Introduction

Competency-based instruction is an approach to

the planning and delivery of courses that has been in
widespread use since the 1970s. The application of its
principles to language teaching is called Competency-
Based Language Teaching an approach that has been
widely used as the basis for the design of work-related
and survival-oriented language teaching programs for
adults. It seeks to teach students the basic skills they
need in order to prepare them for situations they
commonly encounter in everyday life. Recently
competency-basedframeworks have become adopted in
many countries, particularly for vocational and technical
education.
Competency-
BasedLanguage Teaching:
Competency-Based Language Teaching (CBLT) is an application
of the principles of Competency-Based Education (CBE) to
language teaching. Such approach has been widely adopted by
the end of the 1970s, particularly as the basis for the design of
work-related and survival-oriented language teaching programs
for adults.
CBLT seeks to teach language in relation to the social contexts
in which it is used. Language always occurs as a medium of
interaction and communication between people for the
achievement of specific goals and purposes. CBLT has for this
reason most often been used as a framework for language
teaching in situations where learners have specific needs and
are in particular roles and where the language skills they need
can be fairly accurately predicted or determined. As CBLT is
built around the notion of communicative competence and
seeks to develop functional communication skills in learners, it
shares some features with Communicative Language Teaching.
Competencies consist of a description of the essential skills,
knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours required for effective
performance of a real-world task or activity. In this respect
Docking notes that
CBLT is designed not around the notion of subject knowledge
but around the notion of competency. The focus moves from
what students know about language to what they can do with it.
The focus on competencies or learning outcomes underpins the
curriculum framework and syllabus specification, teaching
strategies and assessment. (Docking 1994: 16)
Approach: Theory of Language
and Learning

CBLT (Competency Based Language Teaching)

 Is Base on the nature of language.
 Teach language in relation with society, how
they use it.
 Its shared with behaviorist (depends on the
learners situation.)
 Language can be analyzed into parts and
subpart and they can be tested incrementally.
 Develops functional communication skills in
learners, known of specific real-world task.
Design:Objectives, Syllabus,
Learning activities, Role of
Learners, Teachers, and Material

Docking(1994)
 Syllabus They point out to plan the syllabus
according to the material its going to be teach,
contribution of knowledge field, objectives,
assessment based on norms, and a scale of
scores of their expectation.

CBT
 It focus on what students know about
language to what they can do with it.

Competencies consist of activities related with the

real life situations for surviving social environment.
 ESL curriculum for immigrant and refugees
included:
 Task performance
 Safety
 General word-related
 Work schedules, times sheets, paychecks
 Social language
  Job application
 Job interview

Procedure
 Learning outcomes are specified in three stage.
 These three stage lead to the Advance Certificate
in spoken and written English.
 The initial assessment the students are place within
the framework on the basis of their current English
level proficiency.
 First and second stage relate to general language
development.
 Third stage the learners are often grouped
according to the three syllabus strands of further
study, vocational English, and Community Access.

 Each stage are divided into four domain:

◦ Knowledge and learning competencies
◦ Oral competencies
◦ Reading competencies
◦ Writing competencies
characteristics

What characterizes a competency-based approach is

the focus on the outcomes of learning as the driving force of
teaching and the curriculum.
Auerbach (1986) identifies eight features involved in the
implementation of CBI
programs in language teaching:

1. A focus on successful functioning in society. The goal is to

enable students to become autonomous
individuals capable of coping with the demands of the world.

2. A focus on life skills. Rather than teaching language in

isolation, CBLT teaches language as a
function of communication about concrete tasks. Students are
taught just those language forms/
skills required by the situations in which they will function.
These forms are normally determined
by needs analysis.

3. Task or performance-oriented instruction. What counts is

what students can do as a result of instruction.
The emphasis is on overt behaviors rather than on knowledge
or the ability to talk about
language and skills.

4. Modularized instruction. Language learning is broken down

into meaningful chunks. Objectives
are broken into narrowly focused sub-objectives so that both
teachers and students can get a clear
sense of progress.
5. Outcomes are made explicit. Outcomes are public
knowledge, known and agreed upon by both
learner and teacher. They are specified in terms of behavioral
objectives so that students know what
behaviors are expected of them.

6. Continuous and ongoing assessment. Students are pre-tested

to determine what skills they lack
and post-tested after instruction on that skill. If they do not
achieve the desired level of mastery, they
continue to work on the objective and are retested.

7. Demonstrated mastery of performance objectives. Rather

than the traditional paper-and-pencil
tests, assessment is based on the ability to demonstrate pre-
specified behaviors.

8. Individualized, student-centered instruction. In content, level,

and pace, objectives are defined
in terms of individual needs; prior learning and achievement are
taken into account in developing curricula.
Instruction is not time-based; students progress at their own
rates and concentrate on just those areas in which they lack
competence.
Some critics :

Critics of CBLT have argued that this approach looks easier and neater
than it is. They point out that analyzing
situations into tasks and underlying competencies is not always feasible or
possible, and that often little more
than intuition is involved. They also suggest that this is a reductionist
approach. Language learning is reduced to
a set of lists and such things as thinking skills are ignored.
 advantages
1.             Positive and Negative points Advantages of CBLT from 
the learner’s point of view: 
2.

3. 1. The competencies are specific and practical and relate to 
learners needs.
4. 2. The learners can judge whether the competencies are 
relevant and useful.
3. learner knows exactly whet needs to be learned. 
4. Competencies can be mastered one at a time so the learner 
can see what has been learned and what still remains to be 
learned. Negative aspects: ­ There are no valid procedures 
available to develop competency lists for more programs. ­ 
Many of the areas for which competencies are needed are 
impossible to operationalize. 
Conclusion

“It can confidently be said, as we enter a new

millennium, that the business of improving learning
competencies and skills will remain one of the world’s
fastest growing industries and priorities”. (Rylatt and
Lohan).
Bibliography

 Richards, Jack C., and

Theodore S. Rodgers.
Approaches and Methods in
Language Teaching
(Cambridge Language
Teaching Library). New York:
Cambridge University Press,
2001.