Competence-Based Curriculum and Its Practical · Web viewHelena I. R.Agustien Universitas Negeri Semarang THE CURRICULUM Indonesia is now in the process of changing its school curriculum

Competence-Based Curriculum and Its Practical ImplicationsHelena I. R.Agustien

Universitas Negeri Semarang

THE CURRICULUM

Indonesia is now in the process of changing its school curriculum into a competence-based curriculum (CBC) aimed at equipping school graduates with sufficient knowledge and life skills so that they can survive, academically and socially, in modern societies. With regard to language education, the government’s decree, No 19, 2005, (Depdiknas, 2005) states that language education should develop language competence with special emphasis on reading and writing according to the literacy level set up for every level of education. In other words, language education in Indonesia is aimed at developing competence that enables school graduates to communicate orally and, especially, in writing. This is certainly not a simple task given that the ultimate goal is not only speaking the language, but writing as well. A CBC needs to be designed in order to help language educators see very clearly what competence they try to develop. A CBC for Language education also needs to clearly define what competence to be achieved if the aim of language education is communication.

Communicative Competence

Putting language in the perspective of communication means viewing language as a means of getting along with others, that is, to make one a part of a society. This is one valid way of looking at language. Within this tradition, the combination of knowledge and skills that enables someone to communicate in language is called communicative competence (CC). The term CC was coined by Hymes (1979) and since then several models of CC have arrived in the international literature including models proposed by Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983), Celce-Murcia et al (1995) and other scholars who have proposed theoretical concepts of CC according to their research purposes (Munby (1978), Weinmann and Backlund (1980), Corder (1973), Savignon (1983), Bachman and Palmer (1996). Although CC has not received an agreed interpretation, various CC models do share substantial compatibility, that is, communicative competence is discourse competence (DC).

One model of CC that explicitly addresses language pedagogy is the one proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995).

Presented at UTB International Seminar, Bandung 22 February, 2006

Diagram 1: Schematic representation of Communicative Competence (Celce-Murcia et al. 1995:10)

The proposed model has been motivated by their “belief in the potential of a direct, explicit approach to the teaching of communicative skills, which would require detailed description of what communicative competence entails in order to use the sub-components as a content base in syllabus design” (1995:6). It is also developed from an L2 perspective but a great deal of it is assumed to have validity for describing L1 use as well. Their model proposes five types of competence: linguistic competence, actional competence, sociocultural competence, strategic competence, and at the heart of the model is discourse competence. In Celce-Murcia et al.’s words:

Thus our construct places the discourse component in a position where the lexico-grammatical building blocks, the actional organizing skills of communicative intent, and the socio-cultural context come together and shape discourse, which, in turn, also shapes each of the other components. (Celce-Murcia et al. 1995:9)

The quotation suggests that looking at language education as an effort to develop language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) involves so much more than providing exercises in the four skills involving different themes. Celce-Murcia et al.’s (1995) article provides lists of what each sub-competence covers that can be referred to as well-defined targets when one tries to develop a curriculum. These well-defined targets need to be seen and understood by language teachers so that they know exactly what they try to develop, and based on this understanding, they can think about what learning experiences needed by the learners, teaching materials, and methods needed by the teachers. Celce-Murcia et al.’s lists can be regarded as a translation or elaboration of a “not-so-easy-to-understand” construct called discourse.


Socio-cultural

competence

Actional Competence

Linguistic Competence

Strategic Competence

Discourse Competence

In order to understand the technical terms and the items on the lists one needs to have sufficient background knowledge about language as communication, or as discourse, otherwise it would be very difficult to make sense of the lists and how the items there are interrelated. For that reason, our CBC book provides information regarding the relevant language theories to help language teachers read the lists including discourse, linguistic, actional, socio-cultural, and strategic competences.

One very relevant theory used by Celce-Murcia et al. is that of M.A.K. Halliday who sees language as a means of communication, or as social semiotic (1978). Under Discourse Competence list, for example, they group the items into five sub-headings: Cohesion, Deixis, Coherence, Generic Structure (formal schemata), and Conversational Structure (inherent to the turn–taking system in conversation but may extend to a variety of oral genres). In Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, these sub headings and their respective items do not belong to the same level of abstraction. The four other lists, together with the discourse list, need to be comprehended as a holistic discourse construct that involves different levels of abstraction according to Halliday’s tri-stratal model of language. One way of understanding how these competences systematically relate to each other is by reviewing Halliday’s model of language and other supporting theories.

