BACHELOR OF ARTS IN TEFL

CURRICULUM DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT

Group members (full names) Ngô Hoàng Kim Ngọc (Leader) - 47.01.701.135

and IDs La Đoàn Minh Nghi - 47.01.701.133

Trần Thị Thanh Thoảng - 47.01.701.171

Group leader's email and [email protected]

mobile number 0395440382

Unit name Language Curriculum Design and Management

(2023)

Name of lecturer Nguyen Thanh Binh, PhD

Assignment name Assignment 1: Your learning experience (20%)

– approx. 1,500 words +-10%.

Title of your paper Enhancing Teaching Competency: An

Exploration of Communication and Pedagogy

Word count (excluding list of 1506 words

references, and appendix) (max.

1,500 words +- 10 %)

Due date Soft copy March 28, 2023, 11:59 p.m.

Hard copy March 30, 2023 04:00 p.m. Room

B603 (Ms. Hồng Yến)

You must keep a photocopy or electronic copy of your assignment.

I certify that the attached assignment is my own work. Materials drawn from other

sources have been acknowledged according to unit-specific requirements for

referencing.

I certify that this assessment item has not been submitted previously for academic

credit in this or any other course.

I certify that I have not given a copy or have shown a copy of this assessment item to

another student enrolled in the course.

I acknowledge that the assessor of this assignment may, for the purpose of assessing

this assignment:

· Reproduce this assessment item and provide a copy to another member of the

Department of English; and/or

· Communicate a copy of this assessment item to a plagiarism-checking service

(which may then retain a copy of the item on its database for the purpose of future

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· Submit the assessment item to other forms of plagiarism checking.

I certify that any electronic version of this assessment item that I have submitted is

identical to its paper version.

Signature of the student (Please sign here after printing):

Date: 28/3/ 2023

BACHELOR OF ARTS IN TEFL

ASSIGNMENT 1 ASSESSMENT SHEET:

Diagnostic for the reflection

A Outstanding

B Very Good

C Satisfactory

D Needs further attention (minor flaws or errors)

E Unsatisfactory (major flaws or errors)

QUALITIES

2 Use of references

2 Referencing style

2 Mechanics of writing

2 Comprehension of the readings

6 Coherence of presentation and quality of argument

6 Reflectiveness

Total 20%

ENHANCING TEACHING COMPETENCY: AN EXPLORATION OF

COMMUNICATION AND PEDAGOGY.

This report aims to deconstruct Teaching competency in the aspect of

Communication competency and Pedagogy competency. The main points covered in

the report include reflection on the learning experience, theoretical basis, and

recommendations for enhancing teachers’ Communication Competency, together with

personal proposals for Developing the English Curriculum.

1.1. Context

As a student at a rural high school who is passionate about foreign languages. I

studied English wholeheartedly with high aiming. During the 8-month course in my

high school, almost all the students in my class could not absorb the knowledge my

English teacher imparted. Whenever it comes to the student’s questions, she shows

signs of evasiveness, hesitancy, and trembling in her voice, unable to fully express or

explain what she means in the meaning of the vocabulary and grammatical structures.

From what had been observed, we can define the problem as all about “Teacher

competency”, in that teachers lack effective communication competency and

pedagogy competency in how the teacher organizes to teach grammar and vocabulary

without any theoretical method based on English Learning Teaching. They are indeed

limiting her ability to impart knowledge to the student.

II. THEORETICAL BASIS

2.1 Teaching competency

Firstly, it is crucial to conceptualize the term “teaching competency”. According

to Shashi Shukla, a teaching competency is a set of professional skills such as

pedagogy competency, communicative competency, and cultural competency that can

resolve practical teaching situations appropriately. It includes some composite skills

for teaching like introducing a lesson, fluency in questioning, explaining, reinforcing,

understanding psychology, and classroom management. (Shukla, 2014)

certain relationship with each other, in which they must be coordinated by the teacher

effectively. All the discussion above can help to conduct that the form of teacher

competency is shown in how teachers perform when they teach. That begs the

question “Why are teacher competencies important in teaching?” Here is the

evidence: A survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) found that students tend to lose interest and distract from

lessons when teachers perform badly in class. (David Baker, 2009). This suggests that

effective teaching requires a combination of different skills, all working together to

facilitate student learning.

2.2 Communication competency

From the first insight into teaching competency, we can see that the teacher's

communication competency has a direct impact on students' acquisition process.

According to Okoli, communication competency includes communication models,

interaction among teachers, students, social environment, and learning topics. Those

interactions can be listed include voice, body language, and words (speaking, singing,

tone of voice, sign language, para-language, etc) (Okoli, 2017). Specifically, in an

English class, teachers employ gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues

to convey meaning and reinforce key concepts. If the teacher uses a shaky, hesitant

voice, surely students won’t be able to hear the answer clearly, leading to

misunderstanding. In some cases, students will misspell words or use incorrect

grammar.

To help clarify this even more, here is a story of mine. We all know that "bark up

the wrong tree" refers to making a wrong decision to achieve something. Back then, I

came to ask my teacher about the meaning of "bark up the wrong tree". She described

the meaning of the idiom by telling a story about a dog, lost in the forest, not knowing
which tree was the right tree to bark, and it arbitrarily gave a hasty choice. The phrase

“arbitrarily gave a hasty choice” then had a huge impact on me, and I started to

picture it as something referring to "a person who is not careful when making

decisions.”

From that, we can agree that the teacher's communication competency greatly

influences the students' acquisition process. Surely, it’ll be an undetected mistake,

confusing meaning, and more seriously can be a knowledge gap if the teacher cannot

meet the requirement of communication competencies in the teaching process.

