CURRENT APPROACHES

AND METHODS
PA RT 2
B Y D R . G H A D A H B ATAW I
OBJECTIVES

• Competency –based language teaching, Standards, and the

Common European Framework of Reference
• Task-Based Language Teaching
• Text-Based Language Teaching
Competency –based language teaching, Standards, and the
Common European Framework of Reference
COMPETENCY BASED-LANGUAGE
TEACHING
• It is an example of an approach known as Competency-Based
Education (CBE)which emerged in the united states in 1970s.
• CBE focuses on the outcome and the output of language
learning rather than the input.
• It advocated defining educational goals in terms of precise
measurable descriptions of the knowledge, skills, and
behaviors students should gain at the end of the course.
• It is now a common standards and is considered by the Center
of Applied Linguistics the most important breakthrough.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF CBLT

Implemented effectively, clear specification of effective out

come can:
• A focus on successful functioning in society
• A focus on life skills
• Task performance centered orientation
• Modularized instruction
• Focusing on explicit outcome
• Continuous and ongoing assessment
• Demonstrated mastery of performance objectives
• Individualized, student-centered instruction (p.153)
 BENEFITS OF CBLT

Implemented effectively, CBLT can:

• Improve the quality of teaching/learning, reduce coast, shorten
time, and give measure of students learning.
• Harness the power of technology.
• Change the faculty role.
• Define competencies and develop valid, reliable assessment.
BENEFITS FROM THE LEARNERS’ POINT
OF VIEW
• The competencies are specific and practical and relate to
learners’ needs and interests.
• Competencies can be mastered one at a time, so the learners
can see what has been learned and what still remains to be
learned.
TYPES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
ACTIVITIES
• CBLT is an approach to designing courses but does not imply any
particular methodology. The teacher is free to choose any method or
set of activities that will enable the learning outcomes to be
achieved.
Examples of guidelines for the choice of learning activities
• Instructional activities should integrate the four skills.
• They should focus on the acquisition of communication skills that
allow students to function appropriately in real life .
• They address several learning styles
• They integrate language and culture
• They enable students to develop the language necessary to access
higher level thought
 LEARNERS’ ROLE

Learners are active participants in the learning process. Their roles

are as follows:
• To monitor their learning in reference to the target competencies.
• To develop a range of learning strategies
• To be prepared to deal with uncertainty.
• To be motivated to communicate and learn from communication
• To be willing to constantly attend to meaning and never overlook
the form.
• To be able to transfer knowledge and skills to a new situation
 TEACHER’S ROLE

Teachers have an active role in CBLT as well. Her role is as

follows:
• Needs analyst
• Material developer and material resource assembler
• Assessor
• Coach
 REFORM MOVEMENT TOWARDS
DEVELOPING STANDARDS
• Focusing on national educational “standards” has emerged as an
important realization of competency perspectives in many parts of
the worlds and has become a hotly debated discussion since 1990s.
• It is an attempt to measure and quantify the learners’ mastery of
discrete skills and may combine with any approach as a way to
measure learning outcome s.
• Proficiency standards reflect the competencies students need to
master to be successful in specific content area.
• They include both social and academic uses of language students
must acquire for success in and beyond the classroom.
• Standards are organized into grade level clusters: pre-k-3, 4-8,
and 9-12.
• Some of these standards resemble the CBI and the Whole
language principles.
• E.g., TESOL pre-k-12 English Language Proficiency standards
Framework (P.163)
COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF
REFERENCE (CEFR)
• CEFR is intended to provide a shared basis for reflection and
communication among the different partners in the field. It is a
way to ensure that all learners have access to effective means of
acquiring standard element of language of an intended level.
• It is a framework for language teaching and assessment developed
by The European Council of Europe
• It represents the ‘can do’ statements’ that describe learners’
behaviors/outcomes.
• It is combined with ‘Communicative Language Teaching’
• It describes in a comprehensive way what language learners have
to learn to do in order to use language for communication
effectively
 SIX LEVELS OF CEFR

• Mastery C2
• Effective Operational Proficiency C1
• Vantage B2
• Threshold B1
• Waystage A1
• Breakthrough A1 (166)
 TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING
TBLT
• What is a task? It is an activity in which a person engages in
order to attain an objective by using the target language.
• It is an approach rather than a method as it doesn’t entail one
single methodology.
• It refers to the use of tasks as the core unit of planning and
instruction in language teaching.
• Students are given functional tasks that invite them to focus
mainly on meaning exchange and to use language for real
world, non-linguistic purposes.
• It is a logical development of CLT; it draws on several CLT
principles.
 KEY PRINCIPLES OF TBLT

• Focuses on process rather than product.

