CBLT

Competency-Based Language Teaching (CBLT)

Syllabus

1. CBLT is designed not around the notion of subject knowledge but around the notion of competency.

2. Schenck (1978) points out that the teacher provides a list of competencies which the course is going to deal with, and these are “typically required of students in life role situations”.

3. “Criterion-based assessment”.

4. Competency consists of knowledge attitudes, behaviors, for real tasks and activities.

1990s

• The CBLT had come to be accepted as “the state-of-the-art approach to adult ESL by national policymakers and leaders in curriculum development as well”.

1986, program based in…

• Any refugee in the United States who whished to receive federal assistance had to be enrolled in a competency-based program.

• They had to master the language and demonstrate proper behavior.

Theory of Language and Learning

• Functional and interaction perspective.

• Language is seen as “a medium of interaction and communication between people”.

• Shares the behaviorist view of learning.

• Language can be analyzed into parts and subparts and they can be tested incrementally.

• “mosaic” approach.

• Develops functional communication skills in learners, known of specific real-world task.

Competency-Based Language Teaching(CBLT)

Is an application of the principles of CBE to language teaching.

By the end of 1970s

• Work-related and survival-oriented language teaching programs for adults.

• The most important breakthrough in adult ESL.

Advocates of CBLT see it as a powerful agent of change, because:

• Opportunity for teachers to revitalize their education and training programs.

• Quality of assessment and teaching improves.

• Student learning is enhanced.

-Specification of expected outcomes

-Continuous feedback

References

Auerbach, E. R. (1986). Competency-based ESL: One step forward or two steps back? TESOL Quarterly 20(3): 411 – 415.

Docking, R. (1994). Competency-based curricula – the big picture. Prospect 9(2): 11 – 15.

Grognet, A. G., & Crandall, J. (1982). Competency-bases curricula in adult ESL. ERIC/CLL New Bulletin 6: 3.

Mrowicki, L. (1986). Project Work English Competency-Based Curriculum. Portland, Oreg.: Northwest Educational Cooperative.

Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Second Edition). Cambridge: CUP.

Schneck, E. A. (1978). A Guide to Identifying High School Graduation Competencies.

Role of Teacher

.

• The teacher has to provide positive and constructive feedback.

• She/he needs to be aware of the learners’ needs.

• The teacher has to give clear orders and explanations.

• The teacher selects learning activities and to designs a syllabus.

Learning Activities

The learning activities used in CBLT can be described as systematically designed activities to achieve a certain competence.

Typical areas, for which CB activities have been developed, are for example Job Application, Job Interview, or Work Schedules (Mrowicki, 1986).

According to Auerbach (1986) there are eight key features which are essential for CBLT:

• Outcomes that are made explicit a priori.
• Continuous and ongoing assessment.
• Demonstrated mastery of performance objectives.
• Individualized, student-centered instruction.

• A focus on successful functioning in society.
• A focus on life skills.
• Task-or performance-centered orientation.
• Modularized instruction.

Materials

• Sample texts.

• Assessment tasks.

• Reading competencies.

• Writing competencies

Background

Role of Learner

• Emerged in the U.S in the 1970s
• An educational movement

• The learner has an active role.

• Students have to stay in the actual program until they improve.

• The learner in the CBLT has to be able to adapt and transfer knowledge from one setting to another.

-Knowledge

-Skills

-Behaviors

A course based on CBLT is divided into three stages

CBE Described by Schenck 1978

• Performance based instruction
• Individualized instruction
• Mastery learning
• Outcome based
• Adaptive to the changing needs

*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”

Procedure

1. At the beginning of a course in a competency-based framework the students have to go through an initial assessment.

2. Then, the students are grouped on the basis of:

-English proficiency level

-Learning pace

-Needs

-Social Goals for learning English

Conclusion

• Embraced with enthusiasm.

• Criticised practically and philosophically

a. No valid procedures available.

b. Impossibility of applying needed competencies (adult living, survival, functioning proficiently in the community).

c. Sum of the parts is not equal to the whole (reductionist approach).

CBE (Competency-Based Education)

• Is an educational movement

that focuses on the outcomes or outputs of learning in the development of language programs.

What the learners are expected to do with the language, however they learn to do it.

Competency:

Essential skill, knowledge or behavior required for effective performance of a real world task or activity.

Verónica Cota

Jacqueline Domínguez

Ruby Colin