INTRODUCTION

In recent years, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers have

recognized the importance of the underlying dynamics of culture in
second language communication. In fact, second language learning
exceeds the limits of memorizing vocabulary items and grammar
rules; other areas of knowledge such as social, cultural and discourse
conventions are definitely to be included in the classroom input.
This proposal focuses, in particular, on the importance of integrating
culture and the four traditional language skills into the EFL
classroom. The first aim is, therefore, to show EFL teachers how to
integrate the language skills from the perspective of Content Based
Instruction (CBI) and Task Based Instruction (TBI). A second major
concern is to explore the vast realm of computer science and its
application to the teaching and learning of EFL, thus promoting the
use of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) as a tool to
enhance the teaching of EFL. These approaches have proven to
promote meaningful engagement with content learning, language
skills development, culture and technology, turning learners into more
knowledgeable citizens of the world. The challenge is to offer ideal
conditions for language learning through thematically organized
materials, coherent and meaningful information, the development of
students’ ability to process challenging material, and the reinvestment
of knowledge in a sequence of progressively more complex tasks. The
present paper is structured into four sections. Firstly, the Integrated-
Skill Approaches in the EFL classroom are introduced. Secondly, the
interrelation of listening, speaking and culture is heightened. Thirdly,
the integration of the reading and writing with culture skills is
illustrated. Lastly, the use of Web quests as a means to integrate the
language skills is presented.
We hope this paper, written in collaboration, will provide some
pedagogical basis for the development of intercultural communication,
skills, helping our colleagues in the different kinds of decisions they
need to make in their daily class routine.

Abstract
Teaching and learning are two basic processes underlying the activity
of students and teachers nowadays. Learning process puts both
parties toward each other , what it teaches , and what it takes, the
teacher and the student. Today takes great importance to the training
of students to teach themselves , their education, equipping them with
the skills of independent work with the most advanced methods of
learning conscious , sustainable , active and creative. The purpose of
this topic is to know the importance of usage of all skills during a
lesson hour. The teacher is free to use a variety of methods and
strategies of teaching/learning to suit the needs of students in
different classes. He combines these methods during the learning
process and adapts according to the increasing development of
linguistic competence and independence of student development, the
consistency of this process. Teaching has at its center the method of
communication, task -based methods, functional methods and
situations as real life etc . These methods are realized through various
strategies and techniques, according to language skills (listening,
speaking, reading, writing) . Teacher and students collaborate on the
organization of teaching/learning. To facilitate the teaching / learning,
the teacher finds efficient ways to organize communication activities ,
provides and suggests source materials for students. In contemporary
teaching teacher does not only play the role of teachers, but also plays
the role of supervisor. Together they establish cooperative relations in
the process of learning . The teacher clarifies the students and takes
their understanding of what happens in the classroom. This means
clarifying the rules of the line of work and responsibilities of students
in the process of activities. The teacher suggests and provides the use
of audiovisual means, electronic , and helps students to use various
forms of information technology within and outside the classroom . It
gives students the website in accordance with the age and educational
requirements . On a teaching hour should be applied all four language
skills strategies , but they escalate from level to level depending on the
objectives . Setting the students in the spotlight makes the student
actively participate in linguistic interaction , preparing it for a new
phase of his education or of being able to face the demands of the
labor market.
This proposal focuses on the relevance of integrating culture with the
four traditional language skills in the English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) classroom from the perspective of Content-Based Instruction
(CBI) and Task-Based Instruction (TBI). The article also explores how
Web Quests as a learning tool offer valuable opportunities to develop
foreign language skills in an enhanced environment which promotes
cooperative and autonomous learning in the EFL class.

Key words: Integrated-skill approaches – Content-Based Instruction

(CBI) - Task-Based Instruction (TBI) - Listening, speaking, reading
and writing skills - Culture and Language - Web Quests.

INTEGRATED-SKILL APPROACHES IN THE EFL CLASSROOM

Perhaps one of the most suitable images used to describe the task of
teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) is that of Rebecca
Oxford’s (2001: 1), a renowned scholar in the field of language
learning motivation, learning strategies, and instructional methods,
who claims that teaching EFL conjures up the image of a tapestry. As
a tapestry is woven from many strands, which must be interwoven in
positive ways to produce a strong and colorful piece, so are the
strands of the tapestry in EFL teaching made up of the characteristics
of the teacher, the learner, the setting, and the relevant languages, in
this case, English and the students’ mother tongue.
The question that immediately comes to mind is how EFL instructors
can interweave these strands to produce successful classes. Oxford
(2001: 1) considers three key factors. First, the instructor’s teaching
style should address the learning styles of the learners as much as
possible. Second, the learner should be motivated to learn the target
language. Third, the setting should provide resources and values that
strongly support the teaching of the language. If these strands are not
woven together effectively, the EFL class is likely to become almost as
boring as a teacher-oriented lecture class.
The EFL professional can therefore resort to other strands when faced
with the complex task of teaching the target language. One of them is
to attend to the practice of the four primary skills of listening, reading,
speaking and writing because acquiring a new language necessarily
involves developing these four modalities in varying degrees and
combinations (Oxford, 1990: 5-6). These four skills also include
associated skills, such as knowledge of vocabulary, spelling,
pronunciation, syntax, meaning, and usage. Thus, the skill strand of
the tapestry can lead to effective EFL communication when all the
skills are interwoven during instruction. If these language skills are
effectively interwoven, EFL students are likely to become
communicatively competent.

