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