4- Communicative Competence

Topic 4- Communicative Competence

OPOS 2010 Andradas, Badia, Garcia, Herrera.

4. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT 2.1. THE NOTION OF COMMUNICATION 2.2. THE NOTION OF COMPETENCE 2.3. ON DEFINING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE 3. ANALYSIS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE COMPONENTS: CANALE & SWAIN (1980) 4. THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE (2001) 5. A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING 6. CONCLUSION: APPLIANCE TO THE ESL CLASSROOM 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. INTRODUCTION Communication is an essential tool that not only human beings but also animal species use on a daily basis to interact and connect with other individuals. In the case of human beings, the communication by means of language is probably one of the most frequent and relevant actions of the daily life. However, not all linguistic communication is based on language itself, for instance, speakers make use of body language and other prosodic and suprasegmental features to complete or modify their message. Nevertheless, the use of language itself and of the parallel resources for the enrichment of its meaning depends on factors that are external to language, for instance, knowing the interlocutor, keep clear in mind the purpose of the discourse, and so on. Differences in language are clear according to all these factors, and disrespect for these social conventions frequently causes confusion and, sometimes, undesired effects, since the speaker or hearer may feel insulted or abused. For all these reasons, once the research into language came to a standpoint after all components of language had been described, theorists started to focus on the context of communication and other features related to language used in interactions. The aim of this paper is to explain and contextualize the emergence of the notion of communicative competence and how it is related to the foreign language teaching. 2. THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT In this section of the unit, the origins and the main theories related to communicative competence are explained and analyzed. First of all, it is important to mention the notion of communication in order to understand why it is important for the speakers of any language. Moreover, the notion of competence is also defined and explained to understand why it is essential in order to communicate successfully.

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Topic 4- Communicative Competence

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2.1. THE NOTION OF COMMUNICATION As it has already been mentioned, communication is an essential tool in order to be able to establish relationships among humans. Regarding types of communication, Halliday in 1975, within the field of semiotics distinguished between verbal and non-verbal communication. When the act of communication is verbal, the code is the language, whether written or spoken. On the other hand, nonverbal communication refers to visual and tactile modes, such as gestures, facial expressions, etc. According to Halliday (1975), language may be defined as an instrument of social interaction with a clear communicative purpose. Therefore, it seems logical to talk about language when referring to communication and also to communicative competence, although other elements are important too, as it is explained in the following sections of this unit. 2.2. THE NOTION OF COMPETENCE When talking about competence it is indispensable to refer to the theory of transformational grammar developed by the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, in the 1960s. In this theory, Chomsky defines competence as the ideal speaker’s innate ability to generate and understand utterances and it is the basic hypothesis of General Transformational Grammar, which holds that every native tongue speaker has an innate linguistic ability thanks to mental knowledge. Therefore, Chomsky defended only the idea of linguistic competence. Furthermore, Chomsky also introduces the idea of performance, which is the actual individual production and comprehension of language in specific instances of language use. Chomsky believed that actual performance did not properly reflect the underlying knowledge, that is, competence, because of its many imperfections at the level of errors and hesitations. This fundamental distinction has been at the centre of discussion of many other researchers, and in fact, it has been evaluated and reviewed since then from various theoretical perspectives which are examined in the following subsection. 2.3. ON DEFINING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE The first linguist who introduced the term communicative competence was Dell Hymes in the late 1960s. He did so in a time when Noam Chomsky was using the term linguistic competence in order to refer to the native speaker’s implicit knowledge of the grammatical rules governing her or his language. Although Hymes accepted the idea that grammatical knowledge was important, he argued that in order to communicate effectively, speaker had to know not only grammatical rules, but they also had to learn what was communicatively appropriate in a given context. Therefore, according to Hymes (1962), a speaker must possess more than just grammatical knowledge. Moreover, Hymes pointed out that Chomsky’s competence-performance model, which has been explained before, did not provide an explicit place for sociocultural features. Furthermore, he expanded the notions of grammaticality (competence) and acceptability (performance) into four parameters subsumed under the heading of communicative competence as something which is first, formally possible; secondly, feasible in virtue of the available means; thirdly, appropriate in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated; and finally, something which is in fact done, and actually performed. AS a result of these features, Hyme’s model for communicative competence included grammatical, sociolinguistic and contextual competence and it was a model that inspired subsequent model developments, such as Canale and Swain (1980) which will be analyzed later. Even though Chomsky, Hymes and Canale and Swain are the ones who mainly contributed to the development of the term communicative competence, it is also important to mention other authors that contributed to this discussion. For instance,