Language Skills and the Integration of Culture as the Fifth Skill

in the EFL classroom
The four traditional language skills are essential components of
integral EFL classes, but are they enough to help our students
become communicatively competent? In other words, are the skills
enough to enable students to use the language system appropriately
in any circumstance? Given that communicative competence is the
goal of most EFL language classrooms, EFL instruction needs to
attend to all of its components: organization, pragmatic, strategic and
even psychomotor strategies (Bachman 1990: 87; Celce-Murcia,
Dörnyei, Thurrell (1995: 17). According to Brown (2000: 29),
communicative goals are best achieved by giving attention to language
use and not just usage, to fluency and not just accuracy, to authentic
language and contexts, and to the students’ eventual need to apply
classroom learning to unrehearsed contexts in the real world. But how
can we pay attention to language use, fluency, authentic language and
context in our EFL classrooms? Damen (1997: 12) contends that,
firstly, we should remember that language learning implies and
embraces culture learning; i.e. we should remember that whenever we
teach a language, we are teaching a system of cultural customs, ways
of thinking, feeling, and acting (Brown, 2000: 25). To be successful
EFL teachers, the environment of the classroom should be made as
open as possible to meaningful cultural learning. According to Damen
(1997: 13), culture learning, along with the four traditional skills, i.e.
reading, writing, listening, and speaking, can be accorded its rightful
place as a fifth skill, adding its particular dimension to each of the
other four. The caveat to Damen’s statement is that culture and
grammar are sometimes called skills, but they are somewhat different
from the traditional four skills, as both of these skills intersect and
overlap with listening, reading, speaking and writing in particular
ways (Oxford, 1996: 6). Moreover, teaching culture as a skill,
compared with reading, writing, speaking, and listening, has been
undermined in language instruction. The language instructor
assumes that emphasizing the four mentioned skills is sufficient as
students may have already acquired some knowledge of a particular
culture. When it comes to teaching the culture of the English-
speaking people with their social and political underpinnings, many
EFL students know very little if anything. Thus, teaching the culture
of these countries to its learners should assume an even more
important position in the curriculum as it enhances students’ overall
learning experience. What is worth mentioning, however, is that
culture should not be considered, as Kramsch (1993) puts it, an
“expandable” fifth skill tacked on to the teaching of speaking,
listening, reading and writing. If language is viewed as social practice,
then culture should become the core of language teaching to the
extent that cultural awareness should be viewed as enabling language
proficiency (Kramsch, 1993: 8). Be that as it may, course planning
and course design should integrate the language skills within a
context of meaningful cultural learning when teaching within a
communicative framework.

Integrated-Skill Instruction vs. Segregated-Skill Instruction

In past decades, EFL classes gave prominence to one or two of the
four traditional skills discretely, sometimes precluding the other three;
each skill did not support or interact with each other. Rather, these
segregated-skill-oriented (SSI) courses had language itself as the focus
of instruction to the extent that excessive emphasis on rules and
paradigms taught students a lot about language at the expense of
teaching language itself (Brown, 2000: 218). As Oxford (1990)
maintains, in SSI-courses, language learning was, and sometimes still
is, separate from content learning, which did not ensure adequate
preparation for later success in academic communication, career
related language use, or even everyday interaction in the language.
In recent decades, however, a trend toward skill integration has
ensued. Curriculum and course designers have taken a whole
language approach whereby reading, for instance, is treated as one of
two or more interrelated skills. The experts have realized that by
emphasizing what learners can do with the language, rather than
using the forms of language, EFL instructors can incorporate any or
all of the language skills that are relevant into the classroom arena.
According to Brown (2000: 218), the richness of integrated-skill
courses give EFL students greater motivation that converts to better
retention of principles of effective speaking, listening, reading, and
writing. But how can EFL professionals maintain an integrated-skill
approach in their teaching? Five models of integrated-skill approaches
are in common use: Content-Based Language Instruction (CBI), Task
Based Instruction (TBI), Theme-Based Teaching, Experiential Learning
and the Episode Hypothesis (Brown, 1994: 219). Despite their
differences, they all draw upon a diverse range of materials, textbooks
and technologies for the EFL classroom. Because they are the most
commonly used models of
integrated-skill approaches, let us draw our attention to the first two,
i.e. CBI and TBI, to understand the differences between these
integrated-skill modes of instructions.

