Communicative competence

Beatriz Rodríguez Rivera

For LA-400 Adquisición de un segundo idioma y estudios de campo.

Communicative competence

What a speaker needs to know to communicateeffectively in culturally significant settings.(Gumperz & Hymes, 1972: vii)

The learner’s ability to understand and use languageappropriately to communicate in authentic (rather thansimulated) social and school environments.

Communicative language teaching:

• Involves developing language proficiency through interactions embedded in meaningful contexts.

• provides authentic opportunities for learning that go beyond repetition and memorization of grammatical patterns in isolation

Canale & Swain (1979, 1980) in their review of the literature on communicative competence suggest three subcomponents which together make up communicative competence.

Grammatical competence

Sociolinguistics competence

Discourse competence

Grammatical competence:

Is just that, a knowledge of lexical items and the rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology (Canale & Swain, 1979:54)

Sociolinguistics competence:

Is defined as the ability to produce and recognize socially appropriate language within a given socio-cultural context

Discourse competence:

Is “defined as the ability to produce and recognize coherent and cohesive text” (canale & Swain, 1983: 5)

http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/eslapb/about_communicative_competence.html

Communicative Competence (Canale and Swain, 1980)

Grammatical Competence

(knowledge of lexical items and of

rules of morphology, syntax,

sentence- grammar semantics, and

phonology)

Sociolinguistic Competence Strategic Competence

(verbal and non-verbal communi-

cation strategies that may be called

into action to compensate for break-

downs in communication due to

performance variables or to

insufficient competence)

Sociocultural

Competence

(knowledge of the

relation of

language use to its

non-linguistic

context)

Discourse

Competence

(knowledge of

rules governing

cohesion and

coherence)

Syllabus

Notional/Functional Syllabus

A notional/function syllabus is one "in which the language content is arranged according to the meanings a learner needs to express through language and the functions the learner will use the language for.

A notional syllabus contains

(a)The meanings and concepts the learner needs in order to communicate (eg time, quantity, duration, location) and the language needed to express them. These concepts and meanings are called notions.

(a) The language needed to express different functions or speech acts (eg requesting, suggesting, promising, describing)." (Richards, Platt, and Weber, 1985, p. 196)

A New Category of Classroom Activities: Meaning Focused Activities

1) Information transfer : is a type of communicative activity that involves thetransfer of information from one medium

eg., from a text to another , from a form, table or diagram).

Such activities are intended to help develop the learner's communicativecompetence by engaging them in meaning-focused communication

A New Category of Classroom Activities: Meaning Focused Activities

2) Information Gap: Is a type of communicative activity in which eachparticipant in the activity holds some information other participants don't haveand all participants have to share the information they have with otherparticipants in order to successfully complete a task or solve a problem.

3) Problem Solving

Example 1: Listen to the following dialogues and find out how much each customer needs to pay for his or her order. Use the menu provided (menu not shown here).

Customer 1--Are you ready to order?--Yes. I'd like to have a hamburger, French fries, and a cola, please.--Is that all for you?--Yes.--Please pull to the front. Thank you.

4) Role-Playing and Simulation

A New Category of Classroom Activities: Meaning Focused Activities

1) Critical Features: --goal-directed, i.e., a means rather than an end in itself. Language is considered as a "service" rather than studied as a subject for its own sake.--based on an analysis of learners' needs (Jiang: including analysis of the register/genre of the language used in the target situation)

2) Typical Characteristics:--learners are frequently adults;--the time period available for learning is often limited;--homogeneity (of subject background or profession) may exist. (from Johnson and Johnson,1998)