Competency-based language teaching revisited

As already discussed in section 2.8.3, competency-based language teaching (CBLT) and its forebear Objectives-based Education have been criticised in the literature and share a number of weaknesses. However, accepting a need for objectives in any activity system, and acknowledging current systems of accountability in schools, an approach to language teaching is required which is objectives-led without neglecting learning as an internal representation, or in Dweck’s terms, does not sacrifice mastery to short-term performance goals. In the overview of approaches and methods provided by Richards and Rodgers (2014), the only approach which compares with the tripartite lesson in English MFL practice is that of competency-based language teaching (CBLT), explored below. I have found no reference to a competence-based approach to language teaching, or to objectives - based education (OBE), in any of the standard texts on MFL teaching (e.g. Swarbrick, 1994, Cajkler and Addelman, 2000) or SLA theory (e.g. Ellis 1990; Mitchell, 2004). Library searches, using both terms, of publications during the last ten years produced two articles from the literature on teaching English as a foreign language.

In spite of these reservations, this approach may have some advantages within a culture which prizes observable outcomes. In Richards and Rodgers’ (2014) account of content- based language teaching the goals of competency-based language teaching (CBLT), were described as based on the needs of immigrants to the USA, with the further example of the Common European Framework for Languages (COE, n.d.) originally designed to meet the needs of adult migrant workers in the European Union. The similarity between competency-based language teaching and current practice is seen when comparing a typical competency-based lesson plan template, as described by Richards and Rodgers (2014) and the format of a tripartite lesson. The template lesson starts with a warm-up then an introduction in which “the teacher states the objective of the lesson”. After presentation and practice activities, in the evaluation stage

Students demonstrate their knowledge of what they have learned by showing, explaining, analysing or reflecting on what they have learned during the lesson.

Richards and Rodgers (2014:161) Thus the CBLT approach addresses some of the issues raised by critics of OBE by including opportunities for reflection and meta-cognition. The difference between the CBLT format and the tripartite lesson is that the evaluation is followed by an application stage in which:

Students extend their knowledge of the lesson’s materials to a new situation or apply their knowledge to complete a new and different activity.

Richards and Rodgers (2014:161) The addition of this stage would arguably improve a tripartite lesson by affording

greater autonomy, stimulating greater interest and widening students’ vocabulary. It would also provide the “meaningful” activity which, as Mitchell (2003) noted, is lacking in English classrooms. She saw that omission as contributing to students’ poor

progression in MFL.

If the achievement of behavioural objectives is allowed to dominate the tripartite lesson, an evaluative plenary may signal the end of learning with a test rather than the

beginning of authentic language use with an opportunity for reflection and challenge. In practice, a competency–based plan arguably offers students a richer experience than the “tell and test approach” of the three part lesson. The guidance from the California Department of Education, quoted by Richards and Rodgers (2014) included the integration of the four language skills, enhancing communicative competence through meaningful interaction, focusing on receptive skills (listening and reading) before speaking and writing. Richards and Rodgers (2014:158) noted that competency–based language teaching (CBLT) does not “imply any particular methodology of teaching” but also noted its compatibility with a present-practice-produce lesson format. The example they gave of a lesson from a competency–based language teaching textbook is almost exactly the style of question now used in GCSE MFL examinations, except that the exemplar includes a communicative speaking task appropriate for a newly arrived adult immigrant. In order to complete that task, the student would need to be talking about real world events in the life of a new resident rather than of a student in school.

A drawback of CBLT is therefore its possible irrelevance to the life of the students. Richards and Rodgers (2014) listed three assumptions about language in competency– based language teaching: language is a means of achieving personal and social needs, language links forms and functions in the life of the learner and language can be broken down into its component parts. It is not clear where the teaching of grammar would fit within the approach, apart from those structures which meet situational requirements. Regardless of teaching approaches, there is a paradox inherent in the specification of “personal and social needs” by a third party, particularly a national examination board or a consultant to the European Union. Van Ek's (1977) view of language learning, given below, may be attractive to teachers of MFL but less appealing to their students.

Van Ek’s (1977:3) optimistic view of the Common European Framework for languages was as a “foundation for international cooperation in innovation” in which students will “be able to cross the threshold into a foreign language community […] learning something which makes sense to them” (Van Ek, 1977:17). In fact, the lack of “attitudinal motivation for MFL learning in the UK” (Broady, 2005:31) together with the Europhobic attitudes which prevail in English press (Graham and Santos, 2015) and with the status of English as a global language (Mitchell, 2002) militate against the realisation of Van Ek’s (1977) vision. A challenge for all MFL teaching in English classrooms lies in the difficulty of predicting students’ needs or interests in any language and CBLT is no exception.

Nor does CBLT ease the tension between learners’ communicative goals and accuracy. Thus, Auerbach (1986) questioned whether “mastery learning” (not in the sense of mastery used by Dweck, 2000) is compatible with second language acquisition because of its emphasis on precision and right and wrong answers, rather than allowing risk- taking. Ehrman and Oxford (1995:69) considered that “risk-taking is an essential for progress” in language learning linked to students’ tolerance for ambiguity, while Auerbach (1986) wrote that “the stress on mastery, while satisfying the demands for accountability, may be pedagogically unproductive”. Dweck’s (2000) view was that short- term success, i.e. performance, may undermine longer term goals, i.e. subject mastery. This parallels Hymes’ (1972) proposed distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance in which competence was always greater than performance.

Thus CBLT may not solve all the problems of teaching and learning in MFL classrooms, but it could achieve an improvement, possibly in conjunction with task-based language teaching which is discussed in the next section.