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must represent a major change in the tasks that students have to complete and innovative methodological approaches. A competence involves a combination of practical skills, knowledge, motivation, ethical values, attitudes, emotions, and other social and behavioural components that operate together to ensure effective action. They are envisaged, then, as knowledge in practice, with this knowledge being acquired through active participation in social practices which, as such, can be conducted in both the formal educational context, across the curriculum, and in non-formal and informal educational contexts.
English as a First Foreign Language forms part of the block of core subjects, which are guaranteed to include the knowledge and competences that help students acquire a solid education and continue to exploit subsequent stages in those subjects that should be common to all students; these should be assessed in the final assessments of the stage. The points of reference for checking the degree to which the competences have been acquired and whether the objectives of the stage have been achieved in the continuous and final assessments of the subject of English are the assessment criteria and assessable learning standards.
The assessment criteria are the specific reference point for assessing student learning. They describe what we wish to assess and that students must achieve, both knowledge and competences, and respond to what is to be achieved in the subject.
Learning standards are specifications of the assessment criteria for defining learning outcomes, and which specify what students should know, understand, and know how to do in each subject. They are observable, measurable and assessable and allow performance or achievements to be graded. Their design contributes to and facilitates the development of standardised and comparable tests.
The assessment criteria and standards set out in the curriculum are an assessable formulation of the skills expressed in the general objectives for Primary Education,
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