currently grounded in three types of rationale. First, they are grounded
in the practical extension of theoretical prescriptions based on rationalistic
premises about the nature of language and language learning. Second, they
are grounded in historical tradition, where the decisions of the past are
promulgated in the present. And, third, they are grounded in practical
constraints, wherein the immediate pressures of time and resources force
decisions based on expedience.
To conclude, two final points. First, in our view, the ELT discipline has at
its disposal so little carefully collected data about practice that it is hard to
be certain about anything. We feel that we must work out research
methodologies and argumentation to help us gather relevant data for
studying practical, daily ELT situations.
Second, our approach to ELT theory, while intended to augment the
approach of Widdowson, still remains different. Widdowsons approach
can be fairly characterized as providing a rationalistic description of what
appears to happen naturally in idealized native-speaker interactions, and
conclusions from this are applied to pedagogical decision making. While we
believe this kind of approach to be of great value to the profession, we are
aware that, without empirical grounding, the move from such idealized
descriptions to specific pedagogical recommendations may require real
leaps of faith. Our recommendation is the careful collection of evidence
from both native-speaker and native/non-native speaker discourse in
actual ELT contexts.
The three rationales discussed above - theoretical prescriptions, tra-
dition, and practical constraints - have their uses in making pedagogical
decisions. But the development of an ELT theory within a serious profes-
sional discipline must require an increased effort to create a genuine
discipline. This, we feel, requires that we take an increasingly data-orien-
tated, empirical point of view on crucial pedagogical decisions. However,
we are not calling for more laboratory experimentation, from which general-
izations to ELT learning situations may be unclear. We are interested in a
theory of practice, and the primary relevant domain of inquiry is the range
of practical situations that we as teachers find ourselves in. By considering
careful descriptions of what actually happens in two settings - the ped-
Larry Selinker and Russell Tomlin
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agogical setting in which ELT teachers work, and the specific settings in
which the learners are going to use their growing linguistic abilities in
English - we believe the principles underlying pedagogical decision-mak-
ing will be strengthened.
Received July 1985
Note
1 The conditions under which this conversation was
recorded are described in Johnston et al. (1982).
References
Hargreaves, D., M. Lamon, V. Ramsay, and D.
Shane. 1982. Looking at One ESL Lesson in an
HEP Program. Department of Linguistics, Univer-
sity of Oregon: unpublished manuscript.
Huckin, T. and L. Olsen. 1984. On the use for infor-
mants: LSP discourse analysis in Pugh and Ulijen
(eds): Reading for Professional Purposes: Studies in Native
and Foreign Languages. London: Heinemann.
Johnston, G., C. Kobayashi, and M. Ohno. 1982.
An Investigation of the Four-Skills Hypothesis
Using Japanese and American Informants. Depart-
ment of Linguistics, University of Oregon:
unpublished manuscript.
Selinker, L. 1979. On the use of informants in dis-
course analysis and language for specialized pur-
poses. IRAL XXVII:189-215.
Widdowson, H. G. 1978. Teaching Language as Com-
munication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Widdowson, H. G. 1983. Learning Purpose and Language
Use. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Widdowson, H. G. 1984. The incentive value of
theory in teacher education. ELT Journal 38/3:86-
90.
The authors
Larry Selinker is Professor of Linguistics and former
Director of the English Language Institute at the Uni-
versity of Michigan. His research interests are in ELT
theory, language for specific purposes, discourse
analysis, and second-language acquisition.
Russell Tomlin is Associate Professor of Linguistics
and Director of the American English Institute at the
University of Oregon. His research interests are in
discourse analysis, second-language acquisition and
ELT theory.
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