The Four-Way Balancing Act

Listening. Speaking. Reading. Writing. The four primary skills of language acquisition. It seems simple, but for those who have experience with second language learning, you know how easy it is for these skills to become significantly unbalanced, and how that lack of balance makes overall progress more difficult. 

Of course, it's important to practice each of these "passive" (listening and reading) and "active" (writing and speaking) skills on their own, but I think it's perhaps more important to practice the points of connections between these skills in order to maintain balance. Some of the activities occur relatively naturally, and some activities are more challenging to engage in. I've listed some possible activities below:

Listening to speaking/speaking to listening: a conversation

Listening to writing: listening to a podcast and writing a response

Writing to listening: a chat where the learner writes and listens to a facilitator's spoken response 

Reading to speaking: reading a book or article aloud; reading a passage then discussing aloud

Reading to writing: reading an article and writing a response.

Writing to reading: email/text conversation 

I image these four skills as four points on a compass, but instead of a needle that points in one direction, there is a web of interconnected paths, a map that leads you to the development of language fluency. At the center of this compass/map/web is fun. Fun and enjoyment enhance memory and retention. Especially for adult learners, enjoyment in activities should not be neglected. It's practical to have fun!