Skills, Abilities, and Contexts of Reality

Abstract

The contributions in this volume provide a comprehensive survey of recent research and pedagogic practice in what is described as ‘the four basic language skills.’ My brief, and my original intention, seemed straightforward enough: to provide a short overview which would comment on general trends in a relatively impartial manner. Impartiality is never easy to achieve, however, and since trends are typically a matter of implicit assumptions, discerning them is bound to be subjective in some degree. What I have done is to consider certain of these assumptions and relate them to general issues about the so-called language skills which have been subject to debate for some time. This commentary, then, is less a measured survey than a critical reflection, from an historical and personal perspective, on matters arising from these contributions.

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