Content-Based Language Instruction (CBI)

Brinton, Snow and Wesche (1989: 2) define CBI as “the integration of
particular content with language teaching aims, or as the concurrent
teaching of academic subject matter and second language skills.” In
CBI approaches the second language is the medium to convey
informational content of interest and relevance to the learner, rather
than the immediate object of study. It is worth noting, though, that
oftentimes what EFL instructors teach in any kind of content-based
course is not so much the content itself, but some form of the
discourse of that content. For example, the instructor does not teach
literature itself, but how to analyze literature. According to Eskey
(1997: 139-40, referenced in Oxford 2001: 2), for every piece of
content recognized, there is a discourse community which somehow
provides us with the means to analyze, talk about, and write about
that content. Hence, the task for EFL instructors in CBI is to
acculturate students to the specific discourse communities.
Research in second language acquisition (SLA) also offers support for
CBI; empirical research findings provide evidence that language
learning becomes more concrete. For instance, Genesee (1994)
contends that the integration of language and content in instruction
respects the specificity of functional language, i.e. students can realize
that meaning changes depending upon context, and the fact that more
sophisticated language is learned within a framework that focuses on
complex, authentic context. As EFL instructors, we may question
whether CBI is valuable at all levels of proficiency. Oxford (2001: 2)
maintains that CBI is indeed valuable at all levels of proficiency,
although the nature of the content may differ according to proficiency
level. For instance, the content in beginner courses may involve basic
social and interpersonal communication skills, but at intermediate to
advanced proficiency levels, the content can become more academic in
nature. On the whole, CBI allows for the integration of language skills.
Why? Because CBI is aimed at the development of use-oriented
second and foreign language skills and is distinguished by the
learning of a specific content and related language use skills (Brinton
et al., 1989). As the structure of CBI classes is dictated by the nature
of the subject matter, students are likely to get involved with all the
language skills as the instructors have the students reading,
discussing, solving problems, analyzing data, writing reports, etc.
Thus, students practice all the language skills in a highly integrated
communicative fashion while learning content, such as science, math,
and social studies.

Task-Based Instruction (TBI)

The other integrated-skill approach is known as Task-Based
Instruction (TBI). Nunan (1991a: 279) characterizes TBI as an
approach which highlights learning to communicate through
interaction in the target language, introducing authentic texts to
learning situations, enhancing the learner’s own personal experiences,
and linking classroom language learning with language activation
outside the classroom. Although the course goals are linguistic in
nature, they center on the learners’ pragmatic language competence.
Two caveats are worth noting, however, with respect to the term task.
According to Brown (2000: 83), a task is any structured language
learning endeavor which has a particular objective, appropriate
content, a specified working procedure, and a range of outcomes for
those students who undertake the task. Consequently, a task is not a
special form of teaching technique because several techniques may
comprise a task. For example, a problem-solving task may include a
grammatical explanation, followed by the instructor’s initiated
questions, and then specific turn-taking procedure. On the whole,
tasks are bigger in their ends than techniques. A second caveat worth
mentioning is that TBI is not a method. It puts tasks at the center of
one’s methodological focus, and the learning process is a set of
communicative tasks that are linked to the curricular goals they
serve. As CBI, the purpose of TBI extends beyond the practice of
language for its own sake. Far from being a hodgepodge of useful
things all thrown haphazardly into the classroom, TBI is characterized
by the development and sequencing of tasks. The EFL instructors are
called upon to consider several dimensions of tasks since they should
specify what learners will do with the input and what the respective
roles of the teacher and learners are. Thus, instructors who embrace
TBI should consider that the priority is the functional purposes for
which language is used. For instance, as TBI resorts to real-world
tasks, the input for those tasks can come from various authentic
sources. Among others, Brown (1994: 229) mentions speeches,
conversations, interviews, media extras, etc. The pedagogical task
should therefore specify what learners will do with the input, the roles
of the teacher and the learner, and the evaluation thereof forms an
essential component that will determine its success for performing the
task again with another group of learners. On the whole, EFL
instructors can organize their classrooms around practical tasks in
which language learners engage, either inside class or in the real
world. For instance, a pedagogical task designed to teach EFL
students to give personal information in a job interview might involve
exercises in comprehension of wh-questions, listening to extracts of
job interviews, analyzing the grammar and discourse of job interviews,
modeling an interview (teacher and one student), role-playing a
simulated interview (students in pairs) and understanding
crosscultural rules of etiquette in a job interview. Hence, this job
interview task serves to illustrate how the principles of listening,
speaking, reading, writing and culture become subsumed under a
rubric of what the learners are supposed to do with language, which
allows the instructors to disengage themselves from thinking
exclusively in terms of the traditional four language skills. In sum,
CBI and TBI are just two exponents of Integrated-Skill approaches.
Their advantages are various both for learners and teachers. To begin
with, learners are exposed to authentic language, are challenged to
interact naturally in the language, and gain a picture of the
complexity of the English language for communication. As the
language becomes a means whereby students interact with people,
they develop their communicative competence. For teachers, these
approaches allow them to track their students’ progress in multiple
skills at the same time. As opposed to just dissecting language forms,
teachers who endorse CBI or TBI can promote the learning of real
content, which highly motivates students of various ages and
backgrounds. Is it feasible to apply integrated-skill approaches in the
Mendocinian EFL classroom? How can we possibly do it? Firstly, the
EFL instructor should learn more about the various ways to integrate
skills in the classroom, either by applying TBI or CBI separately or in
combination. As EFL professionals, we should think over our
approach to the teaching of EFL in our environment and evaluate the
extent to which the skills can be integrated. Once we decide to adhere
to one of these approaches, we should carefully select materials,
textbooks, technologies that promote the integration of listening,
reading, speaking, writing and culture, which will eventually enhance
our learners’ communicative competence. On the whole, going back to
Oxford’s image of a tapestry, EFL teachers can integrate the language
skills, and in so doing, they can strengthen the tapestry of language
teaching and learning. In the following section, the integration of two
of the language skills, listening and speaking, is addressed,
illustrating how these two skills may be interrelated with culture in a
CBI/TBI-oriented class. Before plunging into the integration of these
two skills, let us briefly illustrate the crucial role culture has come to
play in the EFL class.

