Development of Communications Skills in ESL Students
Journal #1

When we talk about communications skills for ESL students, teachers acknowledge many concepts related to communication. Some of these concepts are mention on the following paragraphs.
The first two concepts are usage and use. Usage is the way in which words and phrases are actually used (as in a particular form or sense) in a language community and use the act or practice of employing something. In other words, the difference between usage and use is that usage is how to communicate and use is to put communication in practice.

The next two concepts are fluency and accuracy. Fluency is the quality or state of being fluent; able to speak or write smoothly, easily, or readily and accuracy is the condition, quality, precision or/and exactness in communication. Namely, fluency is when a person domains a foreign language being able to express oneself easily and accuracy is when your total-self is participating when speaking, that is, your mind, body, spirit or soul.

Fluency is often associated with speed, but speed in itself has no value. What is important is the ability to work with the rhythm, pace, and accuracy that is appropriate to the purpose for reading or writing. Being measured and deliberate may be right for one purpose, and reading or writing quickly, or expressively, may be best for another. Whatever the purpose, fluency should not be thought of as separate from comprehension.
(Ministry of Education, 2006, page 24.)

In additional to the concepts, teachers must also understand the importance of a syllabus and the difference between a functional syllabus and a structural one. A syllabus is an outline or other brief statement of the main points of a discourse, the subjects of a course of lectures, the contents of a curriculum. Two types of syllabus are the functional syllabus and the structural syllabus. The functional syllabus is based on communicative and social functions; it emphasizes language approach not grammatical and the structural syllabus is a syllabus in which grammatical structures form the central organizing feature. A structural syllabus proceeds from simple grammatical structure to more complex grammatical structure.