Topic 4 Communicative Competence

8/16/2019 Topic 4 Communicative Competence

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Being competent means to be able to do something successfully or efficiently like

actors when they make us believe the role they are playing and forget the person

behind or painters, composers, and dancers when they introduce us to new forms of

beauty. But, when could we say a speaker is competent?

The aim of the chosen topic number 4 “Communicative competence !nalysis of its

components" is to offer a broad account of the concept of communicative

competence and this presentation will start by offering the most relevant definitions of

the concept with emphasis on the terms competence, ability and performance. Then,

models of communicative competence will be presented analy#ing their components

with special attention to the most relevant and current one proposed by the Common

$uropean %ramework of &eference. %inally, a conclusion will be offered and

bibliographical notes will be presented.

Communicative Competence

Overview

The term communicative competence is comprised of two words, the combination of

which means “competence to communicate". Competence is one of the most

controversial terms in the field of general and applied linguistics. 'ts introduction to

linguistic discourse has been generally associated with Chomsky who, in his very

influential book “!spects of the Theory of (ynta)", drew what has been today viewed

as a classic distinction between competence *the monolingual speaker+listeners

knowledge of language- and performance *the actual use of language in real

situations-. e describes /competence as an ideali#ed capacity that is located as a

psychological or mental property or function and /performance as the production of

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actual utterances. 'n short, competence involves “knowing" the language and

performance involves “doing" something with language.

(oon after Chomsky, the linguist ymes *0123- defined communicative competence

not only as an inherent grammatical competence but also as the ability to use

grammatical competence in a variety of communicative situations. It is competence

of language use appropriate to the other participants of the communicative

interaction and appropriate to the given social context and situation.

ater on, Canale and (wain *0156- and understood communicative competence as a

synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for communication.

'n their concept of communicative competence, knowledge refers to the conscious or

unconscious knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of

language use. !ccording to them, there are three types of knowledge knowledge of

underlying grammatical principles, knowledge of how to use language in a social

conte)t in order to fulfill communicative functions and knowledge of how to combine

utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse principles. 'n

addition, their concept of skill refers to how an individual can use the knowledge in

actual communication. !ccording to Canale *0157-, skill re8uires a further distinction

between underlying capacity and its manifestation in real communication, that is to

say, in performance.

!ccording to many other theoreticians, Bachman and 9almer, 011: for e)ample,

affirmed that the nature of communicative competence is not static but dynamic; it is

more interpersonal than intrapersonal and relative rather than absolute. 't is also

largely defined by conte)t. 'n this respect Bachman *0116- suggested using the term

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consistency, relevance of ideas etc., enable the organisation of meaning

establishing a logical relationship between groups of utterances.Strategic competence is composed of knowledge of verbal and non-verbal

communication strategies that are recalled to compensate for breakdowns in

communication due to insufficient competence in one or more components of

communicative competence. hese strategies include paraphrase,

circumlocution, repetition, reluctance, avoidance of words, structures or themes,

guessing, changes of register and style, modifications of messages etc.The sociolinguistic competence in their model includes knowledge of rules and

conventions which underlie the appropriate comprehension and language use in

different sociolinguistic and sociocultural conte!ts.

3. !ccording to Bachman and 9almer *011:-, many traits of language users such as

some general characteristics, their topical knowledge, affective scheme and

language ability influence the communicative language ability. The crucial

characteristic is their language ability which is comprised of two broad areas >

language knowledge and strategic competence.Language knowledge consists of two main components > organizational

knowledge and pragmatic knowledge which complement each other in achieving

communicatively effective language use.

'n Bachman and 9almers model, organisational knowledge is composed of

abilities engaged in a control over formal language structures, of grammatical and

te)tual knowledge.

rammatical knowledge includes several rather independent areas of knowledge

such as knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, synta), phonology, and graphology.

They enable recognition and production of grammatically correct sentences as well

as comprehension of their propositional content. Te)tual knowledge enables

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comprehension and production of spoken or written te)ts. 't covers the knowledge of

conventions for combining sentences or utterances into te)ts, cohesion, and

knowledge of rhetorical organisation *way of developing narrative te)ts, descriptions,

comparisons, classifications etc.- or conversational organi#ation *conventions for

initiating, maintaining and closing conversations-.

Pragmatic knowledge in their model refers to abilities for creating and interpreting

discourse. 't includes two areas of knowledge knowledge of pragmatic conventions

for e)pressing acceptable language functions and for interpreting the illocutionary

power of utterances or discourse *functional knowledge- and knowledge of

sociolinguistic conventions for creating and interpreting language utterances which

are appropriate in a particular conte)t of language use *sociolinguistic knowledge-.

(trategic knowledge is conceived in the model as a set of metacognitive components

which enable language user involvement in goal setting, assessment of

communicative sources, and planning.

7. The last model ' will refer to is the model of description of communicative

language competence in CEFR *3660-, the model which is intended for

assessment as well as for learning and teaching of languages.

'n the C$%&, communicative competence is conceived only in terms of knowledge.

