WHAT ARE LANGUAGE SKILLS?

 

                The essence of communication lies in language skills.  Right from the moment we are born, we learn one language or the other but how do we pick language skills?  What constitutes language Skills?

                The answer lies in using the language in four different ways: Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking.  Did you know that human beings have separate centers in the brain, one for perceiving language and the other for producing language?  Damages to these centers result in the impairment of language functions.

The perception part comes in Reading and Listening whereas the production part comes in Writing and Speaking.

                Just because we use a language, does not mean that the skills necessary for it are automatically fine-tuned.  Skills are learned only through trial-and-error learning and it requires continuous and consistent practice.  The ideal situation where these skills are thoroughly learned is when we can understand whatever we read or listen to and we can write or speak without errors.

                However, mistakes do happen but our primary job is to keep correcting these mistakes so that they are not repeated.

                We need to understand that listening is more than hearing and that reading is more than seeing.  There will be complex processing of information happening when we listen and read so that specific imagery is created in our brains.

                Similarly, speaking is more than producing sounds or talking and writing is more than doodling or scratching with a pen or pencil.

                What they constitute is meaning, which gets communicated to us when we listen or read and to the other person when we speak or write.

                For it to contain meaning, certain accepted rules are followed by the people who use the language.  This set of rules is known as Grammar.  We are taught grammar in schools but we rarely know about its importance in our future life.  Composition enables the sentences to be structured so that communication becomes easy.

                Each language is rich in its repertoire and each meaning has more than one word, as well as sometimes each word has more than one meaning.  This is where we need to enrich ourselves with vocabulary.  The more words we know in a language, the better will be our speech.

                Each word has letters arranged in a particularly accepted way, which is referred to as spelling.  We have to practice spelling judiciously as a wrongly spelled word can convey a different meaning.

When we speak the same words, pronunciation becomes very crucial and we need to learn this systematically.  Though pronunciation may change from region to region, we need to acclimatize ourselves to the most accepted ones.

Another aspect that goes along with the speaking of the language is the use of an accent that changes from one region to another.  However, we have to develop a neutral accent so that the listener has no confusion in understanding what we say.

                In essence, language skills enable us to be proficient in communication so that it becomes easier to live, be, and work together.

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