The integration myth: Reading and writing

There has recently been an increasingly widespread demand for integrated skills materials among ELT practitioners and institutions. This trend has evolved from the communicative language teaching movement that emerged in the 1970s. Skill integration has been seen as an effective way to engage learners as it reflects the natural use of the target language. Integration was first realized in teaching methodology before it started to influence material writing. However, in many cases, integration has become more like a fashion, with no clear understanding about how two skills or more can be integrated in one textbook or whether such integration has made language learning and teaching more effective. This article examines the integration of reading and writing skills in a number of commercial English language teaching (ELT) materials. It first reviews the literature on the integration of these two skills, focusing on the underlying principles and sub-skills. It then reports the findings of an analysis of integration of reading and writing in selected English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) textbooks. Finally, it offers some guidelines and suggestions for how skill integration can be handled more effectively.