The Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) and Its Practical Implications
Helena I. R. Agustien
For
a competence-based curriculum (CBC) for language education, one needs to define
communicative competence (CC). Celce-Murcia et al. (1965) define CC as
discourse competence and this definition is adopted in the present CBC in Indonesia. It has major implications,
both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, one needs to understand
what ‘discourse’ means before writing a CBC. Practically, four problems
arise. First, at universities, systemic functional linguistics is mainly
introduced in linguistic departments, not in teacher training institutions and,
thus, discourse tends to be taken for granted. Secondly, school teachers
need to change their mindset, from teaching knowledge to developing learners’
ability to communicate using spoken and written language. Thirdly,
English teachers are communication teachers and their job is to make students
orate and literate. Fourthly, publishers jump at the opportunity of
writing books supposedly based on CBC, but they use writers who do not
understand what CBC is.
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Agustien, H. I. R. (2006, February). The competence-based curriculum (CBC) and its practical
implications. Paper presented at the 6th
International Conference, ITB Bandung, Indonesia.
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