4 SKILLS IN SPANISH - LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING, AND WRITING Dennisse Cardona - Spanish55 Writer
Have you ever used the phrase: "I understand it more than I speak it"? or "I can read it but can't really write it"? Well, we just touched upon the four basic skills in Spanish that need to be developed when we learn any language: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Studies have shown this is the actual order in which they are acquired, that's why they are also called LSRW skills in Spanish. Learning Spanish online is not an exception.
Before we go into the specifics of this set of abilities, because we have to look at them like that -as a setlet's take more than a couple of steps back and analyze human communication itself. We, as social beings, have the innate ability to develop different forms of language that help us connect with those around us. These variants include spoken, written, and sign language, but also more abstract kinds like visual language, and the complexity increases if we talk, let's say, about body language.
Starting off from this understanding, we could define language as a system of communication that can involve symbols, non-verbal sounds, or actions; the term should not be limited to a tongue or dialect, which is the stock of available words, sounds, and symbols used by the people of a particular region.
We are born with a clean slate and the capability to comprehend and reproduce the sounds around us. Later in life, we acquire the ability to translate those sounds into the correspondent graphical representations. In other words, as babies, it takes us a couple of months, but we manage to understand the words our parents pronounce, and then we learn to utter them ourselves. Later in life, usually in school, we obtain the tools to read and write. See? Listening, speaking, reading and writing: LSRW skills in Spanish.
Once we are set to learn Spanish online, the process is identical. The steps are in the same order and need to be followed exactly like that. Thankfully, our brain already knows this and prioritizes what needs