Halliday’s Model of Language

To start discussing Halliday’s relevant theories to the CC model proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995), their statement is worth contemplating:

Discourse competence concerns the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written text. (Celce-Murcia et al. 1995:13)

Explicit in the statement is that communication happens in text, spoken or written. Thus communicating is creating text, and this involves more than simply creating grammatical sentences.

Derewianka (in Hammond et al. 1992: 1) illustrates Halliday’s model of language in a diagram involving different strata. This model and its explanation is also presented as an appendix in the CBC book in the hope that curious teachers will have some background knowledge about the basic philosophy of the current CBC.


Diagram 2: Derewianka’s Model of language (in Hammond et al., 1992:1)

The diagram suggests the centrality of text which is understood as semantic unit. It means that an exchange or a piece of writing can be considered as communication or a communicative event only when it makes sense. When people talk or write, and the talks and the essays make good sense, they create texts. Therefore, when two insane people talk or write, and their talks or writing do not make sense (although they may make good sentences), they do not create texts; they do not communicate. By the same token, when English learners talk in English and the interlocutors do not understand them, they do not create text; they do not communicate. When we talk, we exchange meanings; we try to mean; we try to create texts. In other words, CC is the competence of creating different texts in different contexts of situation.

Text is recognized through its physical forms, that is, through the phonological and the graphological systems of a language. Every language use involves one of these systems and within the CC framework these systems fall into linguistic competence area. No text can be communicated or realized unless language learners master at least one of the systems.

In addition to that, the configuration of meanings, which “reside” in people’s minds, can only be understood by others if they are realized according to the conventions used by the community, and these conventions are represented in the lexico-grammatical system of language. Thus, when a person is capable of pronouncing English sounds, for instance, s/he still needs to learn the lexico-grammatical system of a language. The words and the grammar a person chooses are realized in sounds or characters. Within the CC framework, lexico-grammar also falls into the area of linguistic competence. Without grammar, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to create meanings or text because to be called a text a piece of language needs to be meaningful. In short, phonology, graphology and lexico-grammar are the basic systems that can make meanings physical and observable, and, thus, communicative or understandable. In L2 context, a CBC considers lexico-grammar an important element to develop learner’s ability to communicate in real sense. The kind of lexico-grammatical system exposed to the students


CULTUREGenre

(Purpose)

SITUATIONWho is involved?

(Tenor)Subject ChannelMatter(Field) (Mode)

REGISTER

TEXT

is the one that helps them realize different kinds to texts that are most relevant to their academic and daily lives as formalized in the government regulation mentioned earlier.

The smallest box in Diagram 2 represents text that is always created a context of situation (represented by the larger box). Language teachers need to have clear ideas about what context of situation involves. Context can be defined, by layman, as things that are around us. This definition, however, is not good enough if we want to discuss to what extend context of situation determines language choice. Halliday’s (1985a) concept about context of situation and how it relates to language choice provides sound explanation to Celce-Murcia et al.’s notions of competence.

There are at least three important elements of context of situation (COS) that constrains people when they make language choices under certain physical and social circumstances. The first element is the field or subject matter or the topic of communication. Every communicative event involves subject matter and, therefore, involves lexis typically related to the topic under discussion. Without mastery of certain “sets” of vocabulary, learners will not be able to represent concrete and mental things or ideas. Without vocabulary, they cannot express ideational meaning (according to Halliday’s metafunction). In the CBC it is suggested that the topics covered are those that are relevant to the learners’ daily and academic communications.

The second element is the tenor or the kind of interpersonal relationship established by people when they are involved in communication. This relationship is established through the exchange of roles which is very obvious in conversations. The exchanges of roles are made possible by appropriate choice of lexico-grammar that expresses speakers’ Moods, modality, and even the English appraisal system (Martin and Rose 2003).