't includes three basic components > linguistic competence, sociolinguistic

competence and pragmatic competence. Thus, strategic competence is not its

componential part. 't is interesting, however, that each component of language

knowledge is e)plicitly defined as knowledge of its contents and ability to apply it.

a !inguistic competence is defined as knowledge of, and ability to use, the formal

resources from which well+formed, meaningful messages may be assembled and

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formulated. 'ts subcomponents are le)ical, grammatical, semantic, phonological,

orthographic and orthoepic competences.

• Lexical Competence can be described as the knowledge of and ability to

recogni#e and use the vocabulary of a language in the way the native

speakers use them. This includes fi)ed e)pressions *greetings, proverbs-,

phrasal idioms, phrasal verbs, compound prepositions, intensifiers or fro#en

metaphors. Besides, it also includes single words forms or grammatical

elements such as articles and personal pronouns.

• Grammatical competence is the ability to recogni#e and produce the

distinctive grammar rules which consists basically of knowledge of elements

such as morpheme+roots and affi)es, categories such as number, case

gender; classes as con@ugations or declinations, structures as compound

and comple) words; processes such as gradation or nominali#ation or

sciences such as morphology and word formation.

• Semantic competence can be defined as the learnerAs awareness and

control of the organi#ation of meaning.

• honological competence consists of a knowledge of and skill in the

perception and production of phonemes in their linguistic environment, word

stress, sentence stress, pitch and intonation.

• Orthographic competence involves a knowledge of and skill in perception

of the symbols of which written te)ts are composed such as form of letters

in printed forms, proper spelling or punctuation marks..

• Orthoepic competence has to do with the way reading aloud is produced

because it is needed to pronounce written te)ts in a proper way. This fact

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may involve knowledge of spelling spelling conventions or ability to resolve

ambiguity when facing ambiguity or syntactic ambiguities.

" Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of sociocultural rules knowing how

to use and respond to language appropriately. The appropriateness depends on

the setting of the communication, the topic, register, and the relationships among

the people communicating. oreover, being appropriate depends on knowing

what the taboos of the other culture are, what politeness indices are used in each

case, what the politically correct term would be for something, how a specific

attitude *authority, friendliness, courtesy, irony etc.- is e)pressed.

(o, according to C$%&As model sociolinguistic competence deals with linguistic

markers of social relations; politeness conventions; e)pressions of folk+wisdom;

register differences; and dialect and accent.

c The last component in this model + pragmatic competence > could be classified

into two categories discourse competence and functional competence.

!iscourse competence is the speakerAs ability to organi#e, structure and arrange

sentences in se8uence so as to produce coherent chunks of meaningful language. 't

includes knowledge of, and ability to, control the ordering sentences in terms of its

topic or focus, the given or new information; the cause effect and so on and so forth.

! key concept related to discourse competence is the so called "co#operative

principle$ *rice 012-, which states that competent speakers make their

contributions when they are re8uired and at the stage at which they occur, by the

accepted purpose of the conversational e)change by observing the following

ma)ims 8uality *try to make your contribution one that is true-, 8uantity *make your

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contribution as informative as necessary, but not more-, relevance *do not say what is

not relevant- and manner *be brief and orderly, avoid obscurity and ambiguity-.

Functional competence used to perform communicative functions is concerned

with the use of spoken discourse and written te!ts in communication for particular

functional purposes. A competent speaker should know how to manage the act of

communication in which each initiative leads to a response from the beginning of the

interaction to its end.

Dow, at the end of my presentation, let me summing up the main points ' covered.

%irstly, ' defined the concept of the “communicative competence" and furthermore '

developed the three models of communicative competence and analy#ed their

components mentioning some of the well+known researchers on the field of

linguistics, emphasi#ing their contributions.

This theme emerges upon the basis that language and communication are at the

heart of the human e)perience, and therefore the main aim is to know how to teach

our students in order to achieve to communicate effectively in a pluralistic society

focusing on the sociolinguistic and cultural aspects of language.

(everal valuable sources have contributed to the reali#ation of this presentation as

follow

Bachman, L.F. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language

Testing. Oxford etc.: OUP.

Canale, M. (198). From comm!n"cat"#e com$etence to

comm!n"cat"#e lan%!a%e $eda%o%&.

Canale, M., ' a"n, M. (1981). * +heoret"cal Frameor for

Comm!n"cat"#e Com$etence. -n Palmer, *., root, P., ' +ro/$er, .

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(d/.), The construct validation of test of communicative competence,

12.

Chom/&, 3. (1924). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cam5r"d%e,

Ma//ach!/ett/:

Co!nc"l of !ro$e (6001). Common European Framework of

eference for Languages! Learning" Teaching and Assessment .

tra/5o!r%.

7&me/, . 7. (196). On Comm!n"cat"#e Com$etence. -n Pr"de, . B.,

' 7olme/, . (d/.), Sociolinguistics" 62969. Balt"more, U*:

Pen%!"n d!cat"on, Pen%!"n Boo/ Ltd.

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Topic 4 Communicative Competence