English Teaching Competencies

This new century requires teachers according to the needs of this century's students. The
challenge we face is not only to teach content but, to help students to exploit their amazing
potential in order to apply their skills in problem solving and, at the same time, being a
citizen of the world. It is not only to know; our students need to do something with their
knowledge, share ideas to help solving situations in their communities, cities, countries,
and the world itself by having confidence in themselves and respecting society, nature,
different opinions, races, etc. Our students need to learn to learn by themselves and keep
learning through their lives and, school is the place where they have to develop their
abilities to face, in the better ways, the problems of this new and complex reality.
Competencies for English language teaching
One of the teaching competencies, proposed by Dr. Philippe Perrenoud (2000), that I
consider as a clear indicator for failure or success in the classroom, is how teachers
organize and encourage learning situations.
According to dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/competency,
September, 2nd, 2008) competency means "quality of being adequately or well qualified
physically and intellectually". So, this competency tells us that we have to be qualified to
promote these learning situations.
The next ideas are based on an interview that Philippe Perrenoud gave on September 2000
and it was called "competencies construction".
(http://www.unige.ch/fapse/SSE/teachers/perrenoud/php_main/php_2000/2000_30.html,
July, 3rd, 2008)
Organization and encouragement of learning situations
In the English classroom, besides constructing paradigmatic fields, or just seeing the
language as isolated concepts which are only resources that students store as ingredients for
problem solving, we have to prepare our students to face real situations where language
will help them to solve such problems; learning is not storing those ingredients, if we think
on competent students, situations in class have to be strongly related to common daily life.
The challenge here for teachers is to be competent in creating these situations in class and,
for students, to be competent in solving problems with the language; if the teacher cannot
encourage and organize learning situations, students will not have the opportunity to use
real language. From this, the importance of meaningful tasks related to real life. It is
necessary that students, instead of only storing knowledge, could take it to another level:
the real life; in the family, in the job, with friends, where the developed tools and abilities
can help to solve situations they usually deal with. Provided we see students as stores of
knowledge to be used in the future, what we would be doing is promoting the acquisition of
concepts but, not the procedures to follow to face daily situations. They would have the
ingredients but, could not make the cake. In class, our practicum has to be related to the
social practices. Students have to acquire tools to deal with these situations, always having
in mind where and when, the context, these tools will be at hand to use them. These social
practices must be taken from the real life of the community and students' reality; the same
activities and content do not work for every single classroom or geographical place.
Students' background takes an important role in creating situations alike to those they will
deal with in order to put this knowledge into practical life, where it serves to a purpose, is
useful, and profitable.
Students, during and after finishing secondary, must know how to use what they learned in
school, not only like isolated concepts but, like well-practiced abilities, ready to be used
conscious or unconsciously. From this perspective, the exam becomes something like a
report of how they solved a problematic situation; the performance, where students faced
the problematic situation, has to be indeed the main part of assessment. Students will be
competent when manage themselves in an adequate way to solve problems where language
is the main tool in this problem solving. Thus, English teachers have to create almost real
situations in the classroom, where students use input to face them but, not only during
exams, if not in every single class. Perrenoud (2000) recommends working on problems or
projects where students utilize knowledge and abilities to achieve complex tasks and
challenges until complete them. We have to be very careful when organizing such
situations; they have to be meaningful for students and linked to the real context. This
clearly infers that meaningful is closely related to what students can do with the language in
their own town or community. As said before, in secondary, we work with the functional
syllabus; this approach clearly describe the social practices that students have to work on
but, if we do not contextualized such functions, it will lose a great amount of
meaningfulness. In the same way, our own perspective towards teaching will have to
change, if needed, into promoters of situations. Our role of lesson-giver will be lowered and
a lot of attention has to be paid to the process where students utilize their resources and
abilities in competent manners. Teachers will have to look for strategies to create interest in
activities, encourage students to take knowledge outside of the walls of school but, seeing
that knowledge as tools to use in the real world.
From my perspective, task based approach has a lot to do with this; according to the British
Council "Task -based Learning offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based
lesson the teacher doesn't pre-determine what language will be studied, the lesson is based
around the completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what
happens as the students complete it" (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/a-
task-based-approach, September, 10th, 2008). In task based, central tasks have to be
completed by using language; in competencies, students have to use language to solve
problems of real life. The only problem in secondary is the size of groups. Students have to
work in pairs or small groups to do the tasks. If we follow the functional syllabus, the
functions will determine what situations have to be created in order to solve the problems
and do the tasks. For instance: First grade, Unit 5, function 5.1: Giving simple information
about places (RES, SEP, 2006). In order to create a situation and a problem to be solved,
students would have to describe their city to a foreigner who wants to walk around and find
out about the places to visit. Students would have to use their background, strategies, and
knowledge to help the foreigner. It, in fact, could be a task which is based on the function
in which students have to be competent. It seems simple but, it is not, there are many issues
that must be analyzed; creating situations is not role playing where students act a script, it
has to begin with a real problem. This problem has to deal with a situation which could
occur in students' lives. They use new input, strategies, abilities, and knowledge to solve it
in the best manner according to their criteria. The teacher has to be creative or explain what
language works for in order to make the problem meaningful to solve. At the same time, the
functional syllabus has to be fulfilled and the sample productions could guide students or
be a basis to use language but, not the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is to solve the
problem. The good thing is that, like the multiple intelligences theory (Gardner 1983), by
investing time and effort, students would turn competent in facing that particular situation
and they could take advantage of strategies consciously or unconsciously, it means they
will domain the process and make it automatic. Maybe the analogy of a trained policeman
who, in practice, has learned strategies for arresting criminals; his capacities will turn into
abilities and, with a lot of practice, he will be an expert. It is going to be easier for him to
arrest a criminal by using strategies and abilities learned in almost real situations, which of
course are meaningful for this type of work. If he only studies in manuals but, he does not
have the opportunity to face a situation alike to one of the streets, at the time of a real
arrest, I think he will be rephrasing the instructions, he will have the ingredients but, he will
struggle a lot more to arrest the criminal, in other words, he will struggle to make the cake.
The design of the simulated problematic situation in the police headquarters has to be
almost like one that policemen face in daily work. The policemen's trainer has indeed to
arrange the simulated scene of crime by not making it too easy but, challenging to a
training police officer and also if the situation is too difficult for a single officer, he will
measure the risks to act and will ask back up if necessary.
On the other hand, and going back to English teaching and learning, having as the ultimate
goal to solve a problem does not mean that working on vocabulary acquisition, writing and
reading sentences, texts, paragraphs, listening to songs, playing in the classroom, drilling,
or controlled and artificial activities are useless; many strategies that teachers use in the
classroom are necessary input. The matter is that students must use that input, not only to
store it.