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Campbell and Wales (1970)

They both felt that appropriateness of the language was even more important than grammaticality. They both criticized Chomsky’s neglect of the sociocultural significance of an utterance within a context. For them, the idea of communicative competence was the ability to produce utterances which are not so much grammatical but more important, appropriate to the context. -

Savignon (1972, 1983)

Sandra Savignon, an American linguist, introduced the idea that communicative competence is the ability to function in a truly communicative setting of one or more interlocutors. She defined a truly communicative setting as a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total information input, both linguistic and paralinguistic. Moreover, in 1983, she stated that there were six relevant elements in the communicative competence: o o o o o o -

willingness to take risks. it is not only an oral competence but also a written one. appropriateness depends on the context. competence is achieved through performance. it is relative and depends on the cooperation of interlocutors. there are degrees in communicative competence.

Widdowson and Munby (1978)

Widdowson made a distinction between use and usage of a language. Use is the realization of the language, whereas usage is the manifestation of the language of the system as meaningful communicative behavior. This duality is based on the notion of effectiveness for communication, by means of which utterances with a well-formed grammatical structure may or may not have a sufficient value for communication in a given context. Therefore, he claimed that whether an utterance has a sufficient communicative value or not is determined in discourse. Similarly, Munby (1978) contends that grammatical competence should be included in the notion of communicative competence under two main theoretical basis. First, he stated that grammatical competence and communicative competence are to be developed separately and secondly, he went further by saying that grammatical competence is not an essential component of communicative competence. The main tenets of his Communicative Competence model are presented under the basis of a linguistic encoding, a sociocultural orientation, a sociosemantic basis of linguistic knowledge, and a discourse level of operation. -

Canale and Swain (1980)

They both developed the concept of communicative competence. For them, this competence was the underlying system of knowledge and skill required for communication. It is important to mention that they gave a lot of importance to the sociolinguistic competence and that they defended the idea that it is in the actual communication, in a real context when a speaker has to demonstrate his/her communicative competence (similar to the concept by Chomsky, performance). Their model will be deeply analyzed in the following section. -

Bachman (1990)

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Topic 4- Communicative Competence

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Bachman proposed in 1990 a concept of communicative competence very similar to that of Canale and Swain, but he rearranged it in order to suggest a tree model, where three major components are to be distinguished: o o o

Language competence which includes the organization sub-competences, grammatical competence and textual competence, and the pragmatic competence. Strategic competence, which includes the assessment, planning and execution. Psycho-physiological mechanisms, as physical means of producing languge through first, a visual and auditory channel and secondly, through a productive or receptive mode.

3. ANALYSIS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE COMPONENTS: CANALE & SWAIN MODEL OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (1980) The most important study on developing the notion of Communicative Competence from Dell Hymes work was done by Canale and Swain (1980). There is a useful discussion which is especially useful for those approaching communicative competence from a second language acquisition point of view. Here the notion of communicative competence is divided up into four subcomponents: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence.  Grammatical competence This type of competence refers to having control of over the purely linguistic aspects of the language code itself. This corresponds to Hymes’ grammatical aspect and includes knowledge of lexicon, syntax, phonology and semantics. o o o o o

Phonology: pronunciation of lexical items, liaison, word stress, intonation. Spelling: graphemes, spelling and punctuation conventions. Vocabulary: common items, idioms, phrasal verbs. Word formation: inflection, derivation, compounding, agreement. Sentence formation: common structures of phrases and sentences.

