Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
October 2016
Abstract
The notion or definition of communicative competence has been constantly developing to adapt to
the context of its use. The combination of the two words simply means competence to
communicate (both verbally and in written form). The central word ―competence‖ has become a
debatable issue in the field of general and applied linguistics. Its introduction in applied linguistics
has been generally linked to Chomsky‘s view on a classic distinction between competence and
performance which is similar to Saussure's concept of la langue and la parole. Based on Chomsky,
Hymes proposed the notion of communicative competence which is believed to be broader and
more realistic than competence. From then on the concept of communicative competence
develops. Canale and Swain, Bachman, Bachman and Palmer, Celce-murcia et al. and
Pawlikowska-Smith are among those who have concern on this concept. In general they are in
agreement with the basic construct of communicative competence. And this paper briefly presents
the development of the notion of communicative competence.
sense whereas This is the man that hit the semantic, phonetic and orthographic rules.
dog that chased the cat that died is totally not This competence enables the speaker to use
feasible (Chomsky (1965: 10); (3) whether or knowledge and skills needed for
not something is appropriate in relation to a understanding and expressing the literal
context in which it is used; and (4) whether meaning of utterances.
or not something is in fact done and actually
performed. (Hymes, 1972: 281; Brumfit and (2) Sociolinguistic competence which refers
Johnson, 1989: 14) to the learner‘s ability to use language
correctly in specific social situations – for
Canale ans Swain‘s Model example, using proper language forms at a
Canale and Swain developed theory of job interview. Socio-linguistic competence is
communicative competence based on based upon such factors as the status of those
Hymes‘work.Their initial framework was speaking to each other, the purpose of the
proposed in 1980 and included three main interaction, and the expectations of the
components: (1) grammatical competence: players. How socially acceptable is the
sentence-level semantics, morphology, person‘s use of English in different settings?
syntax, and phonology; (2) sociolinguistic This competency is about appropriacy in
competence: socio-cultural rules of use, such using language.
as politeness and appropriateness, and rules
of discourse including cohesion and (3) Discourse competence which refers to
coherence; and (3) strategic competence: the the learner‘s ability to use the new language
verbal and non-verbal communicative in spoken and written discourse, how well a
strategies a speaker uses to achieve a desired person can combine grammatical forms and
end result (Canale & Swain, 1980: 29 – 30). meanings to find different ways to speak or
Canale later revised this framework in 1983 write. How well does the student combine
by breaking sociolinguistic competence into the language‘s elements to speak or write in
two separate components: (1) sociolinguistic English? Teachers often call this ability the
competence (appropriateness of register, student‘s fluency.
vocabulary and politeness norms) and (2)
discourse competence (cohesion and Canale (1983, 1984) described discourse
coherence). competence as mastery of rules that
determine ways in which forms and
The four domains of communicative meanings are combined to achieve a
competence in Canale and Swain‘s Model meaningful unity of spoken or written texts.
can be described as follows: The unity of a text is enabled by cohesion in
(1) Grammatical competence or linguistic form and coherence in meaning. Cohesion is
competence which refers to the ability to use achieved by the use of cohesion devices (e.g.
the language correctly, how well a person has pronouns, conjunctions, synonyms, parallel
learned features and rules of the language. structures etc.) which help to link individual
This includes vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentences and utterances to a structural
sentence formation. How well does the whole. The means for achieving coherence,
learner understand the grammar of English? for instance repetition, progression,
Teachers call this accuracy in language use. consistency, relevance of ideas etc., enable
According to Canale and Swain, grammatical the organisation of meaning, i.e. establish a
competence is concerned with mastery of the logical relationship between groups of
linguistic code (verbal or non-verbal) which utterances.
includes vocabulary knowledge as well as
knowledge of morphological, syntactic,
Language comp.
Illocutionary comp
CLA Pragmatic Comp
Sociolinguistic comp
Strategic competence
Psychophysiological mechanisms
In 1996 Bachman and Palmer revisited this Table 1: Bachman, Bachman and
model and made minor changes. In their new Palmer‘Model‘s
model, Bachman and Palmer (1996: 67) use Bachman 1990 Bachman and Palmer
the term ‗knowledge‘ instead of LANGUAGE 1996/2010
COMPETENCE LANGUAGE
‗competence‘. They do not explain the KNOWLEDGE
change in terminology, stating only that ―the ORGANIZATIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL
model of language ability that we adopt in COMPETENCE KNOWLEDGE
this book is essentially that proposed by Grammatical competence Grammatical knowledge
Bachman (1990) who defines language - Knowledge of -Knowledge of
vocabulary vocabulary
ability as involving two components:
- Knowledge of -Knowledge of syntax
language competence, or what we will call morphology -Knowledge of
language knowledge and strategic - Knowledge of syntax phonology/ graphology
competence which we will describe as a set -Knowledge of Textual knowledge
ofmetacognitive strategies. In short, phonology/ graphology -Knowledge of cohesion
Textual competence -Knowledge of rhetorical
Bachman (1990) and Bachman and Palmer
- Cohesion or conversational
(1996, 2010) seem conceptually equivalent, - Rhetorical organization - organization
aside from differences in labels and minor
changes in the description of strategic PRAGMATIC PRAGMATIC
competence. The terminology in the works of COMPETENCE KNOWLEDGE
Illocutionary competence Functional knowledge
Bachman and Palmer from 1996 and 2010 is
-Ideational functions -Knowledge of ideational
more consistent with that used in other -Manipulative functions functions
models than was the terminology proposed -Heuristic functions -Knowledge of
by Bachman (1990). Bachman & Palmer‘s -Imaginative functions manipulative functions
model of language competence (2010) is Sociolinguistic -Knowledge of heuristic
competence functions
undoubtedly multidisciplinary and complex
-Sensitivity to differences -Knowledge of
in nature. The introduction of affective in dialects or variety imaginative functions
factorsis a major step in making the model -Sensitivity to differences Sociolinguistic
quite complicated. Their conception can be in register knowledge
briefly presented in the table below. -Sensitivity to naturalness -Knowledge of genre
-Ability to interpret (2010 only)
cultural References and -Knowledge of
figures of speech dialects/varieties
-Knowledge of registers
-Knowledge of natural or
STRATEGIC idiomatic expressions
COMPETENCE -Knowledge of cultural
Assessment References and figures of
Goal setting speech
Planning
STRATEGIC
COMPETENCE
Assessment / Appraising
(2010)
Execution
Planning