• Uses purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize
communication and meaning.
• Uses tasks that might learners need to achieve real life goals or
tasks that have a pedagogical purpose.
• Uses tasks that are sequenced according to difficulty.
• involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,
producing, or interacting in target language while their
attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form.
 DESCRIPTION OF TBLT

A number of scholars have offered comprehensive and

complementary views of TBLT.
Edwards and Willis (2005) explicated:
• In carrying out a task, learners’ main focus is on exchanging
and understanding meanings rather than on practice of form or
pre-specified forms or patterns.
• There is a purpose/goal for the task.
• The outcome of the completed task can be shared with others.
• Task can involve any or all 4 skills.
• TBLT does not preclude Language-focused study
Doyle (1983) Defined 4 dimensions of Academic Tasks:
• The products students are asked to produce.
• The operations they are required to use in order to produce
these products.
• The cognitive operations required and the resources available.
• The accountability system involved.
An example describing the use of Task based approach (Textbook, p.185).
 BENEFITS OF TBLT

Benefits of adopting TBLT might include:

• Greater motivation as it provides opportunities of repetition
without boredom.
• Greater curricular flexibility
• Promotion of risk taking
• An opportunity for natural error correction
• Promotion of risk taking
• Increased students’ satisfaction and better program evaluation
results
TYPES OF LEARNING AND TEACHING
ACTIVITIES
• Six task types are proposed by Willis (1996): listing, ordering
and sorting, comparing, problem solving, sharing personal
experience, and creative tasks.
• Tasks examples are given by Pica et al. 1993 include:
1. Jigsaw task
2. Information gap task
3. Problem solving task
4. Decision making task
5. Opinion exchange task (p.186)
 LEARNERS’ ROLE

• Group participants
• Monitors
• Risk takers
Teacher’s Role
• Needs analyst
• Motivate students
• Organize the task based activity
• Internationally support the students while they are performing
the task
• Consciousness – raising
• Monitor
 TEXT BASED INSTRUCTION

• It was developed originally in Australia by educationalists working in the

area of literacy drawing on the work of Halliday (1989).
• It is derived from a genre theory of the nature of language and the role
different texts play in social contexts.
• .It seeks to develop communicative competence by mastering different
types of texts (spoken or written) in specific contexts by drawing on their
linguistic and lexical features.
• It uses ‘texts’ as the basis for developing a teaching and learning program,
• It is based on the idea that learning to use English is improved when
teachers introduce students to complete spoken or written texts within an
appropriate situation.
• .
• Different texts have different purposes and are organized in
different ways with different language features, e.g., short
messages, interviews, advertisements, small talk, anecdotes,
jokes, narrative texts, expository texts, descriptive texts….
• Text approach entails that to communicate means be able to
use different kind of spoken and written texts in specific
contexts of use.
• Teachers introduce students to complete spoken or written text
within an appropriate situation; teachers help Ss to develop an
awareness of its linguistic features and how it is structured; T
and Ss construct text together before Ss work on their own.
 PRINCIPLES

• Teaching language and grammatical features explicitly.

• Linking spoken and written texts to the social and cultural
contexts of their use.
• Designing units of work which focus on developing skills in
relation to the whole text.
• Providing students with guided practice as they develop
language skills for meaningful communication through whole
texts.
 TECHER’S ROLE

• Develop a syllabus based on students’ needs

• Select suitable texts based on course objectives
• Modeling the processes of deconstructing and constructing
appropriate texts.
• Assessing students’ progress in understanding and mastering
different text type.
 LEARNERS’ ROLE

Through teacher’s support and guidance and through the use of

rules and patterns, learners are supposed to:

• Create texts of their own

• Develop skills that enable them to monitor their own learning.