My research (Agustien 1997) suggests that this is the most problematic area for the Indonesian learners under study. Throughout the sustained casual conversations, Indonesian learners tend to exchange ideational meanings (focused on lexis), which is unlike English native speakers under similar circumstances (Eggins 1990). Exchanges of interpersonal meanings made by language learners were limited to bare “yes” and “no” responses and occasional “maybe”. The tenor established during the conversations was mainly demanding and giving information with the Indonesian learners taking the role as information provider. As a result, like other non-native speakers’ interactions, the conversations are coloured with many topics (ideational meanings) and very few exchanges of interpersonal meanings. Very likely, this tendency is caused by the complexity of the lexico-grammatical system (Subject, Finite, Modality etc.) that realizes interpersonal meanings. Many students “hate” interpersonal grammar; they do not like learning tenses, aspects and so on. Unfortunately, this area of the clause is the one that expresses interpersonal meanings and, thus, the very means that establishes role relations or tenor. The findings clearly demonstrate that in the foreign language context lexico-grammar cannot be taken for granted. FL learners need to notice the grammar and eventually acquire it. This can happen if the learning process encourages focus on form (Doughty and William 1998).

In Celce-Murcia et al.’s CC framework, this issue falls into actional competence, a sub-competence that enables learners to convey and understand communicative intent. They state that this competence is the ability to match “actional intent with linguistic forms based on the knowledge of an inventory of verbal schemata that carry illocutionary force” (1995:17). In the CC model actional competence is placed at the same level of abstraction with linguistic


competence. However, in Halliday’s stratification, interpersonal intent is realized by lexico-grammar and, thus, in the CC terms, the relationship between actional and linguistic competence is that of realization. This, again, supports the idea that language learners will not be able to establish the right tenor unless they master the interpersonal grammar. This means that if they want to establish role relations conveniently, they have to “love” what they “hate”.

To raise awareness about this issue and to provide easy access to resources for teachers, the CBC includes examples of basic role exchanges (adjacency pairs) and discourse regulating gambits (Keller and Warner 1988) in its appendix. These gambits are very useful for FL learners because they do not hear English being used in the community. Noticing gambits, and other conversational features such as backchannels and pre-fabricated or formulaic expressions can be very beneficial to help them express interpersonal meanings in various contexts of situation.

The third element of context of situation is the channel or mode of communication. Channel of communication has huge impacts on what kinds of language style we adopt under certain contexts of situation. Spoken channel “forces” people to use the spoken style and written channel makes people use the written style. Obviously, the two modes of communication serve two different contexts of situation; spoken language is used when people talk face-to-face or when they are in direct contacts such as phone conversations. In such situations they share the contexts of situation; many things are clear and are not necessarily mentioned during the conversations. Many meanings are recoverable from the contexts, and if speakers try to mention everything that is recoverable, there is a risk of being over explicit.

Communicating in written language requires different understanding about the contexts of situation in which written style is used. This style is usually used when people do not have the opportunity to meet and talk; they do not share the contexts of situation; there are things that are not recoverable so that nearly everything has to be written down. A fiction such as Harry Potter (Rowling 2005) is a good example of how contexts of situation are described in great details. This poses a great challenge in English education in this country especially because the government regulation says that school graduates are expected to be able to write in English (Depdiknas 2005).

There are other issues involved due to the different modes of communication: spoken and written. Detailed account of the issue can be found in Halliday (1986). Celce-Murcia et al. (1995:14) take up this issue under the discourse competence umbrella. The striking difference between spoken and written language is the way they are structured; spoken language is more dynamically structured compared to written language whereas written language is usually synoptically structured. This gives rise to the issues of conversational structure and generic structure of written texts. The pedagogical significance of text structure is that when we try to develop speaking ability, or to write a syllabus, we need to be aware of what kinds of interaction we give priority to so that the students will be able to survive in the target language communication. The same thing holds for written communication. When we teach how to write English texts, we need to address generic structures; the structures usually used by native speakers to write with different communicative purposes. In fact, text structure is not only a discourse issue; it is a socio-cultural issue too because every language has its formal schemata (Carrell 1984). This illustration is only a small fraction of the whole issue of what impacts mode of communication can have in language education.


In the CBC, transactional and interpersonal conversations are explicitly addressed since they display rather different conversational structures. With regard to generic structures, the CBC also recommends several basic generic structures that are relevant to the learners’ daily and academic lives. These structures need to be noticed when the students create monologues or write with different purposes for different audiences.

Understanding context of situation in this way raises a lot of pedagogical issues that need to be addressed in writing an English education curriculum. There is, however, another important issue to be discussed in order to understand the CBC in its total picture. It is the issue of context of culture and how relevant it is to the present CBC and the concept of CC.

The model of language used here shows that every context of situation is embedded within a larger context called context of culture. Every culture produces, so to speak, many text types or genres (Swales 1990). Every genre is characterized by communicative purpose, text structure and linguistic features. Every communicative event that creates a text is purposeful and to achieve the purpose the text needs to be organized or structured in such a way so that the structure matches the expectation of the language users in the culture. It can be said that the structure of the text is some kind of convention used by a community to organize messages although most of the time people do not realize that they follow a convention. Usually people start to question text organization when they find that the messages in a text are not organized according to their expectations. People feel that something “goes wrong” in the sense that something does not match their cultural expectations or schemata.

Genre is also associated with linguistic features. A descriptive text, for example, is characterized by the use of the simple present tense, relational clauses, adjectives, and so on. These linguistic features are used to achieve the communicative purpose. Thus, addressing genre in language education is an attempt to raise awareness about how important it is to communicate with a sense of purpose and how to achieve the purpose.

In the CC framework, this issue is discussed under the discourse competence umbrella, but, to my mind, this is very much a cultural issue. If we intend to develop the ability to write English texts, then the resulting texts should be written the English way or according to the English schemata. This is necessary because when we write in English, the text is supposed to be addressed to those who do not speak our language; those who do not necessarily share our schemata. To communicate in English successfully, we do not only create grammatical sentences, but also organize messages in such a way so that we achieve our communicative purpose.

The ability to write different genres does not develop automatically even among native speakers of English. From childhood, native speakers learn how to write different texts with different communicative purposes. The ability to write does not develop out of the blue as long as the learners know how to produce grammatical sentences. Then, there is a good reason for us, in FL context, to learn to write some basic English genres to develop English literacy up to functional level (for junior high school) and informational level (senior high school) (Wells 1987). Junior high school graduates are expected to reach functional literacy level in the sense that they are able to participate in daily ‘survival’ communications such as conducting transactional conversations, simple monologues, read manuals, popular science, and write short functional texts (i.e. greeting cards, notices, etc.) and basic genres such as descriptive, procedure, narrative, recount, and simple report. Senior high school graduates are expected to be able to conduct more formal transactional conversations, sustain interpersonal


conversations, read and write short functional text (i.e. announcements, advertisements, etc.) and genres that prepare them to access information at universities. Those genres include descriptive, news item, report, narrative, discussion, explanation, exposition and review. More capable students may experiment with combining genres to create more extended texts.

By introducing genres into CBC, curriculum writers, materials developers, teachers can work together to develop discourse competence or the ability to communicate with different purposes in different contexts. By introducing genres we can control the kinds of basic texts we expect our students to master and, therefore, we can be sure that at the end of the day, our students can describe something, report something, recount past experiences, present news, discuss important issues, and explain something and so on. Any topics relevant to these genres can be used in teaching. This is different from a situation where topics are used as the basis in developing materials or learning activities. Uninformed writers may use topics as the starting points in developing text books, but when we examine those books, most of the texts are of descriptive, report, recount or other “random” texts of which communicative purposes cannot be confidently identified. A colleague of mine did a research (Rukmini 2003) on the genres used in reading passages for the third year senior high school textbooks, and she found that 53% of the passages belong to anecdote genre. This shows that failure in controlling genres may deprive students from obtaining learning experiences that prepare them to read academic genres they are likely to be exposed to at the university. In CBC, senior high school students are introduced to genres such as descriptive, report, recount, narrative, explanation, discussion, review, and exposition. These genres are likely to be developed together with topics that are relevant with what students usually talk about in and out the schools.

This discussion indicates that this curriculum brings literacy education perspective into the picture (Kern 2000, Holme 2004, Grainger (ed.) 2004). The goal is to make students literate in English. A literate person is one who can participate in English speaking society through oral and written communication. This means that the person is able to participate in discourses that exist in the society, and this also means that the person has achieved communicative competence: the ultimate goal of language education.

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky’s theory of learning that is relevant to the current CBC is the zone of proximal development (ZPD) defined as “the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978:86). For Vygotsky, “every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first on the social level and later on the individual level” (Vygotsky 1978:57).

Obviously, Vygostsky suggests that the presence of more capable others in a child’s learning environments enables a child to be involved in cultural events at social level that eventually develop the child’s individual cultural identity. In the process, when children do tasks involving speech and hands, they combine language and thought that lead to their cognitive development. Vygotsky also provides us with a model of learning “which emphasizes the role of talk and places social discourse at the centre” (Corden 2000). Thus, while individual potential is acknowledged, this potential can only develop to its maximum capacity when a child undergo learning processes involving more knowledgeable others that create social


Zone of Proximal Development

Independent Learning Zone

interaction, negotiation, and shared learning. In classroom context, Corden (2000:8) suggests that “classroom learning can best be seen as an interaction between teacher’s meanings and those of the pupils, so what they take away is partly shared and partly unique to each of them”. This implies that classroom activities need to be carefully organized in order to provide learning experiences that trigger a child’s development as an individual and social being. This ZPD concept is represented in the following diagram.

Teacher Peer Intervention Intervention

Interactive Discourse

Diagram 3: Independent and potential learning zones (Corden 2000:9)

Together with the pedagogically motivated model of communicative competence, the socio-cultural model of language, this socio-cultural theory of learning (Holme 2004) has far reaching implications in the implementation of CBC.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS To implement the CBC successfully, everyone involved in language education in Indonesia needs to fully understand the nature of the curriculum and the theories underlying it. The levels of understanding may vary according to the kind responsibility one bears within the system of education. The bottom line is that everyone needs to adopt a mindset in order to make concerted efforts to achieve the ultimate goal.

Teacher Training Institutions

The first party that needs to respond to the CBC is the universities that prepare English teachers. In my opinion, until today, teacher training institutions (TTIs) have done so many things about how to teach, how to develop materials, how to test, and so on, but they have not done enough on WHAT (the competence) they try to develop. The competence issue tends to


be overlooked or taken for granted probably because people assume that it is automatically understood. We, lecturers at TTI, tend to assume that we know the kind of competence we are aiming at, so the teaching and learning processes are carried out mostly by personal beliefs or intuition. This by no means saying that intuition is wrong; this is to say that language teachers need to look at the theoretical advances happening in different fields so that reflection can be done with solid theoretical grounding. This is especially true since language education is not a subject that stands on its own; the decisions made in language education are very much informed by advances that happen in applied linguistics and other areas.

A subject called Issues in Applied Linguistics is now in the TTI curriculum, but an important issue such as communicative competence has not had any effects on TTI and school curricula. Now that the Indonesian government recommends that school curricula be based on competence, TTIs need to comprehend the definition of language competence or CC by referring to a CC model that is directly relevant to language education. This paper suggests that the subject called Issues in Applied Linguistics be focused on current issues that have direct relevance to language education such as CC and its implications in language teaching.

By definition, CC is discourse competence. However, TTI’s curriculum does not seem to have included discourse as a separate subject. Some universities have started incorporating discourse in their curricula, but not all TTIs realize the centrality of discourse in language education. Clear understanding of what discourse is may open the teachers’ and students’ minds to a new horizon of what their main tasks are. At Semarang State University (UNNES), for example, a subject called Grammar Meaning and Discourse has been introduced. This course is aimed at raising awareness about the relations of grammar, meanings and discourse so that later, when students teach grammar, they too can show their students how important grammar is in communication. With this understanding, grammar will not be taught as ways of putting words together, but as ways of conveying different meanings: ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings (Halliday 1994). Considering that TTI’s main job is developing discourse competence, TTIs need to put discourse under the spotlight.

Another issue TTIs need to address is the linguistic subjects they introduce to the students. For so many years we have been studying general linguistics involving phonology, morphology, syntax that give students knowledge about units of language that might be useful for those who will carry out research on the phonology, morphology or syntax of languages in the future. However, when we prepare students who will teach communication, our students need linguistics that sees language as communication or language that is used by people to exchange meanings. Language teachers need to understand that in communication we do not only exchange information; we exchange feelings; we express styles; we create logical relations. All of these are expressed in the lexicogrammar of language. When teachers are well informed about the relations between lexicogrammar and the nuances meanings, the teaching of grammar can be more meaningful. It is about time that this kind of linguistics, that is, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), be introduced in TTI curriculum.

The introduction of SFL will shed lights to practical issues addressed by TTIs. For example, when lecturers teach conversation, they need to know exactly what competencies to be developed throughout the course. To converse is to create texts, to participate in a discourse, to create utterances that make sense. To do this, students need to negotiate interpersonally and logicosemantically (Eggins and Slade 1997, Martin 1992). Lecturers need to plan learning experiences that allow the students to perform interpersonal negotiations smoothly such as:


A: I came here yesterday, but you were out.B: Did you?

Then, they can move to logicosemantic negotiation such as:

A: What’s your name?B: Ani.A: Where do you live?B: Jalan Diponegoro.

There are other competencies to develop in basic conversations and these are developed together with the chosen topics. The bottom line is that teaching conversation is not mainly about discussing different topics, it is mainly about developing competencies to negotiate meanings. The topics are used as the “vehicles” to develop the competence.

SFL also addresses spoken and written language and the practical implications in language education. Similar with teaching conversation, teaching writing is also a matter of negotiating meanings. Writing is not mainly about writing with different topics; more than that, writing is about conveying different meanings, negotiating meanings, creating cohesiveness and coherence, establishing text structure etc. All of these can be planned and systematically taught. SFL helps language teachers identify the competencies of different subjects so that TTIs’ syllabi can be written based on competencies.

SFL also gives impetus to literacy education in the sense that teaching English as a first, second or foreign language can be seen as developing literacy in English. Being literate in English means being able to participate in modern societies where English is used and this involves oracy and literacy. In Indonesia, where access to knowledge and science is mainly available in written form, the skills in reading and writing need to be well developed. To be able to develop them properly and systematically, TTIs need to examine what literacy education has to offer. In UNNES, there is a course called Introduction to Literacy Education that provides students with experiences of planning and carrying out classroom activities that lead to the development of the four skills integratedly.

Since the curriculum is also based on Vygotsky’s ZPD and the importance of negotiation and sharing meanings in the classroom, TTIs need to re-examine the students’ ability to scaffold the lessons. Apparently, speaking courses in TTIs nowadays are not sufficient enough to make the graduates carry out scaffolding talks in the classroom. In UNNES, we introduce a course called Speaking for Instructional Purposes that gives experiences to students to do scaffolding talks including opening and closing, reinforcing, explaining, basic questioning, and so on. Our observations indicate that our speaking courses do not automatically guarantee the ability to scaffold lessons, and, therefore, TTIs need to consider this subject in their curricula.

Secondary Schools

At school level, English teachers need to adjust their mindset to the new way of looking at language and language teaching. The biggest challenge seems to be teaching writing that involves some basic genres. This means that teachers need to address competencies in writing such as writing with different communicative purposes, with different text structures and using certain linguistic features for different texts. When this idea was first introduced, teachers were confused, but after they attended some proper training, many find teaching writing


through genres helpful because now the teachers can show the students how to write and not only what to write.

With regard to spoken language, teachers need to be familiar with transactional (especially at junior high school level) and interpersonal conversations (especially at senior high school level). Transactional conversations are those that are aimed at getting something done and this kind of conversation employs certain structures. Interpersonal conversation is conversation that is aimed at establishing interpersonal relationship and the focus is how to sustain conversations. With this knowledge, hopefully teachers can select or develop teaching materials that help students develop the competence.

To provide students with systematic learning experiences, teachers need to be familiar with the spoken and written cycles and the four stages (Building knowledge of the Field, Modelling of Text, Joint Construction, and Independent Construction) that integrate the development of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The proposed framework is as follows:

Diagram 4: Cycles and Stages of Learning (Hammond et al. 1992:17)

In planning the lessons, teachers need to go around the cycle twice. In the first cycle, they start from the first stage called Building Knowledge of the Field (BKOF) where teachers and students build cultural context, share experiences, discuss vocabulary, grammatical patterns and so on. All of these are geared around the types of spoken texts and topics they are going to deal with at the second stage. The second stage is called Modelling of Text (MOT) where students listen to statements of short functional texts, conversations, and monologues that are geared around a certain communicative purpose. For example, if students are expected to produce procedural texts, then, the short functional texts, conversations, and the monologues are developed with one main communicative purpose, that is, giving instruction or direction. In


short, at the second stage, students listen and respond to various texts with similar communicative purposes. After listening, students enter the third stage called Joint Construction of Text (JCT). At this stage they try to develop spoken texts with their peers and with the help from the teachers. They can create different announcements, conversations on showing how to do things, monologues on how to make something and so on. They need to demonstrate their speaking ability and to show confidence to speak. After having the experience of collaborating with friends, they enter stage four called Independent Construction of Text (ICT). At this stage, students are expected to be able to speak spontaneously or to carry our monologues that are aimed at giving directions or showing ways to do things such as how to make a kite, how to make a paper cap, and so on. Thus, the first cycle integrates the development of speaking and listening skills.

