Developing English as a foreign language communicative competence: a curriculum design for teacher training.
Fecha
2021-01-29
Autores
Salmerón Reyes, Mónica Ludivina
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ISSN de la revista
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Editor
Universidad Don Bosco
Resumen
Due to the recent and great demand of English as a social communicative tool in the global
context, seven universities in El Salvador have decided on offering majors related to the acquisition
of English as a foreign language. Among these, Universidad Don Bosco offers two undergraduate
degrees in languages, which claim the development of English language skills using the
competency-based approach.
However, from a practical perspective, there are some students that seem not to have developed
the communicative competence. This gap was verified through data gathered on a diagnostic
research done to 24 students that belong to B1 level. The data was collected through the
administration of a standardized test and revealed that these students had not fully developed their
communicative competences. They showed low proficiency on three dimensions of the
communicative competence; these dimensions were: grammar and vocabulary, discourse
management, and interactive communication and global achievement.
The results of the diagnostic research encourage a deeper analysis for the possible causes of
the low results obtained by the group of students under study. The first possible cause is the role
that both the professor and students have in the learning process. According to an inquiry made to
ten educators of the B+1 course, educators are still seen as knowledge keepers while students have
a passive role as knowledge receivers in the whole process. Second, the learning experiences are
still being designed based on the content and not on the B1+ competencies established for the
Communicative English Course; thus, class mediators deem important to rely on developing
English content, rather than encouraging a language competence.
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The third possible cause of low results obtained by the group is that despite the fact that the
curricula propose ideas of teaching strategies, professors resist to implement them. The curricula
specify three English courses prior to B1+ level, in which students should have developed their
communicative competencies; so that each subject suggests a set of teaching strategies to enhance
students’ communicative competence. The program for English B1+ course suggests teaching
strategies that can directly contribute to the development of the communicative competency;
nevertheless, in day-to-day instruction, professors hardly ever use them due to diverse reasons.
Among these reasons, class mediators point out that teaching strategies are time consuming (i.e.,
because it takes too much time to plan them) the lack of participation from low proficiency level
students and the limited time to cover all the contents.
The fourth possible cause of low results obtained by the group may be due to a single, repetitive
course assessment strategy, as participants are systematically assessed on a monotonous role play
performance, three times during the semester, throughout five English courses ranging from A1,
A2, B1, B1+ and B2. Thus, the implementation of other type of evaluation strategies that require a
high domain of oral ability could be beneficial for the students because they would be challenged
to use the language in different contexts and scenarios similar to real-life situations, enhancing their
abilities to solve real-life issues.
Furthermore, it is essential to highlight that the oral assessment takes place at the end of each
period. The semester has three periods that are divided into four weeks; so, evaluations take place
on the fifth week. Therefore, it becomes an elaborate scenario to examine students’ levels of
acquisition of language competence. It also becomes crucial to support the learning process by
providing ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve planning and students to
improve their learning. Hence, it is necessary to provide teachers with assessment strategies
focused at enhancing the learning process.
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Among the four possible factors that may cause the low proficiency identified on B1+
participants, the present project focuses on the implementation of teaching and assessment
strategies that encourage students to develop their communicative competencies. The reason to
focus specifically on these possible causes is that the diagnostic enquiry on faculty members
indicated that it is necessary to boost up succinct teaching and assessment strategies to better
enhance communicative competence of B1 + participants. Our first observations rendered that
students who carried out the teaching and assessment strategies used in the present project
eventually improved proficiency levels. It is also believed that the present research project may
benefit other students’ competency standards.
Descripción
Palabras clave
Gestión del Currículum , Foreign Language , Enfoque por Competencias , Formación de Profesores
Citación
Salmerón, M. L. (2021). Developing English as a foreign language communicative competence: a curriculum design for teacher training. (Tesis de maestría no publicada). Universidad Don Bosco, La Libertad, El Salvador, C. A.