Essential Skills

Today's workplace and post-secondary learning environments are focusing more and more on essential skills: the skills people need for work, learning and life.

Essential skills are foundational skills that people need to help themselves learn, work and manage change in their lives.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, working with other agencies, has researched and identified nine essential skills used in nearly every occupation and throughout daily life in different ways and at different levels of complexity.

The Nine Essential Skills

• Reading Text
• Document Use
• Numeracy
• Writing
• Oral Communication
• Working with Others
• Continuous Learning
• Thinking Skills
• Computer Use

Essential skills already covered in Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000: ESL for Literacy Learners document are reading, writing, document use, numeracy and thinking skills.

Here are some ways to integrate essential skills into ESL literacy programs:

• Limit the number of broad skill areas to make instruction more manageable.
• Create essential skills classes that specifically deal with these skills at various levels.
• Develop a specific set of outcomes for each essential skill that are teachable and measurable or observable.
• Essential skills can be included into a program through project-based learning.
• Make learners aware of which essential skill and specific outcomes they are working on and how these skills relate to both the project and life inthe "real world".