Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Proposal
By:
A. INTRODUCTION
Preparing school-leavers to enter workplaces or apprenticeship becomes main
concerns in education and training programs. Training institutions compete to
promote that the training they run produces school-leavers ready to enter workplaces
or apprenticeship by specifying competencies needed in a particular workplace. In
addition, to promote programs for prospective students, the institutions include
competencies they will impart their students in their syllabus design. It seems the
inclusion of competencies needed in workplaces becomes the selling points in
designing curriculum/syllabus. Thus, competency-based approaches in curriculum
design are preferable in current language training; let alone in designing
curriculum/syllabus in ESP contexts whose purpose of learning English is to impart
language specific needed in a particular workplace.
The competency-based approaches (CBAs) have long been adopted in vocational
and professional areas. The adoption of these approaches is generated by two
developmental lines: educational and economic. In the educational developmental
line, the application of CBAs is based on the idea of fulfilling learners' needs in
curriculum design and of applying criterion-Reference Testing (CRT) in language
evaluation. In economic developmental line, their application is generated by how to
"sell" curriculum or programs by the inclusion of competencies needed in a particular
workplace and by the idea of how to learn language function in efficient and effective
way.
In designing English syllabus in Tourism area, a course designer should consider
the developmental lines mentioned above. The adoption of CBAs in designing
English curriculum is urgently needed in this area. This paper will further discuss the
Competency-Based Approaches in syllabus design with reference to English for
Tourism. First, it will discuss competency-based approaches in designing syllabus for
ESP context and second, a proposal for finding out competencies needed in Tourism
area with reference to competencies needed by students of Tourism Department (the
University of Mataram).
The second idea generating the application of the CBAs in the educational
developmental line is the movement in testing procedures, especially dealing with the
application of criterion-referenced testing (CRT). The CRT is usually produced to
measure well-defined and fairly specific objectives (Brown, 1996). The purpose of
the CRT is to measure the amount of learning that a learner has established on each
objective. In other words, the CRT is objective-based language points. The
interpretation of results in a CRT is considered absolute in the sense that each
student's result is meaningful without reference to the other learner's results. In
addition, using CRT allows for variety of assessment forms such as role play and
unstructured obeservation. It also allows for modular and self paced learning,
emphasises flexibility to meet individual learner needs and recognises prior learning
or current competencies in relation to training (Hagan, 1994). Applying the CRT in
language teaching will force the learner to achieve the established objectives; the
objectives of which are taken from the aspects of language needed in the target
situation where the language is going to be used.
In the economic developmental line, the CBAs are adopted to give added value
(selling point) to the trainees (graduates) in the job market. Trainees graduated from
institutions having well-defined and explicit competencies in their course description
will have more chances to be considered to get job. Besides, the establishment of
competencies will make the training program more effective and efficient. It is in line
with Hutchinson and Waters' (1993) claim that time and money constraints created a
need for cost-effective courses with clearly defined goals.
Ø a means of justifying certification decisions, not on a normative basis but based
on real standard.
Ø a means of raising standards to meet competency profile requirements and not
just pass marks;
Ø a means of ensuring the credibility and continued resourcing of education and
training providers;
Ø a means of meeting the need for flexibility and diversity and consistent
comparable standards;
Ø a means of interfacing and integrating different forms of learning and including
different education and training sectors, and different levels of education;
Ø a means of empowering learners to take more responsibility for their learning, to
increase their options, and to take advantageof oppurtunities for learning as they
arise.
The process of analysis starts from the identification of learners of the language
teaching program. The target group in this step can be categorized into two groups:
the identification of leraners who want to study the language in terms of personal,
socioculture, education, expectation, interest, real language needs, etc.; and the
identification of professional workers in the target situation, who have used the
language in the target situation. The identification of responsibilities of professional
workers of the target situation will be a useful guideline in the next steps in designing
syllabus since the responsibilities of the professional workers in the target situation
are used as a basis in course design. In this steps, it is necessary to (a) study in-depth
each of the situatons in which they would need to use English; (b) clarify the learners'
communicative purposes by analysing the activities and roles they would be
performing in English; and (c) determine the level of performance they expected to
attain. From the responsibilities of the professional workers, the communicative needs
can further be elaborated in order to find out the focus of language skills needed in
the particular workplace. The following step is the translation of the communicative
into language competencies that need to be developed in in order to be able to do the
job professionally in the target situations. The language competencies are then
translated into teaching materials from functional and structural point of view and
strategies to master the language competencies.
The following are a summary and a sample of how these steps work with
reference to English for Tourism for Front Office Department (the analysis of
complete analysis of competencies needed by students of Tourism Department is in
progress).
4. Taking reservations,
cancellations, and revision.
6. etc.
3. Assessment of What kinds of In order to be able to do these
Communicative communicative needs do responsibilities the FO
Needs professional workers receptionist must have
need to be able to do the language ability on:
responsibilities?
1. how to welcome and
register guests
appropriately.
6. etc.
4. Translation of What English One communicative needs can
Communicative competencies do they be translated into several
Needs into English need to have in order to English competencies:
Competencies be able to function
effectively? 1. how to welcome and
register guests
appropriately.
· etc.
5. Translation of What language input To find out the learning needs
English should be included in (language input for class
Competencies into the syllabus in order to activities), the competencies
linguistic and other achieve the language can further be translated into
specification needed in the target detailed linguistic and other
situation? specifications. For examples:
Ø can use greeting and
leave-taking
The CBAs are preferable in current language teaching since they have a number of
advantages such as fulfilling learners' needs (especially learners' target needs
(necessities)), applying objective-based learning (with the application of criterion
reference assessment), learning in effective and efficient ways since objectives and
materials based on learners' need, having good selling point because well-defined
objectives in course descriptions.
In tracing English competencies for a particular target group, a course designer
can start by analyzing responsibilities of professional workers in the particular target
situation. These responsibilities are then translated into communicative needs and English
competencies. These competencies are then translated into learning needs.
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language learning. Cambridge: CUP
Dudley-Evans, Tony and Maggie Joe St John, 1998. Developments in English for
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Johnson (ed). The Second Language Curriculum. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 63-78.
Crook, Tonny, 1991. “A Skill-Bases Approach to Language Need Analysis for Hotel
Personnel – A Case Study.” A Paper presented at TEFLIN Seminar 37 at
FKIP Unram Mataram Lombok.
Dubin, F. & E. Olshtain, 1988. Course Design: Developing programs and materials for
language learning. Cambridge: CUP
Dudley-Evans, Tony and Maggie Joe St John, 1998. Developments in English for
Specific Purpose. Cambridge: CUP.
Harvey, Annamaria, 1984. “Designing an ESP Course: A Case Study” dalam English
Teaching Forum. Vol. XXII, No. 1, January.
Hutchinson and Walters. 1993. English for Specific Purpose. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Krahnke, Karl, 1987. Approaches to Syllabus Design for Foreign Language Teaching.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Regents.
Robinson, Pauline C. 1991. ESP Today: A practitioner's Guide. New York. Prentice
Hall.
Sheerin, S., 1991. Self Access. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strevens, P., 1988. “ESP after 20 Years” dalam Tickoo, ML. (ed.) ESP: State of Art.
Anthology Series 21. Singapore : RELC
Wimmer, Roger D. & Joseph R. Dominick. 1991. Mass Media Research: An itroduction.
Brown, J.D., 1996. Testing in Language Programs. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents.
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