ALR B3 | Competency-based Teaching Flashcards
In principle, a communicative approach focuses less on what learners _____
about the language than what they can _____ with it.
know, do
It follows, therefore, that a curriculum whose goals are defined in terms of _____ – that is, the specific _____ that learners will be able to do – is more functional than one
that is based around a list of discrete items of grammar.
competencies, skills
Competency-based Teaching, then, starts with an analysis of the specific _____ – or skills – that are needed to do a job, to pursue a field of study, or to survive as a tourist, for example.
behaviours
These skills (sometimes called _____ or even _____) form the basis of the course design, and are the goals – or _____ – of classroom instruction and testing.
key competencies, life skills, outcomes
Competencies are often expressed in the form of _____,
probably the best known of which (for language teaching) are those that
were devised for the Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR).
can do statements
If a method is defined – not just by its syllabus, materials and procedures –
but also by its goals, then Competency-based Teaching certainly merits
_____ as a method in its own right
consideration
It is not so clear, though, as to
how the syllabus goals are to be met. As the CEFR (Council of Europe
2001) insists, ‘such statements of learning objectives say nothing about the _____ by which learners come to be able to act in the required ways … They say nothing about the ways in which teachers facilitate the _____ of language acquisition and learning’.
processes, processes
Nevertheless, the fact that the goals
of learning are typically expressed in terms of _____ (as in the can do statements), rather than as grammar or vocabulary items, suggests that a
skills-based approach would be appropriate.
abilities
Such an approach would be one in which the specific behavioural goal – e.g. ‘writing a short personal letter’ – is modelled for the learners, and then practised by them until it is sufficiently ‘_____’.
automated
However, as in the case of the CEFR, attempts to flesh out the descriptors by specifying the precise linguistic elements (e.g. the grammar and
vocabulary) that are implicated in each _____ may undermine a skills-based approach, inviting a more traditional, atomistic teaching approach, along the lines of the PPP (present-practice-produce) model (see chapter 14).
competence
More problematic still is the fact that, whatever methodology is
employed, a key component of the _____ is testing to see
if the target competencies have been acquired. And the more precisely and
narrowly the competencies are defined, the more items there will be to test.
teaching-learning cycle
Critics of a competency-based approach argue that its narrowly-specified, _____ goals artificially constrain learning, producing learners with a narrow range of competencies and few transferrable skills.
utilitarian
They also argue
that the reduction of learning into discrete, _____ distorts the nature of language and language use in the real world.
modularized chunks
As Auerbach (1986)
comments, ‘the focus on a _____, building block pedagogy may produce such a narrow dissection into sub-units that students cannot see the
forest for the trees’.
bottom-up
The trend to ‘_____’ learning in this way is consistent with the way that education is increasingly being construed as a business, where
production targets and marketing plans directly determine the way that the work-force is trained, and where managers (and teachers) are accountable
both to their stakeholders and to their customers.
commodify
As Gray and Block (2012)
put it, ‘terms such as “outcomes”, “value added”, “knowledge transfer”,
“the knowledge economy” and above all “______” have become part
of the day-to-day vocabulary of _____’.
accountability, education
Worse still, accountability encourages a culture of continuous testing. As
Diane Ravitch (2010) complains – with reference to the introduction of
‘_____’ into the US education system – ‘How did testing and accountability become the main levers of school reform?
common core standards
What was once an effort to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy’. And she adds, ‘_____ should follow the curriculum. They should not replace it or precede it’ (ibid.).
Tests
Despite its business-like associations, the idea that the curriculum should be ‘_____’ according to an analysis of learners’ needs is not
necessarily an unworthy one.
reverse engineered
In fact, it is a fundamental principle
underpinning the teaching of ESP: the starting point of course design is a _____, from which the course objectives, materials and even
teaching procedures are derived.
needs analysis
Success of the _____ is measured in terms of how well the needs have been met.
programme
Moreover, it is a fact that, as Heyworth (2004) argues (in favour of the CEFR) ‘all knowledge of language is _____’.
partial
He adds that ‘the concept of
_____ reinforces the need for negotiation of objectives with
learners, and recognition of the fact that not everyone has to set off on the
journey to learn the whole of the language.
partial competencies
Learning a language is not an “_____” undertaking’.
all or nothing
This is a view that acknowledges the widespread _____ and mobility associated with _____, where conformity to native-speaker models of _____ is of less utility than communicative resourcefulness.
plurilingualism, globalization, proficiency
This suggests that a competency-based model - but one that is negotiated in much the same way that a process syllabus is negotiated and one that, above all, is not over-burdened with continuous testing - might well serve the needs of learners in an increasingly _____ world.
globalized