FOCUSING ON CULTURE, LISTENING AND SPEAKING

Culture: A Design for Living
To enter another culture with only the vaguest notion of its underlying
dynamics reflects not only a provincial naiveté but a dangerous form of
cultural arrogance. (Barnlund, 1991: 73) In recent years, culture has
become a much discussed topic in English language teaching
discourse. Questions such as how to teach culture, whose culture to
teach, the relationship between language and culture and what
constitutes culture have fueled considerable amount of research. The
EFL setting raises questions about what culture to focus on and it is,
no doubt, useful for students to reflect on their own since, by
exploring their own culture, they will acquire the vocabulary with
which to describe values, expectations, behaviors, traditions, customs,
rituals, forms of greeting, cultural signs and identity symbols familiar
to them. What is undeniable is the fact that cultures are formed to
meet human needs. Abraham Maslow (1962:247) has suggested
classifying the needs that all cultures try to meet into lower order and
higher order needs. Lower order needs are the ones related to physical
requirements (food, water, shelter) while the higher order needs are
the ones related to formal education, self-development or self-
fulfillment. It is not surprising then that culture and needs should be
closely connected to behaviors. According to Straub (2005: 2)
behaviors are culturally prescribed norms intended to meet
expectations or needs shared by the members of a culture. What
might appear to be polite behavior in our culture may not necessarily
be regarded as proper behavior in the target language culture and the
other way about. Perhaps one of the most suitable definitions for
culture is the one given by Tylor (1871: 246), who considers culture a
design for living; more precisely, he regards culture as a complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by the human being as a
member of society. An example of what Tylor defines as culture may
be found in the following article by Charles O’Malley (2006: 21). This
article exemplifies the importance of cultural variables that need to be
respected if our students are to benefit from new experiences when
learning a foreign language in a Content-Based and Task-Based
Approach class. It is every foreigner’s nightmare to get into a crowded
room full of Argentines and have to greet and kiss every one of them.
You squeeze past chairs, step around sofas, lean over tables; elbowing
pizza and stepping on people in a clumsy effort to do as the locals do.
Finally, satisfied you have not omitted or offended anyone, you lean
back into a corner and cast a baleful eye for something alcoholic.
Suddenly, your phone rings and it is your rich great aunt sitting in the
airport wondering where you are. It is time to make a quick exit or lose
your inheritance, but part of you is screaming: “No! You cannot leave
until this entire room empties!” Frozen with etiquette fright you spot
some people doing exactly what you want to do – methodically cheeking
and hugging towards the doorway. You get behind them, following their
kissing slipstream and hoping nobody thinks you are an idiot who has
suddenly realized he joined the wrong birthday party. This is why men
invented waving and indeed the more savvy of us know that in a
situation like this, most Argentines just wave. It is only foreigners who
think; “I must kiss everyone!” I must kiss everyone that is, except men.
The easy physicality between Argentine males unnerves the Northern
European. Inter-hugging for us is restricted to weddings, funerals and
football games. So imagine our surprise when an everyday telephone
conversation with an Argentine male friend ends with him saying “un
beso.” More disturbing is the urge to say “un beso” back. I have one
English friend who gets around the problem of kissing by embracing it
enthusiastically. He dispenses wet sloppy kisses to everyone he
encounters. So much so he leaves people in his wake wiping the saliva
from their faces and remarking how all Europeans are just free thinking
perverts. (O´Malley, 2006: 21) The discussion of O’Malley’s article in an
EFL class may exemplify the way norms and behavior are culturally
defined and varied, and EFL learners need to be aware of the cultural
codes of their society to better understand the codes of conduct of the
target language. But how can we raise awareness among EFL
students
when addressing cultural issues? How can this be achieved through
listening and speaking tasks? Let us first discuss the main tenets of
listening and speaking in the EFL class before we apply these
principles to the class itself.

