What is the Fifth Language Learning Skill?

What skills should we teach as language educators?

Traditionally, four macro skills form the backbone of any good language syllabus: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

However, a skill that claims to be the ‘fifth skill’ pops up every few years. The contenders I’ve seen are:

Culture

Grammaring

Translation

Viewing

Mediation

(If you’ve heard of any more, please let me know!)

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Language macro and micro skills

Before we look at these, let’s agree that language learning and teaching are st...