Definition of the Concept Competency

Whenever the term competency is mentioned, a know how to act process is implied. A
competency is a system of conceptual and procedural parts of knowledge organized into
operating schemes that help identify a problem-task and its solution through an efficient
action within a set of situations. Mrowicki (1986, as cited in Weddle, 2006) defines
:competencies as follows

Competencies consist of a description of the essential skills, knowledge, attitudes, and “

behaviors required for effective performance of a real-world task or activity. These activities
may be related to any domain of life, though have typically been linked to the field of work
and to social survival in a new environment.” (p. 2)

Richards and Rodgers (2001) cite Docking (1994) who defines competency as“An element of
competency can be defined as any attribute of an individual that contributes to the successful
performance of a task, job, function, or activity in an academic setting and/or a work setting.
This includes specific knowledge, thinking processes, attitudes, and perceptual and physical
”.skills

Having said this, a competency may be then defined as the ability to act using a range of skills
and knowledge in various situations that may differ from those in which they were learned.
An individual’s competencyin a certain area develops over time. A competency is firmly
linked to a context-of-use. In other words, students will be prepared to use English effectively
in real-life situations by drawing on and manipulating what they have learned in school.
Rationale in this curriculum, language is viewed as a set of interacting competencies.
Therefore, the ability to use language as a speaker, listener, reader and writer is critical in the
goals of the curriculum. The program is therefore always centered on the learners and the
development of their mental and social capacities in order for them to acquire, in the most
effective way possible, competency in English. Competencies are linked to their in-school and
out of school needs. Learners learn to speak, listen to, read, write and re-use what they have
learned in new situations. Nunan (2007) suggested that these skills are taught in an integrated
way, as usedin real-life. It is no longer sufficient to dispense information to learners, rather
the aim is to help learners to play an ever more active role in their own development and
make them responsible for their own learning. In order to take this active role, learners need
opportunities to find the answers to questions arising from their own daily life and to become
more responsible and autonomous. In this approach to learning, learners confront complex
and significant situations.(Mizra Chahrazad 2016 2017)

What is Competency base Approach

There are different models of curriculum development, some focusing on knowledge transmission and
assessment of such knowledge and others more on skills and personal development. The competency-
based approach is a very popular approach which focuses on measurable and useable knowledge,
skills and abilities(Chelly 2010). The competency-based approach consists of organizing the content
of a curriculum in terms of the development of competencies using specific pedagogical practices that
correspond to the main orientations. it claims that learners should mobilize their values, knowledge,
skills, attitudes and behaviours in a personal, independent way, to address challenges successfully.
Challenges are present everywhere and they can be academic, but also practical and life- oriented.
This new approach in education and learning requires a focus not only in input , but also on outcomes
or results. Such results, however, do not pertain only to the academic knowledge, as in traditional
testing where rote memorization of pre-fabricated knowledge is required. Competencies are not just
,skills as opposed to knowledge, but represent a complex articulation of knowledge(Chelly 2010)

CBA syllabus is based on a priori needs-analysis of the students ; This might be taken to entail that .
there are no ready-made syllabuses to be used for all batches of learners and that it is learners’
needs and expectations and actual knowledge-to-skill competencies that determine to a great extent
what category of lessons to incorporate into the syllabus and what lesson sequencing to adopt for
any particular class of learners. One of The defining tenets of this approach is that it is, as Sturgis &
Patrick framed it, ‘the transformation of our education system from a time-based system to a
learning-based system. Transition from one set of lessons/tasks into another is not time-bound. .
Learners are taken into newer sets of lessons, once competencies set for the current lessen have
been adequately fulfilled and proper mastery has been accomplished by the students enrolling in the
program. It measures learning rather than time. Students’ progress by demonstrating their
competence, which means they prove that they have mastered the knowledge and skills (called
competencies) required for a particular course, regardless of how long it takes.’ it is the absence of
time-constraints that enfeebles the prosperity of even the most professionally tailored course, that
sets the CBA and other approaches apart(Djala l Mansour)

Competency Based Approach in Teaching

In CBLT, students learn to use the language in authentic situations likely to be encountered
outside the classroom. For instance, a student might have to fill out an application form,
provide a personal medical history, or give directions on how to complete a specific task.
Although students must practice in order to become competent, competencies are not practice
activities. Competencies are not activities done for the sake of giving a student a grade, nor
are they done only to allow a student to become better at a task. Competencies are practical
applications of language in context.