Focusing on Listening and Speaking

One of our major concerns as EFL professionals is to maintain an
integrated skill approach with meaningful cultural learning within a
communicative framework. In this process, the importance of listening
in language learning can hardly be over-estimated. Through reception
we internalize linguistic information without which we could not
produce language. In classrooms, students always do more listening
than speaking. Listening competence is universally larger than
speaking competence. No wonder, then, that in recent years the
language teaching profession has placed a concerted emphasis on
listening comprehension. Perhaps human beings have a natural
tendency to look at speaking as the major index of language
proficiency. Consider for example our commonly used query “Do you
speak Japanese?” By no means do we intend to exclude the notion of
comprehension in the knowledge of the language, but when we think
of foreign language learning, we first think of speaking (Brown, 2000:
233). Listening, as a major component in language learning and
teaching, first hit the spotlight in the late 1970’s with James Asher’s
work on The Total Physical Response (1977) in which the role of
comprehension was given prominence, as learners were given great
quantities of language to listen to before they were encouraged to
respond orally. Similarly, the Natural Approach identified a significant
“silent period” during which learners were allowed the security of
listening without being forced to go through the anxiety of speaking
before they were ready to do so. These approaches were an outgrowth
of a variety of research studies that showed evidence of the
importance of input in second language acquisition. However, it is
undeniable that the emphasis has been put on speaking proficiency in
the last years. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, many of
which are traceable to the widespread popularity of audiolingual
methodologies in the 1960s, and the communicative competence
movement that began in the 1970s. Yet the legacy of our past is not
the only reason for a continued interest in oral proficiency. Many
language students consider that developing the speaking skill should
be one of their primary goals of study, either because they would
derive some personal satisfaction from it or because they feel it would
be useful in pursuing other interests or career goals. This emphasis
on oral proficiency does not and should not mean that other skill
areas ought to be neglected. Since the ability to function adequately in
speaking continues to be an important goal for many second language
learners, it is incumbent upon us as language teachers to identify
effective strategies for teaching oral skills in the classroom that will
maximize opportunities for the development of useful levels of
proficiency in speaking and listening as an integrated skill whole.

Listening and Speaking in an Advanced EFL Classroom

For students to process their own learning experiences when
practicing the skills discussed above, the following lesson plan has
been designed. The proposal is to work on the movie based on the
novel The Joy Luck Club written by the Chinese American author Amy
Tan. This film is about four mothers who tell tales of their past lives in
China and of their present lives in America. Their daughters weave in
tales of their experience in the United States. Together their stories
create a rich and colorful fabric of family relationships and of a
community searching for its identity. In an attempt to bridge the
cultural gap between these immigrant mothers and their American
born daughters, both generations help each other in the hard struggle
to lead a normal life with a stable relationship. The following activities
have been designed to assist the instructor in developing students’
English language skills (in particular listening and speaking) as well
as increasing their understanding of the American and Chinese
cultures.

The class is divided into five steps:

• Preparing to watch the movie: The teacher may introduce the subject
by telling the members of the audience that they will see a film called
The Joy Luck Club based on the novel under the same title, written by
Amy Tan. In this movie, the Chinese mothers reflect on their
childhood and past life in China that made them live a completely
different life from that of their daughters’, who were born and raised
in America
• Watching part of the movie
• Filling out a number of tasks after watching the film to check
comprehension, and listening to the recorded version of the novel
(getting the gist, writing down unfamiliar words or expressions,
guessing their meaning from context, etc.)
• Watching the movie a second time for better understanding
• Making connections beyond the script through guided questions
after discussing the novel thoroughly To conclude, it may be said that
this section of the paper has been an attempt to highlight the
importance of integrating the language skills with the cultural
variables. They is a major ingredient in any language learning process
and, at the same time, these cultural variables determine our lifestyles
and behaviors, helping us reach across our many borders. Now let us
illustrate how the reading and writing skills can be integrated with
culture in a CBI/TBI class, but before plunging into the integration of
these skills, let us briefly refer to the principles behind the teaching of
reading and writing.

