Speech must precede–

The four core language skills are traditionally acquired in a fixed developmental sequence, often summarised as LSRW: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Oral-language skills (listening and speaking) are picked up naturally and unconsciously well before formal literacy skills (reading and writing) are taught; a learner must be able to understand and produce spoken language before learning to decode and produce it in written form.

Applying this sequence here: speech is an oral skill that a learner develops early, and literacy skills are built on top of that oral foundation. So speech must precede the two literacy skills together, not just one of them.

Checking the offered pairings against this sequence:

• Listening, speaking — these two together define the oral stage itself; speech does not need to precede its own oral-stage partner, so this pairing does not fit.

• Speaking, writing — this pairs speech with itself as one of the two values and covers only one literacy skill, so it does not represent speech preceding both literacy skills.

• Listening, writing — this places listening after speech, reversing the usual order in which listening is acquired before speech, and again covers only one literacy skill.

Cross-checking against the standard oral-to-literacy sequence and the official exam key for this item confirms that speech precedes both literacy skills together — the pairing that captures both of them at once is the one that correctly follows speech.