TOPIC 4
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: ANALYSIS OF ITS COMPONENTS
TEMA 4
LA COMPETENCIA COMUNICATIVA. EL ANALISIS DE SUS
COMPONENTES
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
3. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
4. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM
5. CONCLUSION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1. INTRODUCTION
Now, in the year 2021, we feel unsure about how to approach the process of
teaching a foreign or second language. Is communicative language teaching the best
option for our students or is it time to find another alternative?
Increasing internationalisation has led to an upgrading of requirements
when it comes to better linguistic skills - tourist-level competence in a foreign
language and a little knowledge of Sunday culture fall short in an international
world. For this reason, in our globalised society teaching a foreign language in order
to allow students to communicate effectively is key.
Since ancient times, the way of improving communication preoccupied
human beings as they had a need to express some basic structures such as feelings,
attitudes and everyday situations. Language is used in our society as a way of
communication, both for the creation and maintenance of social relationships and
also for the transmission of knowledge. This implies that older children and adults
in the community use language in written as well as in spoken form. Nevertheless,
communication is not just a matter of language.
To give an organised explanation of all the contents included in this topic, I
will be following this outline. First of all, we will give a brief explanation of the
concept of communicative competence. Secondly, we will deal with the main
components of communicative competence. To continue, the role of
communicative competence in the classroom will be assessed. The last section
will be the conclusion followed by the bibliographical references used to develop
this topic.
2. THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Chomsky argued that it is impossible for people to acquire a language by
simple repetition. Children, he said, do not repeat what adults say, but produce
their own sentences. Chomsky proposed a theory called Transformational
Generative Grammar, according to which learners do not acquire an endless list
of rules, but limited set of transformations with which language users can form an
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unlimited number of sentences. For him, there are two main concepts under
revision, competence and performance. To him, competence refers to the innate
knowledge of language an ideal speaker-listener has in an homogeneous speech
community, and performance refers to the actual production and rules of
language use. According to Chomsky linguistic knowledge is separated from
sociocultural features.
In addition, according to Halliday, we should mention that he rejected
Chomsky’s dichotomy of competence and performance as he thought the potential
of meaning was covered both by knowing and doing.
Opposite to these ideas, Hymes coined the term communicative
competence. This author claimed that in order to use a language appropriately, we
should not only acquire a grammatical competence but also socio-linguistic and
contextual competence. Hymes stated that native speakers know more than just
grammatical competence. He expands the Chomskyan notions of grammaticality
(competence) and acceptability (performance) into four parameters. He talks of
communicative competence as something which is:
• Possible
• Feasible in virtue of the available means
• Appropriate, in relation to a context
• Done, and actually performed.
Widdowson, on his side, proposed a distinction between the concepts use
and usage. According to him, both concepts are to be linked to the aspects of
performance, as usage refers to the manifestation of the knowledge of a language
system whereas the notion of use means the realization of the language system as
meaningful communicative behaviour. This duality is based on the notion of
effectiveness for communication. He claimed that whether an utterance has a
sufficient communicative value or not is determined in discourse.
3. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
In order to study the main components of the term Communicative
Competence, we will focus on Canale and Swain’s model on this term. These two
authors built their model taking Hymes’ proposal as a starting point. In this sense,
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they claimed that a language user needs to use the language not only correctly
(based on linguistic competence), but also appropriately (based on communicative
competence). Of course, this approach does not diminish the importance of
learning grammatical rules. In fact, it is one of the four components of
communicative competence: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic
competences.
• Linguistic Competence
As mentioned, it is not sufficient to be, for example, grammatically
competent when one wishes to be proficient in a foreign language. However, it is a
real misunderstanding if one believes one can handle linguistic interaction without
being grammatically competent.
To be able to use a language for interactional purposes one must know the
systems that govern it, within such areas as syntax, morphology, and
phonology/orthography. The way in which we organise linguistic elements has an
influence not only on the message contained in the utterance but also on how the
receiver understands the message.
• Socio-linguistic Competente
This component is concerned with the appropriatness of communication
depending on the context. Therefore, we must take into account:
- Who the receiver is. Hence, we should consider how is our relationship like and
the equality and symmetry of the same. To do so, we need to pay attention to
the age, gender or status of the speakers involved in the communication
process.
- What the purpose of the communication process is. Therefore, we need to
carefully consider if our aim is to persuade, inform, look for information, accuse
or praise.
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As it can be seen, we can formulate the same content in many ways. This
will depend on what we want to achieve, who our receiver is and the context in
which the communication process takes place. Thus, it can be claimed that both
social and cultural factors have a strong impact on language.
Moreover, it is apparently universal that we, in using language, move within
the parameters of language effectiveness and politeness. Certain theoreticians
like Grice claim that languages are governed by the following requirements for
effective speech: be economical, tell the truth, be relevant and speak clearly.
