Setting Up New Standards: A Preview of Indonesia's New Competence-Based Curriculum

This paper aims at describing some theoretical foundations as well as practical considerations underlying the new competence-based curriculum. First, a pedagogically motivated model of communicative competence (CC) suggested by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) is discussed. Second, a systemic functional view regarding the relations between text, context of situation and context of culture (Halliday, 1985) relevant to the production of various genres is also a central is-sue. Third, literacy levels performative, functional, informational, epistemic (Wells, 1991) have also been taken into considerations. Fourth, the curriculum regards meanings as its top priority and, meta-functions (Halliday, 1978) are of primary importance. Finally, similarities and differences of spoken and written language (Halliday 1986) that tend to be overlooked in the previous/existing curricula are now illuminated.