OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

COMPETENCES IN ELT
Find someone who…
 can knit a sweater
 knows how many glasses to set on a
formal dinner table
 can sing very well
 remembers the name of our 5 last
presidents
 can tell you about 5 national holidays in
other countries
 can fix a water tap
 Can use photoshop effectively
 is good at solving sodoku puzzles
 can speak more than 2 languages
What is a competence?
 Competences represent clusters of skills,
abilities and knowledge needed to perform
jobs.
 A person’s ability to make informed
choices.
 The quality of being adequately or well
qualified physically and intellectually.
 Demonstrated performance and
application of knowledge to perform a
required skill or activity to a specific,
predetermined standard.
Implications of CBT
 If competence is concerned with doing then in
must have a contex

 Competence is an outcome: it describes what

someone can do. It does not describe the learning
process which the individual has undergone.

 In order to measure reliably someone’s ability to

do something, there must be clearly defined and
widely accessible standards through which
performance is measured and accredited.

 Competence is a measure of what someone can

do at a particular point in time.

(UDACE 1989: 6 quoted by Tight 1996)

What standards?
 TOEFL
 TOEIC
 Trinity Exams
 CASAS / SCANS
 Cambridge ESOL
 CEF
 What is teaching?
 To help somebody learn something by giving
information about it

 To show somebody how to do something

 To make somebody feel or think in a different

way

 To persuade somebody not to do something

again by making them suffer so much that they
are afraid to do it
OALD
 What is learning?

 To gain knowledge or skill by studying, from

experience, from being taught, etc.

 To study and repeat something in order to be

able to remember it

 To gradually change your attitudes about

something so that you behave in a different
way
OALD
Learning in educational psychology

Change in an individual
caused by experience
Slavin (2003)
Learning a Language (CEF)
 A holistic view of language.
 Importance of competences.
 Sociolinguistic + Inter-cultural
competence.
 No perfection is attainable or
sought. “Unique individual
competence” is considered.
 Teaching a Language (CEF)
 No particular language teaching methodology. Teachers
should use appropriate methods to teaching and social
context.

 Effective teaching depends on lots of variables -a huge

range of possible teaching methods and materials.

 Teachers have to think on their feet and be flexible and

responsive to their students' needs.

 Teachers need to understand why they're doing what they

do, and to help define their learners' objectives. Teacher’s
experience is extremely valuable in helping them do this.

 Teachers should help students as much as they can to

develop both their language knowledge and their ability to
learn (in class and on their own).
What competences?

 All human competences contribute

in one way or another to the
language user’s ability to
communicate and may be regarded
as aspects of communicative
competence.
 Knowledge Practical-
Knowledge

COMPETENCE

Skill
Attitude

Adapted from: Competences Professional Development How2 Webpage

General competences
 Declarative knowledge

 Skills and know-how

 ‘Existential’ competence

 Ability to learn
 Role play
Personalised
questions

Topic

Problem-
Discussion solving
Linguistic Socio-
Linguistic

Communicative
language
competences

Pragmatic
Linguistic competences
 Lexical competence
 Grammatical competence
 Semantic competence
 Phonological competence
 Orthographic competence
 Orthoepic competence
 Listening:
Weather forecast

Topics: Speaking:
Travel & the weather Beautiful hotels
Title:
On the
Grammar: Move Reading:
Future forms A travel agent’s life

Vocabulary: Writing:
Weather Making a reservation
Sociolinguistic competences
 Linguistic markers of social
relations
 Politeness conventions
 Expressions of folk wisdom
 Register differences
 Dialect and accent
Pragmatic competences.

 Discourse competence

 Functional competence

 Design competence
Lexical grammatical Social markers Politeness conventions
Semantic phonological Register Dialect and accent
orthographic orthoepic Folk & wisdom

Linguistic Socio-Linguistic

Communicative
language competences

Pragmatic

discourse functional
text design
What are the more practical implications for
teachers?

When we prepare classes we ask

ourselves:

 What will I do tomorrow?

 What will my students do tomorrow?

 What will my students be able to do

when they leave my class?
What competences are being used?
What is it that we want in the end?
We equip them for survival
…and we help them realise their potential
Thanks for coming!
laura.meza@oup.com.mx