Competency-Based Approach

Competency-based approach described in the two textbooks, Focus and Horizons, has always been a mystery to me. I simply have no idea how some book designers are trying to put this approach into practice inspite of themselves. Whenever I move to a fluency-based activity, I can not help feeling that teachers have to apply the approach at all costs even at the expense of meaning. Some language chunks, phrases and questions make no sense whatsoever. There is no authenticity. And when one reads these books, they must feel they are reading items that have merely been translated from Arabic into English, nothing more. Some of you might react and say that it is up to the teacher to be creative in this respect and bring updated things to class. So, what is the use of textbooks then? And how about students who read those textbooks? What if they knew that their textbooks do not meet their needs or do not tap into their learning styles? Anyway, I have got many questions to pose concerning this, but this is not the opportunity to answer them all. One of the questions that drew my attention is " What are your favourite clothes?". Is this question good to ask and answer? Why don't we ask instead " What clothes do you wear when you attend a wedding, a birthday party, a meeting, etc? The latter is more communicative. You may have different favourite clothes at the same time, but it all depends on your specific favourite ones on a specific occasion. If I could ask this question, I would also pose another one about parts of the body. " What are your favourite parts of the body". This doesn't make any sense. The bottom line of all this is that some of us are endeavoring to put the approach into practice, not for the sake of preparing students for the outside world, but for the sake of practice. Oh, yes. Practice makes perfect, anyway.