Applied Linguistics

Language and Communication

Knowing a language: 1st &

2nd

What does it mean to know a language well

and to use it successfully? To communicate
effectively?

Historical
Cultural
Individual

factors

Factors involved
Native-like characteristics
Accuracy
Writing skills
Communicate a message

Is grammatical accuracy enough to achieve

communication?

Linguistic competence
Chomskys Universal Grammar (UG)
Competence/performance
Language as an innate human ability
Separate from mental abilities
No social factors considered

Communicative
competence

Dell Hymes proposed 4 components:

Possibility (rules)
Feasibility (difficulty when processing; access to
info)
Appropriateness (social conventions/register/nonverbal behavior)
Attestedness (something true/natural occurence)

Applications of communicative
competence
First language education
Information design
Speech therapy
Translation
Teaching English as a foreign language:
Communicative approach

Communicative
competence
Linguistic
competence

Sociolinguistic
competence

Discourse
Competence

Strategic
competence

Communicative competence
(Canale & Swain, 1983)
Linguistic competence
Sociolinguistic competence

Discourse competence

strategic competence
Organizational competence:
Grammatical: Vocabulary, morphology, syntax, phonology
Textual: cohesion, rhetorical organization
Pragmatic competence:
Ilocutive: ideal, manipulative, heuristic, imaginative functions
Sociolinguistic: sensitivity to dialects, registers, naturalness, cultural
references.
(Bachman, 1990)

Communicative competence and a real-world

problem: language teaching
Some linguistic functions to be developed to communicate effectively:
1. Asking for and giving information
2. Expressing intellectual attitudes
3. Expressing emotional states
4. Expressing moral attitudes
5. Persuading
6. Social uses of language

Developing communicative competence in L2

depends on:
Development of CC in L1
World knowledge
Cognitive style
Quality and quantity of the input
Explicit reflection on use (metacognition)
Affective relations built in the target language
Possibilities of interaction with native speakers /other speakers of the
target language.

Proficiency levels www.alte.org

http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Portfolio/?L=E&M=/documents_intro/common_framework.html

CEFR

ALTE

LEVEL

CAMBRIDGE
EXAM
CPE

C2

C1

Proficient- Very
Advanced
Advanced

B2

Upper intermediate

FCE

B1

Lower Intermediate

PET

A2

Elementary

KET

A1

Waystage
Breakthrough

___

CAE

Communicative approach: some

issues
To develop learners capacity to use the
language effectively.
Role of grammar
Hymess components were distorted
Language learning materials