Communicative competence Information & Communicative competence Links at HealthHaven.com

Communicative competence is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.

The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966,^[1] reacting against the perceived inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's (1965) distinction between competence and performance.^[2] To address Chomsky's abstract notion of competence, Hymes undertook ethnographic exploration of communicative competence that included "communicative form and function in integral relation to each other" (Leung, 2005).^[3] The approach pioneered by Hymes is now known as the ethnography of communication.

[edit] Use in education

The notion of communicative competence is one of the theories that underlies the communicative approach to foreign language teaching.^[3]

Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of four components:^[4]

grammatical competence: words and rules
sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness
discourse competence: cohesion and coherence
strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into the broad headings of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence, and "pragmatic competence," which includes both sociolinguistic and "illocutionary" competence.^[5] Strategic Competence is associated with the interllocutors' ability in using communication strategies ( Faerch & Kasper, 1983; Lin, 2009).

Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice.^[6] This is in contrast to previous views in which grammatical competence was commonly given top priority. The understanding of communicative competence has been influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts as described in large part by John Searle and J.L. Austin.

[edit] References

^ Hymes, D.H. (1966) "Two types of linguistic relativity." In W. Bright (ed) Sociolinguistics pp. 114-158. The Hague: Mouton.
^ Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
^ ^a ^b Leung, C. (2005). Convival Communication: recontextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 15, No.2, 119-143.
^ Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47.
^ Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-437003-8
^ Savignon, S.J. (1997). Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2nd edition.

Further sources

Hymes, D.H. (1971). On communicative competence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Lin, G.H.C.(2009). A case study about communication strategies. Changhua, Taiwan: Shinshin Press.<http://www.bookpump.com/dps/pdf-b/1123744b.pdf>

[0] Hymes, D.H. (1966) "Two types of linguistic relativity." In W. Bright (ed) Sociolinguistics pp. 114-158. The Hague: Mouton.

[1] Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[Leung-2] Leung, C. (2005). Convival Communication: recontextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 15, No.2, 119-143.

[Canale-3] Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47.

[4] Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-437003-8

[5] Savignon, S.J. (1997). Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2nd edition.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]