La gramática en la Enseñanza Media: competencias oficiales y competencias necesarias

This study reviews the so-called competences listed in various official documents. The ostensible role of such competences is to determine which aspects of a school subject must be assimilated, carried out and applied by the students. This paper underlines the redundancy and vagueness that can be seen in some official descriptions of the so-called “competence in linguistic communication”, such as the conception (erroneous, we think) that communication and formalist perspectives are incompatible. We will compare competences linked to science subjects with those associated to non-science subjects in order to point out the asymmetries between them, which contribute to reinforcing (unfairly and unjustifiably) the perception of language study as unscientific  . Finally, we propose a series of competences that we think should be promoted in secondary and baccalaureate language classrooms.