1- what is CBA??

In the year 2003, the Moroccan government started a general reform in the field of education and training in order to improve of the national school level which declared to be one of the most important strategic sectors that the whole policy of the country will be based on, especially, in the globalized economy, this latter in which a harsh competition takes place.
After decades of the implementation of the objectives- centered approach and after the assessment of its drawbacks in the national and international level the ministry of education, in a transitional step has adopted what is called « competency- based approach ». In fact, this pedagogy has many characteristics on which I’m going to shed some light after giving some definitions of the most important terms of this method.
First of all, what does the word « approach » mean? I’ll not offer its meaning literally because it is self explanatory, but the focus will be on its pedagogical concept; the term approach refers to “theories about the nature of language and language learning and it is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning, in one word, approach is axiomatic. In fact, there are a lot of approaches and theories which are used by teachers and experts in both classes and researches”.
For example, the behavioral approach which guided the educational psychology through the first half of the twentieth century. It’s famous theoretical leaders are B.F skinner (1938) and Thorndike.
This approach was a teacher- centered approach so it neglected the active role of the student in the learning task by neglecting the psychological and emotional differences of students.
In fact, objectives-driven curricula were heavily criticized according to David Nunan (2002) “criticisms included the idea that trivial learning behaviors are the easiest to operationalize, hence the really outcomes of education will be under –emphasized. In addition, many people feel that pre-specification of precise objectives prevents the teacher from taking advantage of instructional opportunities occurring unexpectedly in the classroom. It has also been noted that outcomes other than behavior change are important in education.
Besides, experts argue that individuals are so different in acquiring learning a language, Nunan stresses this idea as follow “in terms of language teaching, an additional criticism relates to the creative nature of language proficiency… Proficient language users know multiple ways of achieving communicative ends through language, and therefore identifying objectives is a priori, or the standards which indicates how well the objectives has met, may be problematic, Another problem is that, taken to its logical conclusion, the approach spawns hundreds of detailed, micro-level performance statements. Finally, despite the emphasis on objectives in teacher education programs in the 1970, they failed to take root in teaching practice.
Frankly, Nunan in this quote represents the criticisms of Sheverson and Stern (1981) when both of them noticed that “teachers are trained to plan instruction by specifying behavioral objectives which this prescriptive model of planning may be one of the most consistently taught features of teacher education programs, the model is consistently not used in teachers planning model”.
The mentioned idea leds us to talk about the outcomes of education in this approach, it is obvious that objectives movement is a content- centered approach, in other words the most important goal of this method is to make students study the maximum of information in a total separation between theory/content and practice/situations in real life in learning and teaching foreign language, the basic established objective for learners is to study grammar, functions, vocabularies of the target language, which means to learn how language describes language itself but not to use it in a meaningful and real situations, that is to say ,communicate the foreign language.
Despite all these drawbacks, objectives or performances as known in the contemporary pedagogy are so important in teaching and learning a foreign language but what is worth to say is that the use of objectives in what is called performance-based teaching and competency-centered teaching is a part of it is not in the behaviorist meaning ,David Nunan explains this idea in his important article entitled “performance based approaches to the design of EFL instruction” (2002), “objectives, used appropriately, did bring tangible benefits to the learning process. In work cited in may 1988 book on curriculum, the use of objectives, when conveyed to learners in ways that made sense to them, played an important part in sensitizing learners to what it is to be a language learner in particular, learners come to have a more realistic idea of what would be seem as the gradual accretion of achievable goals. Learners developed greater sensitivity to their role as language learners and their vague notions of what is to be a learner became much sharper, self- evaluation became more feasible classroom activities could be seen to relate to real life needs.
Development of skills was seen as a gradual rather than all or nothing process.
However, Morocco has adopted competency –based approach instruction as an alternative to the use of objectives in teaching and learning foreign language in general and English in particular to modernize our educational system and ameliorate the level of students and motivate them to learn foreign languages.
This approach emerged for the first time in U.S.A during the seventies and was widely adopted in vocationally-oriented educations and in adult ESL program. By the end of eighties (CBA) had come to accepted as the state-of-the art approach to adult ESL by national policymakers and leaders in curriculum development (MATE news letter).
Many pedagogical experts developed (CBA) and improved it to take place in whole school levels not only in U.S but in all over the world, a development which based on the cognitive revolution leaded by Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky.
(CBA) contains many significant terms which a good teacher should learn by heart with a Cary understanding in order to save himself from overlapping the constituents of (CBA) instruction that may affects his teaching tasks negatively.
Therefore differences were given to the term “competency” According to Mark Smith*, it is“the ability to do scouting to a prescribed standard” whereas, Larson** considers the term “competency as a minimal standards for particular transfer area”. Ahmed Shaaibi tries to combine many definitions in his article “CBA and SBE what, why and how?”As follow: “competency based education refers to a system of education in which a performance- based learning is sought.
(CBA) puts more focus on the outcomes of teaching operation” that is to say, combination of knowledge, understanding, experience and ability to prefer tasks in real life situations
Ahmed Shaibi, explains the difference between competencies and competences by saying “competency” differs from “competence”, the first are virtues and qualifications enabling the individual learner for real life tasks while the latter as abilities or skills to attained in gradual stages and different learning occasions” then, Ahmed Shaibi offers Smith definition which runs “competence and competences are broad capacities , in contrast competency (plural competencies) is narrower, more atomistic concept use to label particular abilities ….in this sense competency is not simply a skill but it is a virtue, a general sense of excellence and goodness. It involves being up to these tasks that life present us…..” in other words competences are the external outcomes of invisible competencies.
Above, I have given various definition to the term “competency” and similar notions, in this stage I will try to shed some light about the major characteristics of (CBA) in the following as presented by professor Ahmed Chaibi in his article “competency-based education: what, why, and how?”.
· -“CBA” specifies the skills needed by learners to function in areas of communication, technology, problem solving and interpersonal relationship”
· -“CBA” is not only concerned with what the learners know about language but what thy do with language.
· -“CBA” considers language as a tool for communication rather than a mere content to be mastered. It conceives of foreign language ability. For instance as skill rather than content.
In the other hand, competencies that may included in the school curriculum are various because it teaches in the whole aspects of learner’s personality, in this paragraph the focus will be on four types of competencies as cited by Abdelkader Cheddoudi : “teaching EFL through the CBA model by Abdelkader Cheddoudi/ MATE newsletter 2006 v26 (3,4):
· The social competencies: learners are recommended, through the medium of language, to get the appropriate social manner with speakers of the target language.
· The communicative competencies: which learners are supposed to acquire the foreign language to a prescribed acceptable standard to allow them to communicate fluently and appropriately?
· The intellectual competencies: learners are to develop high order thinking skills problem-solving strategy, and creative skills work.
· The methodological competencies: students– in breaf – should “learn how to learn” because (CBA) provides learners with opportunity to take more responsibility for their own learning.
To sum up competency-based teaching enhances critical thinking in EFL classes because it decreases the central of teachers and encourages the autonomy of learners in student and in student –teacher interaction.