Developing your skills

Listening and reading regularly to develop your speaking and writing skills.

Receptive skills (listening, reading)

Regular listening and reading in a foreign language can help to develop:

  • comprehension skills, including speed of comprehension
  • range of vocabulary
  • range of useful functional expressions
  • awareness of stylistics
  • speaking and writing skills

See our Helpsheets and worksheets page for hints on listening and reading.

Suggested activities

Productive skills (speaking, writing)

Listening and reading regularly can contribute to the development of your speaking and writing skills. 

You do, however, need to practise speaking and writing regularly as well, applying what you have learnt from your listening and reading in a conscious and active way.

Speaking

  • Find a Face-to-Face partner to practise speaking in your target language.
  • Speak in your target language regularly with friends on the same course as you.
  • Develop your pronunciation and fluency using OLCLAE resources to repeat after native speakers.
  • Read aloud.
  • Use conversation exchange schemes to develop your speed of response to native speakers.
  • Record yourself - alone or in dialogue with a language partner.
  • Seek constructive feedback and corrections from a language partner. 

Writing

  • Find a correspondence partner to communicate with - a friend on your course, your study partner, or another language learner through an online language exchange service.
  • Encourage correspondents to correct your spelling, grammar and style in a constructive manner.
  • Provide feedback to friends on their writing: this will build your own awareness of written style and common mistakes and make you more critical of your own written work.
  • Look at these writing hints on our Helpsheets page.
  • Use our Writing in a foreign language activity sheet.
  • Make sure you are constantly developing your vocabulary, grammar knowledge and awareness of style and applying it to your writing.

Useful links

Underlying skills (vocabulary, grammar)

You need a wide range of vocabulary and sound grammatical knowledge in order to develop your Receptive and Productive Skills. Both of these areas need working on actively. It is also important to learn how to use a dictionary properly.