Victoria Pogosian
3. In Search for Competences of a Foreign Language Teacher
The main idea of the new concept of training teachers is based on the competence approach, implementing this approach entails a new procedure of designing curricula: from identifying professional competences of the in-service teacher to identifying the courses that would allow the pre-service teachers acquire those competences. As a result there is expected congruence between the competences to be gained and the training. This procedure seems to be quite reasonable, and that is exactly the way it should be: if this congruence does not exist, it is not clear what the universities are for. At the same time it should be admitted that most of current Russian programmes are rather
knowledge oriented than competence oriented. This knowledge orientation is quite obvious if tests and exams are taken into consideration, as they usually are targeted at finding out what the student knows and what he/she does not know which is the main criterion of the academic success, but which does not allow to assess the prospective performance of the graduate. The competence based approach is targeted at training for professional competences, for the ability to perform the duties of the teacher, in this respect the approach is focused on the abilities rather than knowledge, and this implies that all the aspects of training teachers should be reconsidered: its goals, content, curricula, syllabi, etc.
The concept of professional competencies has been widely discussed and developed by educators and several suggestions have been made. But, although the main idea seems to be new, something of the kind existed in the former days. Professional requirements for teachers of foreign languages published in 1985 (Shatilov, Salomatov, 1985) identified not only the skills of in-service teachers of foreign languages, but also set the goals of pre-service training. These requirements were based on the functional approach to the professional activities of the teacher, i.e. content of training pre-service teachers was determined by the content, the sphere, and the conditions of the activities of in-service teachers.
− According to S. Shatilov and K. Salomatov (1985), the goal of training teachers was to develop the following competences:
− language (linguistic) competence regarded as the knowledge of the system of the foreign language and the rules of using it in communication;
− linguistic-cultural competence regarded as the awareness of interrelationship language and culture of the countries speaking the foreign language, the acquisition of cultural semantics, and the cultural function of the foreign language;
− communicative competence regarded as the ability to produce and understand utterances in the foreign language adequate to the conditions and factors of communication, as the adequate proficiency in the foreign language which for
the teacher is a means of communication, of teaching, and of self-education.
S. Shatilov and K. Salomatov described the professional objective of the course of training of pre-service teachers as developing communicative-methodological competence which consists of professional-adaptive skills, gnostic skills (the ability to compare and analyse language units, monologues, dialogues, etc.), constructive skills (the ability to adapt texts for teaching various language skills, etc.), organizing skills (Berdichevsky, 1989).
During the recent period of transformations and search for competences, these requirements have not been completely discarded, they have been analysed, reestimated, developed by various scholars, they are usually referred to in the major publications, though mostly by those scholars who write on the competences of foreign language teachers, while they are practically never mentioned by those who develop the general concept of higher education. This general concept has been widely discussed, various proposals have been made suggesting different names for competences, different definitions of competences, allocating different relevance to certain competences, but it seems that there is no contradiction to trace. Let us examine some of the proposals.
In 2003 the project of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation titled “Development of recommendations and instructional materials for training specialists in the field of education for the strategic goals of school renewal” described the professional competence of the teacher as an integral ability to solve typical professional problems arising in real situations of professional pedagogical activities, this ability is based on knowledge, professional and life experiences, values, inclinations.
In most publications professional competence is regarded as an integral indicator of quality of university education and is described as the ability to solve typical professional problems. Professional pedagogical competence is usually described as consisting of two basic components: competence in teaching certain subjects, and competence in developing and upbringing students, the second component being regarded as an invariable component of educators’ competence
regardless of the subject they teach (Kolesnikova, Tamashevich, 2007, 77).
The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has recently suggested a new model of the Federal Standard of Higher Education. The framework of this model is also based on two components, the former is described as universal, and the latter is a variable one. Thus, according to the suggested model, a university graduate should have the following competences:
a) universal competences including, for example,
- competences in science, such as the ability to apply the knowledge of the basic laws of natural sciences in the professional activities, to apply mathematical analysis methods and models, theoretical and experimental research in physics, chemistry, ecology; the ability to identify the essence of natural sciences in the problems arising in the professional activities and to employ the required tools and instrument of physics and mathematics for solving the problems;
- instrumental competences, such as the computer skills, the ability to use the state language in written and oral communication, as well as proficiency in a foreign language; the ability to manage small teams; the ability to work with information coming from various sources;
- social and cultural competences resulting from learning humanities, economics, for example; the ability to organize communities of learners, the ability to cooperate with social partners.
b) professional competences related to the field of qualification.
The two approaches to the issue of professional pedagogical competences described above demonstrate that they do not contradict each other. On the other hand, the variety of the uncontradictory classifications is fairly confusing. While Russian educators are making attempts to come to agreement with each other in terms of these classifications, it might be more helpful to work with European educators and develop a joint approach, as the Bologna process will in any way unite the efforts made at national levels and as a result most of
the concepts proposed now will have to be reconsidered. But in any case, the above deliberations touched upon the issue of general understanding of professional pedagogical competences without going into details of competences of teachers of foreign languages.
E. Solovova, V. Safonova, and K. Makhmurian (2004), the authors of the publication of “Attestation of foreign language teachers of educational establishments” identify 3 main competences of the foreign language teacher: communicative, general pedagogical competence (psycho-pedagogical and methodological), and cultural and philological. They interpret the communicative competence in the conventional way, as the ability to communicate in a foreign language.
Psycho-pedagogical competence is described as a wide scope of knowledge in the field of psychology and pedagogy and the ability to apply this knowledge in designing lesson plans and in teaching as well as in various extracurricular activities and in communicating with students and their parents and with colleagues.
The cultural competence is understood as the general level of culture and education, and the philological competence implies a high level of proficiency in the native language. Another aspect of philological competence is related to the foreign language proficiency, that is why, as Kolesnikova and Tamashevich suggest, it should be regarded as a part of communicative competence (2007, 79).
Methodological competence is described as the ability to teach a foreign language in accordance with the goals and conditions of instruction as well as with the age, the level of language proficiency, and individual needs of students.
This interpretation of competences of the foreign language teacher on the one hand is in line with the current views on competences in Russian education, on the other hand, it does not contradict the above mentioned views of Shatilov and Salomatin expressed in 1985 which still remain the most cited in the deliberations of scholars designing the set of competences of the foreign languages teachers.