INTEGRATING READING AND WRITING SKILLS

Should reading be taught in isolation or associated with other
language skills? EFL teachers constantly ask themselves this
question. As H. Douglas Brown states, “reading ability will best be
developed in association with writing, listening, and speaking activity”
(Brown, 1994: 283). Even in those courses labeled as ‘reading’, the
interrelationship of skills, especially the reading-writing connection,
proves to be advantageous. Thus reading appears as a component of
general second language proficiency, but only in the perspective of the
whole picture of interactive language teaching.

Principles for Reading Comprehension

Reading is a bottom-up process in which readers "must first recognize
a multiplicity of linguistic signals and use their linguistic data
processing mechanisms to impose some sort of order to these signals"
(Brown, 1994: 284). The reader chooses among all the information
meaningful data and infers meanings, decides what to retain and
what not to retain in his memory, and moves on. Meaning is thus
constructed through reading not because a text carries it but because
the reader brings information, knowledge, experience and culture to
the printed word. This theory, known as Schema Theory (Brown,
1994: 284) emphasizes the conceptually driven, or top-down
processing that brings background information to make decisions
about meaning. It is worth mentioning that we might not subscribe to
either process in particular; rather learners should be encouraged to
combine bottom-up and top-down processes in reading, which implies
in practice doing such things as discussing the topic of a text before
reading it, arousing expectations, eliciting connections between
references in the text and situations known to the learners (Ur, 1996:
141).

Principles for Writing

A few decades ago teachers used to focus on the final product of their
students’ writing and its format. Nowadays, the focus lies on content
and message since learners are seen as creators of language. This is
known as the process approach to writing instruction. Teaching
focuses on the process students go through when writing. Students
then learn different strategies for pre-writing, drafting and rewriting
which give students opportunity to return to their work and improve
it. Unlike oral language, written language involves thinking as it can
be planned ahead and revised. Within this approach, revision is
crucial since students get feedback throughout the composing process
either from their teachers or peers. However, the process approach
does not disregard product. Process is not the end; it is the means to
the end. EFL teachers should not forget that native language patterns
of thinking and writing can interfere with second language writing.
However, EFL teachers’ role is to value students’ native-language
related rhetorical traditions and guide them through a process of
understanding them rather than rejecting students’ backgrounds.
Hence, culture is at play.

Reading and Writing at Play

A series of classroom activities can be devised to integrate reading and
writing without disregarding listening, speaking and culture, as was
discussed in section 3. To serve that purpose, a lesson plan on the
topic of co-education has been designed. Because it addresses this
topic, the movie Mona Lisa Smile (Newel, 2003) has been chosen to
raise EFL students’ cultural awareness of the differences between
single-sex and coeducational schooling in America. A power point
presentation with specially selected scenes from the movie has been
created to foster listening comprehension and oral discussion followed
by accompanying texts extracted from the textbook Raise the Issues
by Carol Numrich (2002) on coed vs. single sex education, a topic
relevant both in the United States of America and in Argentina. Let us
now illustrate how the class is taught. First, students are shown
photographs from Mona Lisa Smile. Then, they are asked whether they
have attended a single sex or a coed school and they are invited to
share their personal experiences. This introspection can have them
reflect upon their own schooling thus giving significance to the
discussion. Some of them may find the effects of single sex education
negative, some others positive. Since co-education may or may not
have influenced personal growth,
controversy is likely to break out. The analysis of three movie scenes
from Mona Lisa Smile can bring about vivid memories among the
audience. Mona Lisa Smile is about Katherine Watson, a Californian
Art History teacher, who gets a position at Wellesley College, an all-girl
conservative institution, in the fall of 1953. In the post-war era,
Katherine Watson expects that her students, the best and brightest
girls in the United States of America, will take advantage of the
opportunities presented to them. However, Katherine soon discovers
that the prestigious university fosters marriage as the only key to
success in life. Discussion may center on only three scenes from the
movie. This discussion can set the ground for the introduction to the
reading material ‘Better Dead than Coed’ (Numrich, 2002: 24). Next,
students read the following passage from the text mentioned above:
When you stop and think about your high school or college Alma mater,
were your experiences more positive or negative? Do your feelings of
success or failure in that school have anything to do with whether or
not your school was single sex or coed? More and more Americans are
electing to send their children to single sex schools because they feel
both boys and girls blossom when they study in the company of
students of
the same sex. They tend to achieve more. (Numrich, 2002: 22). After
reading this introductory paragraph, students answer the following
questions:
• Did you attend a single sex or a coed school?
• What was your experience like?
• Did you find advantages or disadvantages?
• What do you know about the effects of coeducation on students?
• What do you know about single sex schooling?
After answering these questions, students read the remaining of the
text in pairs and complete a chart (See Chart 1) on the ideas the
author of the commentary agrees and disagrees with.

