The four basic fundamental skills of language are reading, writing, speaking and listening. You can easily divide them up into two groups – passive language skills of listening and reading, and then the active language skills of speaking and writing. It is generally accepted that passive language skills are learnt first with active language skills developing later on. I seem to learn the skills in this order: reading -> listening -> speaking -> writing.
And today, my readers, I’m going to reveal exactly why I think it is holding me back in my language studies…