. CBLT demands that language be connected to a social context rather than being taught in
isolation. CBLT requires learners to demonstrate that they can use the language to
communicate effectively(W. I. Griffith1, Hye-Yeon Lim2)

Brief history of competence-based teaching and learning

The history of competence-based curriculum can be traced back to the early 1970s when
competence based education emerged for the first time in the United States of America
(Richard & Rogers, 2001). It isan educational movement that defineeducational goals in terms
of precise measurable descriptions of knowledge, skills, and behaviours students had to
posses at the end of the course of study. Thereafter, the movement spread into European
countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany in the 1980s (Wolf, 2001). Other
countries worldwide have been motivated to implement the competence-based curriculum in
schools due to the ever changing technology and global market. In Africa, competence-based
curriculum was adopted for the first time in South Africa in1998, following the acute shortage
of professionals like engineers, technicians and artisans. South Africa adopted the competence
based curriculum in a bid to change attitudes of all South Africans and equip them with
.employable skills to cope with challenging issues in the 21stcentury

Content-based Competence-based
teaching and teaching and
learning learning

1 Is focused on a Is designed to help

narrow set of students learn
academic academic
outcomes and fails knowledge, the
to recognize that skills to apply it and
student success is lifelong learning
dependent on a full skills that are
range of needed to be fully
foundational skills, prepared for
including social- college, career and
emotional, and the .life
.application of skills
2 Is time-based. Is based on
Schools batch learning: students
students by age must demonstrate
and move them mastery of
through the same learning, with
content and schools monitoring
courses at the pace and offering
same pace. additional supports
Students advance to meet time-bound
to the next grade .targets
level after a year of
schooling
regardless of what
they actually
.learned
3 Uses academic Grading in
grading practices competency
that can often send education is
 misleading signals designed to
about what communicate
students know by student progress in
reflecting a mix of learning academic
factors, including skills and content
behavior, as well as the skills
assignment they need to be
completion and .lifelong learners
getting a passing
grade on tests, not
student learning
4 Relies upon a Seeks to create an
bureaucratic, empowering,
hierarchical system responsive system
that perpetuates that is designed to
traditional roles, build trust and
cultural norms and challenge inequity
power dynamics
that doesn’t support
inclusivity and
cultural
.responsiveness
5 Is built on a fixed In contrast, a
mindset —the competency-based
notion that people’s education system
“abilities are carved is built upon a
.”in stone growth mindset
with a belief that all
children can learn
with the right mix of
challenges and
.supports

6 Depends on It fosters intrinsic

.extrinsic motivation motivation by
activating student
agency and
providing multiple
opportunities for
learning to the
same high
.standards
7 Emphasizes In this system
covering the everything should
curriculum and fails be rooted in what
to reflect the we know is best for
learning sciences students in terms of
about what we engagement,
know about how motivation and
children learn .learning
8 Is organized to This education is
efficiently deliver organized to
curriculum and personalize
assessing students’ learning and
proficiency at low support the
levels such as development of
memorization and higher order skills
comprehension of such as analysis,
content knowledge evaluation and
 rather than applied .problem-solving
learning and
mastery
9 Has high variability It builds educators’
in how teachers capacity to make
determine judgments of
.proficiency student mastery to
the same high
standards and
calibrated for
consistency with
other teachers
10 Ranks and sorts It meets students
students creating where they are to
“winners” and ensure that each
“losers” and one can be
perpetuating successful to the
patterns of same high college-
.inequality in society and career-ready
.standards

