21 st CENTURY COMPETENCIES & LANGUAGE TEACHING
In today’s hyper-connected world, no nation can launch a fully effective domestic education agenda without addressing global needs and trends, and nurturing a globally competent citizenship. Therefore, nations should be alerted to know how other nations are approaching to meet the ever increasing challenges. In a knowledge-based economy where creativity, innovation, and collaboration are highly regarded, one the most important twenty-first century skills students need is global competence. It is now a prerequisite for success in a world that demands scientific and technological literacy as well as cross-cultural leadership. Competences can be defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context and the key competences are those which all individuals needed for personal fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment. This plenary speech will introduce the key competencies and specifically focus on the importance of foreign language teaching and learning.