Competency-based Language Teaching
Competency-based Language Teaching
Competency-Based
Language Teaching (CBLT) focuses on what “learners are expected to do with the
language”.[1]
This approach emerged in the United States in the 1970s and can be described as
“defining educational goals in terms of precise measurable descriptions of the
knowledge, skills, and behaviors students should possess at the end of a course
of study” .[2]
The
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2000, p.246) defines competency as “the
ability to do sth well” and as “a skill that you need in a particular job or
for a particular task”.[3]
Historical
According
to Richards & Rodgers on his book, he wrote “Competency-Based Language
Teaching (CBLT) is an application of the principles of Competency-Based
Education to language teaching”. In Competency-Based Education (CBE) the focus
is on the “outcomes or outputs of learning”. By the end of the 1970s
Competency-Based Language Teaching was mostly used in “work-related and
survival-oriented language teaching programs for adults” Since the 1990s, CBLT
has been seen as “the state-of-the-art approach to adult ESL” so that any
refugee in the United States who wished to receive federal assistance had to
attend a competency-based program in which they learned a set of language
skills “that are necessary for individuals to function proficiently in the
society in which they live”
The Approaches in CBLT
There
are several principals in CBLT:
1. Language
is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning (functional view)
2. Language
is a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relation and for the
performance of social transactions between individuals. Language is a tool for
the creation and maintenance of social relations. (interactional view)
3. CBLT
is built around the notion of communicative competence and seeks to develop
functional communication skills in learners.
4. CBLT shares with behaviorist views of
learning, the notion that language form can be inferred from language function;
that is, certain life encounters call for certain kinds of language.
The Implementation of CBLT
Auerbach
in Richards and Rodgers (2001:145) provides a useful review of factors involved
in the implementation of CBE programs in ESL, and indentifies eight key
features:
1. A
focus on successful functioning in society
2. A
focus on life skills
3. Task
-or performance- centered orientation
4. Modularized
instructions
5. Outcomes
that are made explicit a priory
6. Continuous
and ongoing assessment
7. Demonstrated
mastery of performance objectives
8. Individualized, student-centered instruction
The Competencies Involved in CBLT
CBLT
is built around the notion of communicative competence:
1. Grammatical
competence
It
refers to linguistic competence and the domain of grammatical and lexical
capacity.
2. Sociolinguistic
competence
understanding of the social context in which
communication takes place, including role relationship, the shared information
of the participants, and the communicative purpose for their interaction.
3. Discourse
competence
It
refers to the interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their
interconnectedness and of how meaning is represented in relationship to the
entire discourse or text.
4. Strategic
competence
It
refers to the coping strategies that the communicators employ to initiate,
terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication[4]
Role of Teacher
The
role of the teacher in a competency-based framework is not defined by specific
terms. The teacher has to provide positive and constructive feedback in order
to help the students to improve their skills. She/he needs to be aware of the
learners’ needs so that everybody feels welcome in class The different
competencies dealt with in class require specific instructions for the various
learning activities. Thus the teacher has to give clear orders and explanations
to make sure that every student understands the task they are going to deal
with. But the teacher does not push the students because the instructions are
not time-based; instead the student’s progress is most important Another task
of the teacher in CBLT is to select learning activities and to design a
syllabus according to the competency the students are going to acquire.[5]
Role of Learner (student)
The
role of the learner in a competency-based framework is to decide whether the
competencies are useful and relevant for him/her (Richards & Rodgers, 2001,
p.146). This shows that the learner has an active role in the classroom which
is underlined by the fact that the students are expected to perform the skills
learned (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.146). The competencies the students
will learn are clearly defined and present in the public so that “the learner
knows exactly what needs to be learned” and for which purpose he/she has to use
the competencies (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.147). In this regard it is
vital that every competency is mastered one at a time because this makes sure
that the learners know what they have already learned and what the next steps
will look like.[6]
Moreover, the students have to stay in the actual program until they improve.
After they mastered their skills, they move into a more proficient group of
students. The main goal of the learner in Competency-Based Language Teaching is
to be able to adapt and transfer knowledge from one setting to another.
Materials
The
materials the teacher chooses are mainly “sample texts and assessment tasks
that provide examples of texts and assessment tasks that relate to the competency”.
These materials are used to provide the students with “the essential skills,
knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors required for effective performance of a
real-world task or activity”. A great variety of competencies should be
improved by these tasks. On the one hand, knowledge and learning competencies
as well as oral competencies are dealt with. On the other hand, the materials
include tasks to improve the reading and writing competencies.[7]
Procedure
At
the beginning of a course in a competency-based framework the students have to
go through an initial assessment, in which the teacher determines the current
proficiency level of the individual student. After this the students are
grouped on the basis of “their current English proficiency level, their
learning pace, their needs, and their social goals for learning English”.
Furthermore, a course based on CBLT is divided into three stages, which the
students have to go through in order to successfully finish the course. At
Stages 1 and 2 the learners deal with twelve competencies which are related to
general language development. At Stage 3 the students are grouped on the basis
of their learning goals and “competencies are defined according to the three
syllabus strands of Further Study, Vocational English, and Community Access”.[8]
Advantages
1. learner
can judge whether the competency seem useful
2. the
competencies are specific and practical
Disadvantage
1.
The process learning activity will
be passive if teacher does not motivate the students.[9]
CONCLUSION
CBLT is an educational
movement that has been introduced in several places of the world, since people
need to face the demands of it. It provides learners with the essential tools
to interact successfully in society, enhancing them to use their knowledge to
solve different real life situations. Furthermore, CBLT involves teachers’
great knowledge of student´s context, interests and needs and the development
of different standards that enrich and lead the teaching-learning process, so
that learners know exactly what they need to learn to be communicatively
competent
REFERENCES
·
Richard, Jack C. Rodgers, Theodore S. Approach and Method in Language Teaching
Second edition. Cambridge University Press. 1986.
·
Oxford Learner’s Pocket
Dictionary Fourth Edition
[1]
Richard,
Jack C. Rodgers, Theodore S. Approach and
Method in Language Teaching Second edition. Cambridge University Press. 1986.
Page 141
[2]
Ibid 141
[3] Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary Fourth
Edition Page 85
[4] http://teffl.wordpress.com/
[5] Richard,
Jack C. Rodgers, Theodore S. Approach and
Method in Language Teaching Second edition. Cambridge University Press. 1986.
Page 146
[6] Richard,
Jack C. Rodgers, Theodore S. Approach and
Method in Language Teaching Second edition. Cambridge University Press. 1986.
Page 147
[7]
Ibid 147
[8]
Wikipedia.org
[9]
http ://nurilaapriliani.blogspot.com/
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