WEB-QUESTS AND INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS

The language skills integration advocated in this paper and developed
so far by means of different activities and tasks will be taken a step
further in this section through the deployment of a computer-based
activity called Web-Quest, which allows precisely the type of skills
integration proposed in this article. Computer Assisted Language
Learning (CALL) has been among us for about three decades, affecting
the way we approach the teaching and learning of EFL. It offers an
invaluable source of learning opportunities and material through tools
which provide teachers with an enhanced medium for helping learners
acquire the target language, thus developing all language skills in an
integrated manner. One such tool is the Internet with its myriad of
sites, many of which contain material with high educational potential.
An example of this is the so called Web-Quest developed by Professor
Bernie Dodge from San Diego State University in 1995
([Link] According to him, “a WebQuest is an
inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that
learners interact with comes from resources on the internet.”
Although not originally devised to teach EFL, but rather K-12 and
adults on a variety of curriculum subjects, the content and approach
of WebQuests can be perfectly adapted to this field. Actually, in late
years several WebQuests have been developed by teachers of EFL and
other foreign languages and contributed to the site. WebQuests are
content and task-based activities which provide opportunities for
developing English language skills and gaining experience of the target
language culture. Teachers can access any WebQuest they wish
through a matrix which lists all the WebQuests available in the site or
can use a quick access feature through a search engine.

Fundamental Features of WebQuests

WebQuests present the following critical attributes:
1- An introduction that sets the stage and provides some background
information
2- A task that is doable and interesting
3- A set of information sources needed to complete the task. Many
(though not necessarily all) of the resources are embedded in the
WeQuest document itself as anchors pointing to information on the
World Wide Web. Information sources might include web documents,
experts available via e-mail or real time conferencing, searchable
databases on the net, and books and other documents physically
available in the learner's setting. Because pointers to resources are
included, the learner is not left to wander through webspace
completely adrift
4- A description of the process the learners should go through in
accomplishing the task. The process should be broken down into
clearly described steps
5- Some guidance on how to organize the information acquired. This
can take the form of guiding questions, or directions to complete
organizational frameworks such as time lines, concept maps, or
cause-and-effect diagrams 6- A conclusion that brings closure to the
quest, reminds the learners about what they have learned, and
perhaps
encourages them to extend the experience into other domains Some
other non-critical attributes of a WebQuest include the following:
1- WebQuests are most likely to be group activities
2- WebQuests might be enhanced by wrapping motivational elements
around the basic structure by giving the learners a role to play
(e.g.,scientist, detective, reporter), simulated personae to interact with
via e-mail, and a scenario to work within (e.g. you've been asked by
the Secretary General of the UN to brief him on what's happening in
sub-Saharan Africa this week)
3- WebQuests can be designed within a single discipline, or they can
be interdisciplinary1