2.3 Pedagogy competency

Pedagogy is a vital element of teaching competency that a teacher must acquire in

their teaching life. Ningtiyas suppose that Pedagogy competency is teachers' ability to

manage to learn, including the ability to plan a learning program, interact, manage

perform and assess the learning process. (Ningtiyas, 2018)

In Ada’s opinion, Pedagogy competency is the ability and willingness to apply

attitudes, knowledge, and skills to encourage learning to create learning in the best

way. Teacher pedagogical competence is the ability to manage learning, which

includes planning, implementation, and evaluation of learning outcomes of learners.

(Ada, 2016)

From that view, we can see that pedagogical competence is what a teacher needs

to acquire before they call themselves a “Teacher”, and technically, can be

acknowledged as the very basic understanding of their students, how to make a lesson

plan, the learning process, and the very crucial one - curriculum development”.

2.4 How Curriculum Shapes Teacher Competency

There is an opinion: “The curriculum is content, but it comes alive for students

when contextualized" which is proven to be the teacher’s job.

Fleisher, 2017) above begs a classic question: “How does the relationship between

curriculum and the teacher’s competency have an enormous effect on a student’s

learning process?”.

In answer to this question, we need to admit that it is quite crucial for a teacher

to always acknowledge their abilities (teacher competency) and have a huge

understanding of the curriculum given, to adapt the requirements about student

performance which is listed in the curriculum itself. In recent years, due to the

changing in the number of fields (economy, tourism...) related to curriculum

development that leads to the question of “How do we as curriculum designers

construct a fully appropriate curriculum?”. To find the question for this problem, the

following part will propose some recommendations for the problem defined in the

above experience, totally from the perspective of a curriculum designer, based on the

21st-century educational view.

III. RECOMMENDATION

It’s hard to perfectly construct a curriculum, problems might be posed, as in the

experience in this report. There are two problems teachers encountered in the above

experience, which are the lack of organizational skills and teaching methods to apply

to each specific lesson.

effective class. To achieve teaching and learning quality, teachers must basically

acquire the knowledge of the lesson and then make a specific plan before each lesson.

In a classroom, the teacher acts as a tool to transmit knowledge and skills as well as a

reliable source of information. When students have any questions, the teacher must at

least ensure the focus of knowledge to answer that problem. In today’s 21st century,

the new high school textbook program is even more demanding, requiring teachers to

have the ability to have a deep understanding of the objectives given in the

curriculum. In this way, the teacher must maximize their own social knowledge

resources and apply them in the new lecture, which can enlighten students, and meet

the requirements of the new program.

For the second problem, teachers are unsure about the correct teaching method

to apply in the classroom. Specifically, in the lesson on grammar, teachers can use

teaching methods based on behaviorism theory. Students repeat and practice to help

them firmly grasp the usage and rules of that type of grammar and apply the Grammar

Translation Method in the reading lesson. As a curriculum designer, we should focus

on clarifying the crucial of the methodology, to help teacher has a better

understanding of how to use the appropriate method in teaching English.

In addition, the curriculum should be a guideline for the teacher in how they

teach. Realizing the problem starts with the lack of assessment in class, leading to

such a big gap in knowledge. I suggest the curriculum to ensure the importance of

assessment, which will help teachers to precisely apply this to their teaching in class.

Being a curriculum designer requires an objective perspective on the problem,

stability, and flexibility in your thoughts because of the development of any fields

related to the educational aspect in our modern world-21st-century.

IV.CONCLUSION
 Teachers lacking effective communication competency and pedagogy competency

are limited in their ability to impart critical content to their students. In the teaching

process, teaching competency is one of the most crucial parts. The communication

competency of a teacher also has a direct impact on students' acquisition process.

Also, it is proved that pedagogical competency constitutes a vital element in a

teacher’s life. It includes planning, implementation, and evaluation of the learning

outcomes of learners. The teacher's job is to provide a pedagogical tool that supports

learning and offers needed visibility for students, especially in the 21st century.

Also, in terms of the responsibility of a curriculum designer, we need to be more

aware of the quality and the flexibility in a curriculum, to meet the needs of students

in today’s world, the unstoppable development in many fields related that have a huge

influence on education, especially in English teaching.

REFERENCES

Ada, J. H. (2016, december 2). The contribution of teachers’ pedagogical competence

toward the effectiveness of teaching English at MTSN balang-balang. In S.

Azisah, The contribution of teachers’ pedagogical competence toward the

effectiveness of teaching English at MTSN Balang-Balang (p. 241). Nigery:

ETERNAL (English Teaching Learning and Research Journal).

David Baker, A. G. (2009). Creating effective teaching competency and Learning

environment. paris: OECD Publishing.

Ningtiyas, W. (2018, February 3). Does Teacher’s Training Affect the Pedagogical

Competence of Mathematics Teachers? Does Teacher’s Training Affect the

Pedagogical Competence of Mathematics Teachers? p. 2.

Okoli, A. (2017, November 3). Relating Communication Competence to Teaching

Effectiveness: Implication for Teacher Education. Implication for Teacher

Shukla, S. (2014, May-Jun 6). Teaching Competency, Professional Commitment and

Job Satisfaction-A Study of Primary School Teachers. Professional

Commitment and Job Satisfaction-A Study of Primary School Teachers., p. 46.

Steven Fleisher, P. ( 2017, August 1). Metacognition and Teacher-Student-Curriculum

Relationships. Metacognition and Teacher-Student-Curriculum Relationships,

p. 24.