This competence focuses directly on the knowledge and skills required to understand and express the literal meaning of utterances accurately. It corresponds to what Chomsky called linguistic competence and what Hymes termed as formally possible.  Sociolinguistic competence This component includes both sociocultural rules of use and rules of discourse. Regarding sociocultural rules of use, this competence is linked to the notion of the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as status of participants, purposes of the interaction and norms or conventions of interaction. In terms of rules of discourse, Canale and Swain (1980) defined it as the mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings. When the speaker deals with appropriateness of form, we refer to the extent to which a given meaning is represented in both verbal and non-verbal form that is proper in a given context. Thus, it refers to communicative functions, attitudes, prepositions and ideas. In relation to meaning appropriateness, this competence is concerned with the extent to which particular communicative functions and ideas are judged to be proper in a given situation, as, for instance, complaining and inviting.

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 Discourse competence This type of competence concerns the mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres. In order to achieve this competence it is important to bear in mind the concepts cohesion and coherence, which are essential to link ideas in a discourse and to define the relationship among the different meanings in a text, respectively.  Strategic competence This competence is composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action for two main reasons: - To compensate for breakdowns in communication - To enhance the effectiveness of communication. Basically, it is the type of knowledge that a speaker needs to sustain a communication with someone. This may be achieved by paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance, guessing as well as shifts in register and style. Therefore, strategic competence is useful in various circumstances as for instance, the early stages of second language acquisition, where communicative competence can be present with just strategic and socio-linguistic competence. 4. A BROADER CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (2001) abbreviated as CEFR, is a guideline used to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe. Its model of communicative competence presented is not only heir to the different definitions and classifications of communicative competence and its components, but also takes into account external factors to language and sociolinguistics in order to incorporate personal abilities, motivational factors and general knowledge of the world. Therefore, general competences, which are external to language and include competences which are not only necessary for language learning, must be distinguished from the communicative language competences, which adopt a categorization quite close to that of Canale and Swain (1980). These are the main categorization of this model: 



General competences o Declarative competence o Skills and know-how o Existential competence o Ability to learn Communicative language competence o Linguistic competence o Sociolinguistic competence o Pragmatic competence

Regarding general competences, they can be grouped in four categories: a) Declarative knowledge, including: o Knowledge of the world, which involves the knowledge of the major geographical, environmental, demographic, economic and political features of the countries where the foreign language is spoken. o sociolcultural knowledge, which is the knowledge of the society and culture of the community or communities in which a language is spoken. 5/8

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intercultural awareness, which is the knowledge, awareness and understanding of the relation between the world of origin and the world of the target community. b) Skills and know-how, including: o practical skills and know-how are, among others: social skills, living skills, vocational and professional skills and leisure skills. o intercultural skills and know-how, which basically means the ability to bring the culture of origin and the foreign culture into relation with each other, by means of sensitivity and overcoming stereotyped relationships. c) Existential competence, which refers to the factors connected with the speaker’s individual personality, and involves the attitudes, motivations, beliefs, etc. which contribute to their personal identity. d) Ability to learn is defined as the ability to observe and participate in new experiences and to incorporate new knowledge into existing knowledge. It includes: o language and communication awareness, which includes sensitivity to language and language use. o general phonetic awareness and skills o study skills. These refers to factors such as maintaining attention to the presented information; cooperating effectively in pair and group work, making rapid and frequent active use of the language learnt and having the ability to use available materials for independent learning and to organize and use materials for self-directed learning. o heuristic skills, which are the abilities of the learner to understand and convey new information and to use new technologies. On the other hand, communicative language competences have the following components: a) linguistic competences, which are also subclassified into: o lexical competence means being able to use the vocabulary of a language, both lexical elements and grammatical elements. o grammatical competence is the ability to use the grammatical resources of a language. Therefore, the speaker must be able to understand and express meaning by using and recognizing well-formed phrases and sentences. o semantic competence deals with the speaker’s awareness and control of the organization of meaning. There is lexical semantics, which deals with questions of word meaning in relation to a general context; and grammatical semantics, which deals with the meaning of grammatical elements instead. o phonological competence involves the knowledge and skill in the perception and production of phonemes and the realization in particular contexts, the distinctive features of phonemes, and syllable structure, and word stress and tone. o orthographic competence involves the knowledge and skill in the perception and production of the symbols used for writing, that is to say, letters, words and texts. o orthoepic1 competence is the application of orthographic competence in combination with some competences belonging to the semantic and phonological categories and it implies being able to produce a correct pronunciation from the written words. b) sociolinguistic competences is the knowledge and skills required to deal with the social dimension of language use. Therefore, there are some elements and features that can be included in this type of competence. 1

or·tho·e·py: The study of the pronunciation of words or The study of the relationship between the pronunciation of words and their orthography. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Orthoepic)