WebQuests and EFL

In order to exemplify how WebQuests can be used to develop language
skills and aspects of the foreign language culture in the EFL
classroom, the WebQuest “Critical Consumerism: Advertising
Awareness” ([Link] was chosen
for this workshop as it was considered to be highly motivating to
students, to contain relevant language and tasks, and to be
representative of the target culture, in addition to providing
opportunities for cross-cultural comparison as advertising bears
culture-specific significance. In this WebQuest learners are invited to
enter the world of advertising and to look into it with a critical eye. In
the introduction they are told that the WebQuest will show them some
of what advertisers do in order to get their attention and are
instructed to take a prequiz and reflect their knowledge of and
attitudes towards advertisements. In fact, this pre-quiz acts as a pre-
listening, prediction task which in turn activates learners’ schemata
related to the topic. Next they are directed to watch the first chapter of
a documentary called The Merchants of Cool about how advertisers go
about creating ads targeted to teenagers. This constitutes the listening
section of the task, after which learners and teacher go through the
prequiz to confirm or correct their predictions. Thus, listening is
directly catered to, in addition to listening to teacher and classmates
throughout the development of the WebQuest. The task section
describes what learners are required to do; that is, to research and
analyze advertisements and then to create their own ads. By learning
how advertising works, they are expected to become more aware of
how it affects them, the choices they make, and how they can affect
others. Learners are supposed to keep a portfolio of advertising
analysis, which will eventually be used as part of their assessment
and final grade. This section also describes commercial and non-
commercial advertising and provides examples of each type. In this
way the stage is set for learners to begin working, while reading input
is provided through task description and examples of print ads, thus
helping learners develop reading skills. Reading and writing skills are
further developed in the next step where the process is outlined,
which constitutes the core of the WebQuest, with learners being
guided to explore selected websites which contain information and
examples of each step in the process. Each stage is allocated a certain
amount of time ranging from 1 to 3 days. In stage 1, learners have to
choose and analize ads using an analysis log supplied by the teacher
(tips for critical viewing and analysis are also provided). After this,
they have to choose the message they want to convey as well as the
medium. Links to tutorials are suggested for learners to make more
informed choices
and to guide them in the process. The mediums they may choose from
are the following:
• Television advertisement
• Radio advertisement
• Print advertisement, example: magazine
• Billboard/poster design
In addition, this WebQuest offers plenty of resources for students to
explore and prepare to create their own ads, deploying different skills
as they work their way through it. Reading is practised throughout the
development of the WebQuest, while writing is exercised to some
extent by having learners fill in logs, peer editing and team evaluation
forms, in addition to actually writing the ads. Cooperative learning is
also enhanced as all tasks are carried out in teams. Finally, students
present the ads to the entire school providing an authentic audience
and decide how they would like them to be presented (for example,
over the announcements, in the media center, etc.). But before they do
so they deliver in-class presentations of the advertisements. At this
point, but also in earlier instances of work with the WeQuest, learners
practice speaking. Thus, all skills are developed in an integrated way.
The cultural aspects of the target language are highlighted in the ad
analysis section with the added advantage of comparing and
contrasting commercials in L1 and L2. In the evaluation section
guidelines are provided on how learners’ work will be assessed, taking
into account its quality, according to specific rubrics. The work to be
evaluated includes:
• Portfolio of research on advertising
• Advertisement creation
• Team evaluation
• Presentation
In the conclusion learners are congratulated for having become
advertisers themselves and are encouraged to watch the full
documentary The Merchants of Cool and to continue reading and doing
research on the issue, for which end further links are included. Thus,
the WebQuest activity has come to an end providing learners with
plenty of language practice on an authentic topic and in a relaxed
atmosphere. WebQuests as a learning tool offer valuable opportunities
to develop foreign language skills in an enhanced environment which
promotes cooperative and autonomous learning. Not only are the four
traditional language skills catered to, but cross-cultural awareness
can also be tapped through the choice of culture-laden topics.
Technology in itself is not the key, however, to promoting improved
learning which “appears to lie in how effectively the medium is
exploited in the teaching and learning situation" (Ouston, 1997).
Existing WebQuests can be adapted to cater for teaching and learning
needs, and new ones can also be developed to suit more specific topics
and purposes. Students themselves could develop their own
WebQuests as part of a class project. The possibilities are only
bounded by imagination, and WebQuests are a starting point in this
learning adventure.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
We hope that after reading this article EFL professionals will become
more acquainted with the various forms of instructions (particularly
CBI and TBI) whereby they can integrate the traditional four language
skills with culture. At the same time, we also hope that fostering the
use of WebQuests may be another useful tool for EFL teachers in the
integration of the language skills as presented in this article.

Unit Cost Total cost

S/N Activity Unit Qty Birr Ct Birr Ct
1 Investment costs
1.1 Purchasing of Seating Chairs No 50 2,000 00 100,000 00
1.2 Tables & White Boards No 12 5,000 00 60,000 00
1.3 Office Furniture for the M/gr Set 1 50,000 00 50,000 00
1.4 Office Furniture for Secretary Set 1 40,000 00 40,000 00
1.5 Computers No 5 20,000 00 100,000 00
1.6 Printers with a Copy Machine No 2 50,000 00 100,000 00
1.7 Gowns & Cleaning Materials Set 5 5,000 00 25,000 00
1.8 Stationery Items Set 3 10,000 00 30,000 00
1.9 TV No 1 20,000 00 20,000 00
Sub-total 525,000 00
2 Service’s costs
2.1 Tea/Coffee/Water/Snack Mont 12 3,000 00 36,000 00
2.2 Miscellaneous Cost Sum xx 20,000 00 20,000 00
Sub-total 56,000 00
3 Marketing & management
3.1 Renting of Classrooms No 5 120,000 00 120,000 00
3.2 Transport and promotion Sum xx 30,000 00 30,000 00
3.3 Recruiting a Secretary No 1 5,000 00 60,000 00
3.4 Recruiting a Guard &
No 2 2,000 00 48,000 00
Cleaner
English, Arabic & Halabissa
3.5 Languages Instructors No 5 6,000 00 360,000 00
Utility Costs (water,electric,
3.6 Telephone etc..2,000/month Mont 12 2,000 00 24,000 00
Sub-total 642,000 00
Total Cost 1,223,000 00

Financial Plan of the Project

7.2. Revenue  (Service Income)

S/N Description Monthly Yearly Remark

Teaching Service
1 Income From 100
100,000 1,200,000
Students

2 Translation Services 10,000 120,000

Total Income 1,320,000 ETB

7.3.   Profit /Loss Projection

S/N Description Total Income Total Expense Net/Loss Remark

1 Income Fixed
1,320,000
Assets
2 Expense 698,000 won’t be
Net Income 622,000 included

8.     Fund Request

S/N Description Dashen Bank Own Contribution

1 Fund/Loan 1,000,000 20% from the total budget

Total Budget 1,000,000 244,600

NB:- The project will be able to be minimized and expanded…