Assessment and Relevance of English Communication Skills Syllabus to Diploma in Law Programme In Tanzania: Does it Bring Competency Based Education and Training as Expected?

Abstract

Appropriate and well-designed Curriculum is one of the variables that may contribute to sustainable development in any given society. The syllabus can reflect the type of end product of graduates that any education system ought to produce.This paper assesses the Communication skills curriculum in the institutions offering diploma in law programme in Tanzania. Looking on English communication skills curriculum, one may raise a concern whether that the current syllabus will create diploma graduates who are well equipped with competence based education and training, instead of knowledge based, thus contributing to sustainable development. The content of English communication skills for these institutions not only not harmonized but also does not reflect on English communication skills for lawyers, instead one finds loaded with English grammar as if the programme is intended to humanities programme, thus reflecting knowledge based education. The paper suggest the need for harmonizing the English communication skills for diploma in law programme and conducting several workshop organised by the appropriate organs such as National council for technical education on the methodology of implementing the competency based teaching. The paper concludes that unless the knowledge based education and training contents are changed, the expectations of producing graduates with competence based education and training is far from reality. Keywords: Competency based, knowledge based, education, communication skills, syllabus