language skills

(in language teaching) the mode or mannaer in which language is used. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are generally called the four language skills. Sometimes speaking and writing are called the active/productive skills and reading and listening, the passive/receptive skills. Often the skills are divided into subskills, such as discriminating sounds in connected speech, or understanding relations within a sentence.

Jack C. Richards, Richard Schmidt., Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, p.293