Implementing a Competency Based Instructional Framework to Develop ESP Students’ Reading Comprehension: Case of Master’s Students of Political Sciences at Mohamed Boudiaf University - M’sila

Abstract

English is considered nowadays as an international language which all students tend to learn for both academic and specific purposes. Students who study English for specific purposes (ESP) focus on developing their language skills in order to gain the competence which is related to their field of specialization such as politics, medicines, and physics. An example of these language skills is reading. Along this line of thought, the present investigation aims at designing an English course which would address the same of this objective in the field of Political Sciences. Based on the needs analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data of students from the department of political sciences; University of M’sila (Algeria), different teaching criteria related to the course design and teaching approach are drawn. That is to say, the course focuses on teaching the three major competences namely linguistic, strategic, and discourse competences, i.e., the main objective of this research is to provide students with knowledge and skills related to the major linguistic features such as phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax; strategic competence including meta-cognitive, cognitive, and affective strategies; and discourse competence like text organization, cohesive devices, and text genre. The findings of the needs analysis phase suggest the Competency-based approach (CBA) as an appropriate instructional model used to implement the course content. The course is implemented and evaluated to see its effect on students’ professional competencies. The results show positive progress on students’ communicative competences which leads to the development of the reading comprehension proficiency