Comparative Study on Competency-Based English Curriculum

Competency-based curriculum has been a world trend in educational reform, and 2015 national curriculum employed the competences in general guidelines and subject-specific areas. In line with the competency-based national curriculum, various research has been conducted on the alignment of the competences in general guidelines with those in subject curriculum, interconnectedness of competences among the components in the national curriculum, appropriateness of the unified content matrix format in each subject in terms of applicability of the competences, and degree of specified description of the competences. In fact, some aspects of the 2015 national curriculum has been criticized regarding the lack of respecting for the characteristics of individual subject. The purpose of this study is to draw implications for raising applicability of national curriculum into local schools through analyzing general guidelines and English curriculum in two countries, Finland and Singapore, both of which employed competency-based national curriculum. The results of this study draw three main implications based on the analysis of the curricular; classification and specification of competences, emphasis on how to teach with what to teach, and respect for subject-specific characteristics. Further research is provided for raising applicability of the curriculum to schools through more in-depth international curriculum analysis.