Introducing the CBA
What is a competency?
Why choose a competency-based approach?
View of learning
The learners role
The programme recommends to:
Conclusion
What is a competency?
Whenever the term competency is mentioned, a know-how to act process is
implied.
Because of its global and integrating characteristics, acquiring a competency requires
learning in motor, affective and cognitive fields.
A competency is a system of conceptual and procedural parts of knowledge organised
into operating schemes that, help identify a problem-task and its solution through an
efficient action within a set of situations.
A competency involves the necessary knowledge and capacities that a given solution
requires.
As it is possible to evaluate a competency through performance, then a competency is
the final stage of a cycle, a period, and determines intermediate and long terms
prospects of the learners development.
Why choose a competency-based approach?
Establishing a programme based on logic that is centred on competencies fits in a set
of instructions commissioned by the Ministry of Education. These instructions are
based on worldwide research that highlights the importance of the links between
learning and context of use, thus helping the learners in making learning meaningful.
For several decades, competencies have been used in the educational field. Since
emphasis is put on the learners social and personal development, the aim is to make
him reinvest his knowledge while performing tasks at school level as well as at social
and professional levels. The programme has been conceived with the purpose of
ensuring sustainable and viable learning.
Although the competency-based programme is a novelty, its objectives are not new.
Actually, educationists have always been interested in developing general know-
how processes and in fixing knowledge acquired in class. This programme will allow
the Algerian learner to develop his capacity to think and act according to a vision of a
world that he will construct day by day. This logic has a series of pedagogical
implications such as:

Making the school acquisitions viable and sustainable:
The school will help the learner give sense to knowledge acquired in class and teach
him how to make beneficial and relevant use of it. His learning must be reinvested not
only in school contexts, (that is to say from one situation to another or from one
disciplinary context to another) but also in contexts outside the school.

Developing the thinking process of the learner:
To achieve this aim, it is vital to reinforce the cognitive function of school by
establishing tight relationships between acquiring knowledge and developing thinking
processes. The emphasis put on the development of competencies makes it impossible
to focus exclusively on acquiring disciplinary knowledge, but enhances the
development of thinking processes necessary for assimilating them and using them in
real life.

