Competency-based English teaching and learning: Investigating pre-service teachers of Chinese's learning experience

English competency is known as one of the crucial skills in various social contexts in Hong Kong. In tertiary educational setting, English courses do not focus solely on the development of the four language skills. Rather, they put emphasis on the application of English Language for academic use or instrumental use. This paper will investigate the effectiveness of the implementation of competency-based ESL teaching and the learning situation of a group of 70 pre-service teachers of Chinese in a Hong Kong tertiary institute. This paper also intends to draw implications from our findings to answer the following questions: (1) How do tertiary students respond to competencybased ESL teaching and learning? (2) What are the difficulties in implementing competencybased approach? (3) What implications has competency-based ESL teaching and learning drawn to assessment and material design in Hong Kong context? Through answering the above questions, it is hoped that light can be shed on competency-based ESL researches and give insights to the development of competency-based ESL teaching in terms of material design and assessment. Copyright © 2008 Universidad de Granada.