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linguistic markers of social relations, for instance greetings or conventions for turntaking. o politeness conventions o expressions of folk wisdom, such as idioms, proverbs and so on. o register differences, basically regarding differences in level of formality: frozen, formal, neutral, informal, familiar and intimate. o dialect and accent, which concerns the ability to recognize the linguistic markers of factors such as social class, regional or national origins, occupational group, etc. c) pragmatic competences, including: o discourse competence, which is the ability to organize, structure and arrange discourse. o functional competences or the ability to use spoken discourse and written texts in communication for particular functional purpose. It is important to differentiate between microfunctions, which are categories for the functional use of single utterances usually as turns and interactions, and macrofunctions, which refer to longer utterances, such as sentences or texts. o design competence or the ability to use schemata which underlie communication. For instance: question/answer, request/offer, and so on. 5. A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING As it has been stated before, the notion of communicative competence has been highly influential in fields of linguistics, but also in fields such as education, sociology and psychology. Probably its greater impact has been in language teaching, including the teaching of English as a second or foreign language. Whereas the emphasis in language teaching had been on grammatical and syntactic accuracy, the works by Hymes and Canale and Swain, meant a significant move towards Communicative language teaching, which involved the teaching and learning of the language considered appropriate to specific situations, based on what speakers actually use rather than what they are presumed to use. Accordingly, assessment of language learning has been influenced and the focus has been shifted on students’ capacity to communicate, rather that the ability to produce grammatically correct sentences. When talking about the Communicative Approach or Communicative Language Teaching, it is relevant to mention some features and a set of principles that provide a broad overview of this method. The first principle claims for students to learn a language through using it to communicate. Secondly, there is an emphasis on authentic and meaningful communication which should be the goal of classroom activities. Thirdly, fluency, which is the ability to generate and communicate one’s ideas intelligibly and with relative ease, is seen as an important dimension of communication, in contrast with the previous idea of the term accuracy, which is the ability to produce language with few errors. Fourth, communication is intended to involve the integration of different language skills, and finally, the principle that claims for learning as a process of creative construction which involves trial and error. The rapid adoption and implementation of Communicative Language Teaching resulted in similar approaches, such as The Natural Approach, Cooperative Language Learning, Content- Based Teaching, known as CLIL, and Task-Based Teaching.

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6. CONCLUSION: APPLIANCE TO THE ESL CLASSROOM As it can be understood from the previous section of this paper, the notion of competence has gone well beyond the extent of Linguistics and has been assimilated by other disciplines. As an example, the Catalan curriculum of Foreign Language in Secondary Education, according to DOGC núm. 4915 and DOGC núm. 5183, establishes that the Foreign Language subject must not only contribute to communicative competence in the foreign language, but also to a set of basic competences of the whole stage, such as Competence in Linguistic Communication, Competence for Socialization and citizenship or Competence for Learning How to Learn. Within language learning and language teaching, communicative competence has become the goal of all foreign language education, and even the mother tongue learning, even though, grammatical competence still remains as the primary objective, which is an approach that has been changing in the past few years. Usually, the teaching of a foreign language includes socio-cultural elements, such as knowledge of aspects of the foreign language community or major traditions, but neglects other relevant elements, especially pragmatic elements, such as conversation conventions and schemata. Therefore, teachers must take the different components of communicative competence into account and exploit them in the classroom, designing and executing activities which account for grammatical knowledge, but also for sociocultural aspects and pragmatic abilities, so that the students may reach global communicative competence, and nowadays that can be achieved by means of new technologies, which may provide a more appropriate setting for students to experience the target language in its cultural context.

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (www.britannica.com). Last accessed: October, 2010. Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980) Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics 1. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Toronto. Council of Europe (2001) Common European Framework for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. DOGC núm. 4915- Decret 143/2007 Currículum Educació Secundària Obligatòria DOGC núm. 5183- Decret 142/2008 - Currículum Batxillerat Hymes, D. (1972) On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride and J.Homes (eds.), Sociolinguistics, pp.269-93. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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