In order to develop listening and reading skills the teacher and the students concentrate on each of these skills separately. However, in the case of writing and speaking, the normal pattern is to use one of the receptive skills to cue student written or oral responses. This combination of skills is common to a variety of communicative contexts. Except for the initial stages of second- language learning, when they are attempting to determine the acquisition of certain basic foundation competencies, teachers should select teachinglearning activities in which the students have the opportunity to combine the skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing.
Elkins, Kalivoda, and Morain (1972) have addressed themselves to this topic. These authors outline an activity in which each student practices each of the four skills in a period of thirty to thirty-five minutes. In this activity two short stories are given to two subgroup leaders in a total group of six students.
The subgroup leaders read the passage and tell it orally to the other two members of their subgroup, who write the story. The stories are then exchanged, and the other subgroup members read the second story and tell it to their subgroup leader, who writes it down. At the end all group members discuss the two stories.