Presenting learning contexts in relation to the needs of the learner:
The learner must grasp the usefulness of the resources he develops in relation to the
problems he meets in everyday life. The competency-based approach makes it possible
to link the development of personal resources and the meaningful situations, which
call for such resources.
With this approach, the learner will acquire abilities to use the language for
communication thanks to the interwoven processes of learning reading, listening,
speaking and writing.
Since language is central to all forms of communication, its mastery is necessary and
basic to all school learning as well as interpersonal relationships.
Thus, the learner becomes able to get in touch with schoolmates and the adults around
him, to express his own vision of the world, to make his the others culture and
transmit his own culture.
Putting an end to disciplinary barriers:
The programme recommends focusing on basic learning that the pupils will have to
master during their course. This programme will take part in the setting of
transversal competencies in various fields: intellectual, methodological, personal,
social and communicational. It aims at developing competencies in various real life
situations, appealing to various sources that are related to disciplinary fields, the
decompartimentalization encourages and favours the development of transversal
competencies. Going beyond the disciplinary field, these transversal competencies will
be implemented in a gradually widening field as they get used and developed in
various contexts.
Choosing a personalized pedagogy:
To facilitate the development of the learners competencies, it will be necessary to rely
on the resources that have to be explicited, developed and enriched. To achieve this
aim, various pedagogical approaches will be preferred, keeping individual differences
in mind.
View of learning
Centred on the development of competencies, learning is favoured in complex and
meaningful situations. As it is cognitive, affective and social process, learning fits in
cognitive and sociocognitivist perspectives. It is a process that implies making laying
foundation to new acquisitions through the reorganisation of the learners cognitive
structure.
The programme determines learning that will call upon intellectual procedures and
attitudes such as respect for differences, co-operation and team work. Communication
thus, in this programme is a priority that takes into consideration the latest
developments in the field of Second Foreign Language Teaching, communicative
approach, cognitive psychology and socio-constructivism.
This programme is learner-centred and focussed on the construction of the learners
knowledge. It aims at developing competencies that are regarded as essential for the
learner of the new century. These competencies are the ability to interact orally, the
ability to process oral and written texts and the ability to write texts.
The learners role:
Learning requires from the learner to go through a process of personal appropriation.
Because of this conception of learning, the learner continually questions his own
convictions. This permanent questioning 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 or people in possession of information.
This presupposes that the learner creates situations of learning and assessment
relating both to the process and the results. The interactions with his classmates and
his teacher help the learner to:
Make a representation of situations.
Find various ways of performing tasks.
Construct and call upon various resources.
Proceed to an assessment of his progress during the activities and at the
end of activities.

To do so, the learner will appeal to cognitive, affective and motivational strategies in
order to set a balance between his previous knowledge and his newly acquired
knowledge.
The reflection the learner will operate on his own learning processes will assure the
quality of his acquisition and facilitate his retention.
Since learning is a challenging intellectual process, while accomplishing a task, the
learner displays appropriate behaviours while doing a specific action. This is
performance.
By focusing more on the learner, the teaching objectives facilitate the learning
assessment. Thus, diagnostic, formative and summative assessments make it possible
to redefine the globality of assessing act as well as the interdependence between the
different moment when it takes place.
Besides, the pedagogical objectives insist on the principle that only what has been
clearly stated can be assessed at the end of the learning process. Because he focuses his
action on the learner and his learning process, the teacher determines the teaching
objectives in terms of development, decides on the choice of appropriate methods,
situations, assessment tools, ways of reinvesting pre-requisites and types of remedial
work.
Thus the meaning of assessment changes: from being a final external sanctioning
action(normative, summative and certificative), it becomes the driving force for
learning.
It allows judgement and appropriation on one hand and motivation on the other
hand.
Through making the learning objectives explicit, the teacher proposes to give the
learner meaning to his task, and shows him that the result to reach is accessible.
The proper wording of these objectives clarifies the object of the learning process. It is
only then that a great autonomy can be achieved.
Even if all the pupils do not achieve the same objectives at the same time, their
formulation facilitates the organisation of a personalized pedagogy and gives new
impulse to the learners involvement.
Mutual commitment between teacher and learner through a language comprehensible
to both partners allows a better definition of the contract between teacher and
learner, that is to say the result to be achieved by the learner.
It will also facilitate the identification of the different commitments of each partner,
the final evaluation of the project and improve communication between the partners.
The programme recommends to:
Put emphasis on what is essential in order to ensure the learners
academic success, his personal development and his integration in
society.
Develop the cultural dimension by facing the learner with fundamental
and universal values.
Make sure that the learners will be thoroughly taken in charge; for that,
it is necessary to specify the requirement the teacher must satisfy and
propose a progression of the learning processes.
Give each learner an appropriate and personalised answer to each
particular need.
Organise the teaching while taking into account the development of the
competencies that require long lasting pedagogical operation and the
rhythm of the pupils learning process while avoiding the risk of
repeating the year.
Integrate N.T.I.C that have become an absolute must, and stand for
indispensable resources for learning and teaching. These technologies
are not only means of consulting sources of documentation but also
means of production. A sensible use of these techniques will allow the
development of a transversal competency in a methodological field.
Conclusion
The approach based on competency leads to a serious revision of the teachers
profession. This implies a change in the teachers attitude toward knowledge and
towards teaching. The teacher will have to:

Do more than teaching as merely communicating knowledge.
Make the learner learn.
Quit his function of monitoring and evaluating in order to get involved
in all activities.
Create various means of teaching.
Share his power, negotiate with the learners and accept their point their
view.
Work on projects, and to do so, he must have a perfect knowledge of the
project procedures.
Possess a complete knowledge of group dynamics.
Be able to conduct discussions, to act as a mediator between the learners
and analyse the group functioning.
Clarify the processes, the ways the learners think and act; thus the
teacher displays greater transparency.
Encourage and guide the learners efforts by showing the learner that
he is allowed to make errors and to have doubts.
Enhance the value of co-operation between the learners.
Proceed to formative evaluation in working situations.
Open to other disciplines and have discussions with his colleagues about
methods and interdisciplinary concerns