)Luka Mathayo Mkonongwa(

Teachers Role

Teachers as a researcher: Their role is to facilitate the process of language acquisition

through the development of appropriate learning like hypothesis making or hypothesis testing.
We can also say that the teacher in a classroom is a researcher; an important aspect of his job
is watching, listening and asking questions. In order to learn more about how they learn so
that teachers may be more helpful to students. At the same time that we teach children they
also teach us because they show us how they learn. This kind of watching and listening may
contribute to teacher’s ability to use what the classroom experience provide him or her create
contextualized and meaningful lessons (chelly2010) Instead of being a filler of knowledge
vessels that learners come into the classroom with, the teacher becomes more of a facilitator
of how these vessels could be filled up mainly by the learners as they get actively immersed in
the process of language acquisition. The centrality of the teacher’s role lies in their ability to
construct tasks and activities which will serve to meet the needs and expectations of the
learners previously calculated prior to the commencement of the course. A portion of the
teacher’s role bears on their constantly giving properly devised feedback and in adopting
appropriate measures for assessing their students’ progress.(Djalal Mansour)

Teachers as facilitators: The role of the teacher changes from one of being an information-
giver to that of a facilitator. This does not mean that teachers no longer give information, but
that they give different types of information and deliver it in different ways. Teachers provide
the materials, the activities, and the practice opportunities to their students (Paul, 2008). The
quality and authenticity of these materials are central to the success of class. Teachers will
have to devote large amounts of time to creating activities related to the specific skills
necessary to fulfill the competency requirements. Significant time will also be required to
assess students and provide specific, directed, and personalized feedback.( W. I. Griffith1,
Hye –Yeon Lim2)

Learners Role

students become apprentices :Students, within this framework, are no longer recipients and
consumers of knowledge furnished by their caring teachers on a silver platter. Students are
called upon to take charges of their own learning and to be active participants in the
classroom. Their roles will be to generate knowledge and share it with their partners(Djalal
Mansour)

As the program is based on socio-constructivism, the learner should go through a process of

personal appropriation, questioning his own convictions; Students will no longer be able to
rely only on the teacher and the classroom to be the primary sources of information.. This
leads the learner to revise his prior knowledge and its scope to compare his own
representations with those of his classmates, to search for information and validate it through
consulting various sources of documentation and people in possession of information. balance
between his previous knowledge and his newly acquired knowledge. The reflection of the
learner will operate on his own learning processes, assure the quality of his acquisition and
facilitate his retention. It is essential to note that negotiation is an important aspect of a
constructivist classroom. It unites teachers and students in a common purpose. Another
quality of a constructivist classroom is its interactive nature.(Chelly 2010

Activities, Materials, and Syllabus

Although teachers are free to develop the strategies and tactics most likely to work in a given
educational setting, the design of a CBLT syllabus is different from those of more traditional
classes. Rather than being organized around specific language topics, CBLT courses are
developed around competencies and the skills necessary for mastery. Each day and each unit
focus on the skills necessary to move students along the path toward mastery. Syllabi must
include performance activities that allow the student to practice the requisite skills (Griffith &
Lim, 2010; Richards & Rogers, 2001; Wong, 2008).

This may require a shift in both thinking and organization. In many traditional classes, lessons
are likely to be organized by topics such as present tense, past tense, irregular past tense,
future tense with be going to, and so on. While these topics will still be taught, they will not
drive the lesson nor will they be the focus. Instead, if a specific competency requires a student
to use the past tense, then teachers will introduce that form and the vocabulary necessary for
the specific task. The tense would be taught as an integral part of the lesson, along with
relevant vocabulary, register, pronunciation, and so on. This suggests that, rather than being
taught as a unit, the past tense may be introduced in multiple units depending on need. This
allows modules to build on each other and students to practice skills learned earlier.
Class materials must be oriented to doing rather than knowing. There should be few exercises
that require students to fill in the blank, circle the right answer, or specifically test only
grammar. Rather, each task should be developed around a real-world situation requiring the
use of some or all of the components of the specified competency. For example, if the
competency is “giving personal information”, then tasks must require students to use
knowledge about self to produce such information. Students might practice by creating a
family tree, talking about favorite pastimes, or describing what they did over the weekend.
Notice that the student is required to do something with the language (Richard & Rogers,
2001). Each of these activities requires the student to present knowledge about self.

The activities in the CBLT classroom must be oriented toward the ability to successfully
complete a real-world task. The most effective materials will be authentic sample texts related
to a specific competency (e.g., completed job applications; recordings of a complaint about a
service). The materials help provide students with the essential skills, knowledge, attitudes,
and behaviors required to meet the competency standards.( W. I. Griffith1, Hye-Yeon Lim)