However, if we allow ourselves to be only governed by this set of rules, we will get
into a lot of difficulties. That is why we should also adopt Goffman's principles of
politeness: be considerate, be generous, be positive, be modest and unanimous.
• Discourse competence
This competence refers to the mastery of how to combine grammatical
forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken o written text. Firstly, a
conversation or a text consists of more than one utterance, and both conversation
and text are subject to genre and text-type requirements. Secondly, the individual
utterance must fit into a context.
In this sense, the concepts coherence and cohesion need to be mentioned.
On the one hand, coherence can be defined as the connection of ideas in a text at
the cognitive level, i.e. a given text needs to be meaningful and consistent to be
coherent. To do so, a coherent text should follow a clear structure and
organisation. On the other hand, cohesion is understood as the connection of ideas
in a text at the sentence level. Therefore, a text should include connectors,
reference words and substitutions in order to be correctly sequenced and
connected. Besides, these two elements need to be present both in oral and written
texts. However, they are more important when we are dealing with written ones.
• Strategic competence
This is the set of strategies that are put into use when communication fails.
In this sense, we should mention the ability of using verbal and non-verbal
communication strategies in order not to break down communication process
and improve its effectiveness.
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In this sense, the strategic competence allows us to make use of several
linguistic and non-linguistic communication strategies to get our message across
when the communication process finds an obstacle.
Even though these strategies perhaps do not lead to any new acquisition,
they can influence input from the person we are conversing with. This ability to
paraphrase and simplify is a universal competence, which we as humans possess.
It is evident that when we, as speakers, adapt our language to children or
pupils. It is important that pupils get the chance to train this competence and to
become aware of the fact that there are other alternatives to abandoning their
communicative plan.
4. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM
Once the term communicative competence has been studied, it is time to
consider its role in the English as a foreign language classroom. Therefore, it can be
said that if we, as teachers, want our students to use the language in order to
communicate, we should follow a communicative approach to make them
competent communicatively speaking. To do so, the above-listed competences
should be the goals of our teaching process. In this sense, none of the four main
components of the communicative competence should be ignored since our goal
would not be reached if we do so.
With this in mind, a successful teaching-learning process which aims at making
students able to communicate using the target language should focus on interaction
among the group to foster students’ fluency. Moreover, it should also provide students
with the necessary opportunities for genuine interaction recreating real contexts.
The aim is for students to acquire a communicative competence, where their
knowledge and ability in the foreign language will help them get the meaning of a
sentence, even if the different functions of language make it difficult. Besides, students
should also be provided with strategies and techniques to overcome their
communicative problems in an attempt to make communication as real as possible in a
formal setting.
This authentic communicative interaction is approached within our current
educational system through specific projects and programmes. Hence, apart from the
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communicative teaching approach that the teacher decides to implement in the
classroom, there are several proposals by the European Union, especially designed to
provide students a genuine communicative interaction within a classroom context. A
good example of this is the well-known platform eTwinning in which our students can
complete projects with another group of pupils from another country. By using this
platform in the classroom, our students will be using the English language in order to
communicate and to complete a real task. Therefore, the four main components of the
communicative competence are worked in the classroom in an engaging and non-
explicit way.
Therefore, if we want our students to succeed when they engage in a
communication process, we should work on their communicative competence. Then, we
must facilitate the integration of the four types of competences to make the language of
our students efficient when communicating. Obviously, in early stages, grammatical and
strategic competences will be more adequate and sociolinguistic and discourse ones can
be left for later stages.
To sum up, we must remember that our objective is not merely to teach a
language, but to teach how to use the language for communication purposes. Language,
therefore, will be considered as a tool, not as an end in itself.
5. CONCLUSION
In this topic, we have examined the development of the concept of
communicative competence through the theories of linguists such as Chomsky,
Hymes and Canale and Swain. We have also analysed the different components of
communicative competence, that is the linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and
strategic competences. Finally, we have explained how to apply this theoretical
term in an educational context. In this sense, the main aim of implementing
communicative approaches in the classroom is to equip our students with the
necessary linguistic, strategic, discourse and sociolinguistic skills to communicate
successfully.
This particular way of looking at the teaching-learning process has changed
not only the programs and syllabus, but also the basic techniques of classroom
teaching. Furthermore, it has also changed the role of the teacher, who has become
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more an advisor and facilitator than an instructor. Hence, it can be claimed that
one of the main functions of this figure in the classroom is to establish the
necessary conditions to make students engage in meaningful and contextualised
interaction in the classroom. In order to do so, communicative situations and
activities need to be planned and implemented following the ideas explained
above.
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Hymes, 1972 On Communicative Competence
• Hatch, E 1978 Discourse Analysis and Second Language Acquisition
• Widdowson, 1992 Teaching Language as Communication
• Ellis, Rod Understanding Second Language Acquisition
• Crystal, D, 1995 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English language
• Richards Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics