AARE YOU RE YOU

CCOMPETENT OR OMPETENT OR

AARE RE YYOU OU NNOT?OT?

Rodolfo Chaviano. August, 2006rodolfo.chaviano@uam.edu.ni

R.Chaviano 2006

Competencies or competences?Competencies or competences?

'Competency' is now generally defined as the behaviours that employees must have, or must acquire, to input into a situation in order to achieve high levels of performance, while 'competence' relates to a system of minimum standards or is demonstrated by performance and outputs. http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/perfmangmt/competnces/comptfrmwk.htm?IsSrchRes=1

Although most HR professionals draw a distinction between 'competencies' and 'competences', this is by no means universal and the two terms are often used interchangeably.

R.Chaviano 2006

Related DefinitionsCommunicative Competence - Term used by Campbell and Wales (1970) and Hymes (1972) to refer to: the relationship and interaction between the native speaker's grammatical competence (or knowledge of the rules of the language) and Sociolinguistic Competence (or knowledge of the rules of language use). It is distinguished from communicative performance which is the realization of theses competences in actual speech in real situations.

USAGE and USE - Terms used by Widdowson (1978) to refer to two aspects of communicative performance:

a) the ability to produce correct sentences, or manifestations of the linguistic system = USAGE.

b) the ability to use the knowledge of the rules for effective communication = USE.

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ACHIEVING LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

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FLUENCY COMPETENCE ACCURACY

Performance Quality

Language

Competence in terms of Competence in terms of meaningmeaning

Any strategy of language teaching that derives the content of learning from an initial analysis of the learner needs to express three different kinds of meaning:

Functional (i.e. the social purpose of the utterance)   Modal (the degree of likelihood)

Conceptual - the meaning relations expressed by forms within the sentence (categories communicative function )

http://www.elc-brighton.co.uk/ Ted Powerhttp://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/ted.html R.Chaviano 2006

Being CompetentBeing Competent

Being competentBeing competent means means doing and and re-doingre-doing

the language and its meaning in your own

words.R.Chaviano 2006

Building Up Language Competencies

LANGUAGE COMPETENCIES RELY MAINLY ON:

⃠� the acquisition of word-meaning. ⃠� the formation of concepts. ⃠� the understanding of the socio-cultural meaning of language.

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=SPEECH COMPETENCE

LEXICAL COMPETENCE

WRITING COMPETENCE

AUDITORY COMPETENCE

LISTENING COMPETENCE

SYNTAGMATIC COMPETENCESYNTAGMATIC COMPETENCE

GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE

INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

NON-VERBAL LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

Etc.

BEINGCOMPETENT

HAVINGmultiple

Competencies

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MAJOR COMPETENCIES FOR COMMUNICATION

NAMING WORD

DEFINING CATEGORY

DESCRIBING PERCEPTION

EXPLAINING LANGUAGE

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MAJOR COMPETENCIES MAJOR COMPETENCIES FRAMEWORKFRAMEWORK

NAMING

PRONOUNCING CONVEYING MEANING

CATEGORIZING CONCEPTS & NOTIONS DEFINING

DESCRIBING PERCEPTIONS SENSES & FEELINGS

EXPLAINING Meaning into Words EXPANDING IDEAS

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

COMPETENCIES

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MAJOR COMPETENCIES FOR COMMUNICATION

UTTERANCE MEANING

NAMING

DEFINING DESCRIBINGL

EXPLANATING

ITEM WORD CATEGORY PERCEPTIONSYNTAGMATIC

LANGUAGE

a tree a plantwith leaves

large...with fruits ...etc.

An apple treethat grows in

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WORD-MEANING & FORMATION OF WORD-MEANING & FORMATION OF CONCEPTSCONCEPTS

It is a tree. It is a plant. It has leaves and a solid trunk.It’s tall and green. It provides shade and oxygen. It grows in the forest or everywhere around us.

It’s a mango tree. It’s grown in tropical areas.It’s well known plant. It bears delicious fruit. Fruit is usually canned during the harvest season so as to have enough fruit available throughout the year. RCh.

10R.Chaviano 2006

TEST YOUR LANGUAGE COMPETENCIES.

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TEST YOUR LANGUAGE COMPETENCIES.

CAN YOU NAME THEM?

     ___________

  Greetings ______________1___ 

Making Questions ___________________9___ 

Stating Facts of Life ________________________5_____

Expanding Ideas ____________________________2_____

Connecting Ideas________________________________3____

Making Comparisons _________________________________8______

Telling apart Mass & Unit _____________________________________6______

Building Up Multi-Word Units ___ ________________________________________7____

Understanding Lexical Units  ______________________________________________________4_______

Understanding Verb Collocation ____________________________________ 10_____ Understanding the Social Meaning of Language

Conveying Meaning

PRODUCINGUTTERANCES

Expected CompetenciesR.Chaviano 2006

TEST YOUR LANGUAGE COMPETENCIES.

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coat-of-arms wall-unit.

Utensil tools baby_car_seat

toiletries

Can you define them?

Being Competent means Understanding Being Competent means Understanding & Using Multi-word Units& Using Multi-word Units * *

Multi-word UnitsMulti-word Units

A computer screen, a flower vase, A computer screen, a flower vase,

a pepperoni pizza, a waste paper a pepperoni pizza, a waste paper basket, a helping hand, a ceiling fan, basket, a helping hand, a ceiling fan,

the state-of-the-art technology, etc.the state-of-the-art technology, etc.

* term coined by Lewis, Michael. The Lexical Approach, 1994.* term coined by Lewis, Michael. The Lexical Approach, 1994.

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BEING COMPETENT MEANS BEING COMPETENT MEANS UNDERSTANDING LEXICAL UNITSUNDERSTANDING LEXICAL UNITS

  TAKE OFF two words (2)two words (2) several lexical units  TO PUT UP WITH multi-word verbmulti-word verb one lexical unit   TO BE TAKEN FOR literallyliterally a) one meaning A RIDE idiomatically idiomatically b)another meaning  A BLACK HOLE several wordsseveral words one lexical unit

Adapted from: MA KINGS ENS EOF WORDS, Andrew Sheehan.

FORUM. Volume 42, Number 1, page 11. Jan 2004

STANDS FORIS

SAW ONE WORD THREE LEXICAL UNITS

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Being Competent means Understanding The Social Meaning of Language

Unfortunately, this linguistic competency is the most difficult to be understood and mastered. It is slowly learned, very often, after dealing with language units for a long time. It´s quite hard, even for those living in the target language milieu. 

The use of interjections, inflexions of the voice, idioms, mottoes, proverbs, sayings, phrasal verbs, cliché, slogans, fixed phrases, and word collocations such as, a thick moustache, a distant relative, To drop the flower vase, to spoil the food, etc. are among the most common.

There are lexical units such as hot-desking, that would seldom be understood by the foreign learner. Because of their syntactical relations or their incomprehensible surface meaning

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Benefits of a competency-based systemBenefits of a competency-based system

Oucomes are measurable and standardized according to language functions and the student individual expected performance in real life situations.

The language used to describe competencies is comprehensible for students and teachers as well.(semantics)

Competencies are based on what tha average performer does.

This approach works in favor of rapidly-changing circumstances by setting one particular group of attitudes and skills.

Some behavioural competencies are basically personality traits which an individual may be able or unable to achieve.

Relies on conveying word-meaning and the formation of concepts in the target language.

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Some Guidelines to Implement Language Some Guidelines to Implement Language CompetenciesCompetencies

• • English is a English is a phonemic phonemic languagelanguage..

• • Meaning is on top of any communicative Meaning is on top of any communicative

act.act.

• • Syntagmatic Competence relies onSyntagmatic Competence relies on

SemanticSemantic CategoriesCategories..

• • Grammatical competence is Grammatical competence is paradigmaticparadigmatic..

• • Conveying meaning is Conveying meaning is syntagmaticsyntagmatic..

• • Syntagmatic competence is Syntagmatic competence is the core ofthe core of

language competence. language competence.

• • The formation of simple syntactic units isThe formation of simple syntactic units is

fundamental in thefundamental in the understanding & understanding &

building up English.building up English.• • The The Social Meaning of LanguageSocial Meaning of Language is is

quite hard, even for those living in the quite hard, even for those living in the

target language milieu.target language milieu.

• • English students should get familiar English students should get familiar

with, and with, and produce utterances.produce utterances.

• • Students should understand and Students should understand and use use

multi- word unitsmulti- word units from the very start. from the very start.

• • Students should understand and Students should understand and

derive wordsderive words by analogy, and by analogy, and

develope association strategies.develope association strategies.

• • Students should be given theoretical Students should be given theoretical

information on writing styles.information on writing styles.

• • Being competentBeing competent means means doing anddoing and

re-doing the language meaning.re-doing the language meaning.

• • Doing writing practice from the Doing writing practice from the very beginning.very beginning.

   R.Chaviano 2006

Thank you verymuch!

LIC. RODOLFO ChAVIANOUniversidad Americana (UAM)

rodolfo.chaviano@uam.edu.ni

August 2006