A STUDY ON
EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPETENCY – BASED ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AT SECONDARY LEVEL.
This paper investigate that
teaching and testing of English as a
second language facilitates the learners , language teachers, textbook writers
and evaluators in respect of their involvement in Competency – Based English
Language teaching. With data from survey based on the questionnaire
administrated on high school students of S N D P School Aluva, it is found that
the students show very positive attitude towards competency – based English
language teaching. They claimed improved learning, communication skills and
better comprehension.
INTRODUCTION
Competency-based
education (CBE) emerged in the 1970s in the US. It referred to an educational movement
that advocated defining educational goals in terms of precise measurable
description of the knowledge, skills, and behaviours students should possess at
the end of a course of study (Guskey,2005). CBLT was an application of the principles of
CBE to language teaching. Language programs that were work-related and
survival-oriented adopted such an approach in the end of 1970s. CBLT is a
teaching approach which focuses on the outcomes of language learning. CBLT
emphasizes what learners are expected to achieve with the target language. In
other words, the approach sees outputs very importantly rather than the
learning process. This means, starting with a clear picture of what is
important for students to be able to do, then organising curriculum,
instruction, and assessment to make sure this learning ultimately happens. The
keys to having a competency-based system include developing a clear set of
learning outcomes around which all of the system’s components can be focused, and
establishing the conditions and opportunities within the system that enable and
encourage all students to achieve those essential outcomes.
CBLT is based on a
functional perspective on language teaching and its framework is often tailored
to meet learners’ needs and the language skills they need can be fairly
accurately predicted or determined. CBLT also has a notion that language form
can be inferred from language function. That is, course designers should
accurately predict the vocabulary and structures that are possibly to be encountered
in that particular situation and they can be organized into teaching and
learning units.
NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
Today we observe a huge
growth in classroom technology and with it, introduction of new learning
methodologies. The learning happens when children actively involves in the
particular learning activity. If a
student develops the competency by the learning this will be sustained and thus
literacy could be permanent. It is necessary to check the effectiveness of competency
–based English language teaching because everything has positive as well as
negative effects. There is a chance of domination of more smart students in this
learning. So, as a new concept in educational field it is important to check
its effectiveness among children.
STATEMENT OF THE
PROBLEM
The problem for the
present study is entitled Effectiveness of Competency – Based English Language
teaching at secondary level.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main objectives of
this study were to find out.
v The
effect of competency – based teaching on the achievement of English Language
among secondary level.
v The
effect competency – based teaching on the development of English Language
Skills among secondary level.
HYPOTHESIS
•
Collaborative learning may help the students in improving leadership qualities,
communication skills and co-operation.
•
Smart students may dominate in competency – based English Language learning.
•
Most students may enjoy working in groups.
METHODOLOGY
Method: Survey was
conducted by the investigator for the study on the effectiveness of
collaborative learning in high school students.
Sample: The sample
consist of twenty students of class 10 selected at random from S N D P School
Aluva
. TOOLS
Questionnaire: A
situational questionnaire was prepared by the investigator and its content and
validity was established by proper methods of questionnaire. A percentage
analysis was done by the investigators in order to reach at conclusions.
I want to take English course to improve my English
proficiency.
I can also see the reasons for learning
English.
I can see the need of
using English to give a presentation.
I can see reasons for
learning how to write expository writing.
I can see the need to
use English to write academic paper.
The assignments required in the course can
help me develop my professional development.
I am sure what learning
outcomes I need to achieve in the English course
FINDINGS
Competency – Based English
Language Teaching was found superior in effectiveness to the conventional
method of teaching English.
The collection of
analysis data indicate that competency – based English language help the most
students in improving leadership qualities, co-operation, communication and
adjustments. It also helps them learning English language better. Almost half
of tem felt difficulty when they communicative in groups. 75% of the students
believe that competency – based English language help in
understanding the content or topic which the teacher discusses in the class in
a better way.
However, as for those
skills that were newly introduced to students only at the beginning of the semester
and had never been taught in secondary school settings, students were not
certain whether they had acquired them or not. The most evident ones are
scanning, skimming, finding information, finding evidence to support claims in
essay, interviewing, forming and analysing questionnaires, doing surveys,
writing personal reflection, evaluating evidence and speaking with appropriate intonation.
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
The domination of the
smart students should be controlled by the teachers and equal participation of
the students must be ensured.
Teacher should help
the students in improving communication skills and confidence.
Teacher must ensure
the content is reached through competency – based English each
time.
CONCLUSIONS
This study found that
students in fact held strong preference for learning English. Therefore,
curriculum planner should take into account students’ need at certain point of
time when implementing CBLT. Collaboration across departments is also strongly
recommended.
Students also revealed
that the assessment descriptors were not useful in helping them to achieve the assessment
targets or get a high grade because the descriptors were in relative form. To
solve this problem, pedagogical adjustment was strongly recommended. Teachers
may consider showing students sample scripts of different grades while
explaining the assessment descriptors in details so that students can easily
internalize the assessment criteria.
Students also stated
that research skills was the study skill that they felt not confident in most
while the fours skills—speaking, listening, reading and writing—could be easily
acquired and employed. Thus, needs analysis can be done before the commencement
of the course and give more instructional emphasis to those skills and areas
which students do not feel confident in. All in all, to enhance the
effectiveness of competency-based language teaching, the language programme
must be locally developed so that curriculum, instruction and assessment can be
correlated with each other. Competency-based language education should also
have an instructional emphasis so that the programme is not another form of
standardized testing. Based on the above results found, educators should think
carefully about whether the right domains are being assessed, whether they are
learners’ need and what diagnostically one can infer if the performance is not acceptably
high.
REFERENCE
Bibliography
Edutrack, vol 13,
No.5, June 2013.print
Arjunan N. K
Psychological bases of education. Palakkad; yuga publications; 1994. Print
Webliography
www.science
direct.com
www.teach thought.com
