Situational Foreign Language Instruction in Competency-Based Learning Framework: Ukrainian Experience

Abstract

Competency-based learning and developing communicative competency is the main strategy guided by the state policy in the education of Ukraine. It has led to a need for reforms in the curriculum and requires rethinking the foreign language teaching approaches in modern educational institutions. The authors claim that situational foreign language instruction has the didactic potential to achieve the learning goals of the competency-based framework. Situational instruction functions as the key component of the updated model of learning. Using a quasi-experimental design, 137 students and 91 foreign language teachers were purposely selected from institutions of secondary education to be the study participants. Validated pre- and post-experimental tests, questionnaires, didactic materials, and a scoring rubric were used to collect the necessary data on students’ performance. The data showed that the proposed situational instruction was effective and received positive responses from the participants of the learning process. The use of communicative situations in the competency-based learning framework makes it possible to approximate the students’ learning to the real-world situations of interaction with people of different cultures who speak foreign languages, and enhances the development of communicative competency.