The second cycle is aimed at developing the ability of using written language. The teachers and students go through all the four stages, but in MOT students are exposed to written texts. Here students develop reading skills, followed by joint construction in writing texts, and finally they write texts independently. Like the strategies employed in the first cycle, activities in this cycle are also geared around the same communicative purpose. Students read short functional texts and procedural texts, and then they write texts similar to what they have read. In this way, the integration of the four skills is created by the communicative purpose(s) of texts. Students speak what they have heard, read what they have talked about, and write what they have read.

To carry out activities at all stages, teachers need to use various teaching techniques they have already learned, known and used. Those techniques are still needed and relevant to this approach. What needs to be remembered when teachers prepare their lessons is that every activity they design has to be aimed at providing learning experiences to use language and, thus, to achieve communicative competence. There are some literacy principles offered by the New London Group (Kern 2000) that can be used by in planning language classes. They are: interpretation, collaboration, convention, cultural knowledge, problem solving, reflection and self reflection, and language use (Kern 2000:16). Kern suggests that “These principles, although they are framed in terms of reading and writing, are not unique to literacy, but can be applied broadly to human communication in general” (Kern 2000:17). The implication is that when a teacher plans an activity, s/he needs to keep in mind that the activity needs to engage students in activities that involve as many of these principles as possible. Since this literacy-based approach is something rather new to many teachers, systematic trainings need to be conducted across the country.

Such trainings should address substantial issues including the basic philosophy and theory underlying the CBC, the suggested approach to implement the curriculum, selecting and developing materials, assessment, and teachers’ scaffolding talks. Proper trainings will hopefully help teachers understand why the curriculum is the way it is, how to implement it, and what skills are required in order to conduct the teaching as expected.

School Management

School management and other related parties need to learn the changes happening in English education. This is important so that English teachers can focus their attention on and use the energy for teaching without being disrupted by irrelevant administrative tasks such as filling out different forms which is not recommended by the curriculum. School management needs to understand the nature of language education and gives allowances to English teachers to


carry out teaching and administer tests in their own ways. Possibly, school management needs to have a package that explains how English teaching based on the CBC to be conducted.

Textbook Writers

Many publishers have jumped to the first opportunity of writing textbooks claimed to be based on the CBC. These publishers employ writers many of whom are not graduates of TTIs, or TTIs’ graduates but without teaching experiences, or teachers who have never been introduced to the new CBC. It is not surprising that the textbooks written by uninformed writers create confusion. Publishers need to give proper orientation to their writers regarding what the CBC is about and implications it has in the selection, development and organization of materials in the textbooks.One crucial issue about developing conversational texts in textbooks is the awareness that Indonesian learners are usually weak at conducting interpersonal negotiations. This kind of negotiation involves the use of Finite, a grammatical item that does not exist in Indonesian languages. Textbook writers need to make students notice the importance of interpersonal negotiations by providing exercises geared around interpersonal exchanges. This kind of exercise does occur in many textbooks including those written by native speakers of English. However, for native speakers, interpersonal exchange has become a part of their intuition so that no special mention or exercise about it is regarded as necessary. It is suggested that Indonesian textbook writers seriously address interpersonal negotiations in their textbooks to make that kind of exchange a part of our students’ intuition.

CLOSING REMARKS

Celce-Murcia, Thurell and Dornyei (1995) have outlined what communicative competence entails. Their detailed description includes a lot of concepts that emerge from different disciplines such as general linguistics, discourse, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, language acquisition. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL) appears to be very resourceful if one attempts to obtain good understanding of communicative competence as suggested by Celce-Murcia et al. The high compatibility of the CC model and SFL lies in the motivation to shed light to language education especially regarding what issues to address. This is the time for language education to clarify the function it serves among the community.

This paper leaves us with a huge agenda covering different issues and theoretical advances in related disciplines that can be taken into account in order to improve our understanding about what good language education is. Such an enriched perspective is badly needed to raise awareness that paradigms do shift, that language education is not self sufficient, and that we, language teachers, need to be open to changes.

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