HOW ENGLISH SKILLS ARE TAUGHT IN CBTIs 214

By Citlali Hau and Blanca Chi

For this interview we visited the center of studies of industrial technical baccalaureate (CBTIs

214) the name of the teacher interviewed is Rafel Velasco Argente. The information collected

from this interview is detailed below, this is related to the way in which English skills are

taught in this school.

Professor Rafael Velasco has been working in the CBTIs since 2010, however, he has been

for rest periods covering licenses, from 2014 onwards he has been constant, so he has been

working in that institution for about 7 years. The teacher's teaching Schedule depends on the

English program to be taught and the semester in which the students are, for English 1 to 4

(1-4 semester) 3 hours of class per week are taught per group, for 5 semester it takes 5 hours

distributed in the week, for the students of sixth semester there is no English.

The English program in high school is from the origin of this institution, 33 years ago. Over

time there have been many reforms with the English teaching program at this school, the first

program reform was in 2000, later there were changes in 2008, another one was carried out

in 2014 and finally a new version was worked on last year.

The method used in this school for teaching English is Competency-based Learning (CBL),

from the point of view of the teacher, not all the expected competencies are achieved. On the

other hand, the teacher tells us that there is conductivism when teachers taught, apart from

that, there are teachers who make use of the Project based learning, in the same way that

several teachers resort to the application of Flipped Classroom, this is that research is done

as homework and the classroom is viewed as a practice laboratory. According to the teacher,

these are techniques that are part of the Competency-based Learning.

The expectation for the students of teacher Rafael in his own words is a limited and realistic

expectation: “if I am given 3 hours in a semester of fourteen weeks, cutting the hours I have

left as 30 hours for my students to approach an A1”, as a consequence, there is no time to

properly apply all the skills so they are given a kind of spectrum of things and it is important

that they be very functional with what they can do. "My expectations are very limited and I

plan accordingly" "I am not frustrated that they reach an A1 but that they achieve certain

aspects of the competition since they will cover it later"

According to the teacher, the teaching of skills focuses more on writing, speaking, use of

English for the time available. For the ability of listening it is taught through Flipped

Classroom, where accompaniment platforms are used where the student can be in contact

with the language through videos or audios, in the other skills only a reinforcement is made.

On the production side there is more in speaking than in writing. The programs say that

reading and writing should be focused once the students master the foundation, so writing

skills are used until the 5th semester, according to the teacher the student should have 100

hours of training between English 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then move on to the writing and reading

approach.

The sub-skills it focuses a lot on grammar. With vocabulary it is only done when teach must

go to certain functional aspects for example, if the students talk about presentations, teachers

focus on vocabulary of nationalities, occupations, work, etc. Sub-abilities are inserted into

each other and within the same class planning, they are not set apart, they are integral skills.

All the skills are linked therefore when teachers try to teach they have to be obvious with

what are they doing, tell them that "there are the things, now we'll get it together". Finally,

quoting teacher Rafael: "For me all the abilities have to go mixed."