COMPETENCIES IN THE ESL/EFL CLASSROOM

WORKING WITH COMPETENCIES IN THE ESL/EFL CLASSROOM


Communicative language teaching involves developing language proficiency through interactions embedded in meaningful contexts.
SL/EFL classroom teachers are requested to not only provide linguistic tools (e.g., grammar rules, vocabulary, phonics), but also the communicative tools needed to improve accuracy in students’ speaking abilities. Teachers must search for ways to perform tasks in a second language similar to those they would use in their mother tongue. That is, strategies from the former language can certainly support aspects of these strategies in the second language.

What is expected in the ESL/EFL classroom is that students complete the tasks and at the same time, produce something new as a result of their own learning. It is no longer sufficient simply to memorize material, read and repeat scripted dialogs in texts, or perform multiple choice tests. This new approach requires students to activate higher order thinking skills and to actually be able to use the language in real contexts based on the knowledge they have gained through classroom study. Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs Wheel provides an illustration of what students need to produce at each level of thinking.

  

To sum up in a communicative English course, students listen, speak, write, read, as well as evaluate, express, understand, cooperate, formulate, encourage, and interact with facts related to the target language. Students practice what they can do by using the skills from their native language. The purpose is to help students develop a second language (and the tasks emerging from this learning such as answering the phone, interacting in a conversation, or completing any printed form as questionnaires, surveys, and so on) and also to learn the necessary linguistic elements to communicate appropriately and transform the results obtained from the learning itself or the tasks completed as their own way of communicating in a second language effectively. In this way, students practice their generic skills as well as their higher order thinking skills.

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