Communicative Language AbilityLyle F . Bachman A presentation by: Zeynab Khalafi

Communicative Language Ability

• Communicative language ability includes the competence of language and the capacity for implementing this competence.

• the ability to use language ability to use language communicatively involves both knowledge of or competence in the language and the capacity for implementing , or using this competence.(widdowson1983,candlin1986).

Language Proficiency and Communicative Competence

• Early Models (Lado): distinguish skills (reading, speaking) from components of knowledge (grammar, vocabulary)

• Later Models• Halliday (1976): language functions• VanDijk (1977): delineation of the relationship between text

and context.• Hymes (1972): recognize the sociocultural factors in the

speech situation• Recognition of the dynamic interaction between the context

and the discourse.

Framework of Communicative Language Ability (CLA)

• Communicative language ability (CLA) can be described as consisting of both knowledge, or competence and the capacity for implementing, or executing that competence in appropriate ,contextualized communicative language use.(candlin 1986).

Framework of Communicative Language Ability (CLA)• Three components:• Language competence: specific knowledge of

components used in communication• Strategic competence: mental capacity for implementing

the components of language competence in contextualized communicative language use. (real-word knowledge, sociocultural knowledge).

• Psychophysiological mechanisms: neurological and psychological process in the actual execution of language as a physical phenomenon.(sound,light)

Framework of Communicative Language Ability (CLA)

Framework of Communicative Language Ability (CLA)

• Attempts to prove the validity of the components have not been successful.

• Allen (1983) tried to measure grammatical competence (morphology and syntax) , discourse competence (cohesion and coherence) and sociolinguistic competence (sensitivity to register), failed to support the factorial distinctness of these particular components.

Framework of Communicative Language Ability

• Bachman(1982): grammatical and pragmatically competence are closely associated with each other, while sociolinguistic competence are distinct.

Framework of Communicative Language Ability (CLA)

Language Competence

• Language competence: grammatical, sociolinguistic, and discourse competence (Canale & Swain):– organizational competence

» grammatical competence» textual competence

– pragmatic competence» illocutionary competence» sociolinguistic competence

Language Competence

The organizational competence is divided into grammatical competence and textual competence.

Language Competence

• Grammatical Competence:

Knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, phonology and graphology.

These competences govern the choice of words to express specific significations, their forms, their arrangement in utterances to express propositions, and their physical realizations as described by widdowson(1987).

Language Competence

The textual competence, pertains to the knowledge of conventions for cohesion and coherenceand rehetorical organization. It also includes conventions for language use in conversations, involving starting, maintaining, and closing conversations.

Bachman’s textual competence have both the part of

Canale and Swain’s discourse competence andthe part of their strategies.

Language Competence

• textual competence is Knowledge of the conventions for joining utterances together to form a text

• Convention (Halliday): semantic relationships such as references, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

• Convention (Grice): given and new information• Conventions Of rhetorical organization: narration, description,

comparison, classification, process analysis.• Conventions of conversational language: establishing,

maintaining, terminating conversations, attention getting, topic nomination, topic development and conversation maintenance.

pragmatic Competence

• Pragmatic competence: is the relationships between the language users and the context of communication, utterance and the acts or functions that speakers intend to perform through these utterances.

• Van Dijk’s aspects of pragmatics:

pragmatic Competence

• The examination of the pragmatic conditions that whether or not a given utterance is acceptable to other users of the language as an act, or the performance of an intended function

• The characterization of the conditions that determine which utterances are successful in which situations.

Language Competence

• Pragmatic Competence:

Bachman’s pragmatic competence, mainly focuses on the relationship between what one says in his or her communicative acts and what functions he or she intends to perform through his or her utterances.

• illocutionary competence: (ideational, manipulative, heuristic,& imaginativefunctions; coherence; speech acts).

Language Functions of Illocutionary Competence

• Manipulative function: the primary purpose is to affect the world around us. this function is performed in formulating and stating rules, laws and norms of behavior.

• we have two functions according to manipulative:

• 1- regulatory : is used to control the behavior of others. • 2- interactional : is used to form, maintain, or change

interpersonal relationships. Any act of interpersonal language use involves two levels of message:

a) context b) relationship

Language Functions of Illocutionary Competence

• Ideational function: we express meaning in terms of our experience of the real world.

• Heuristic function: extend our knowledge of the world around us.

• Imaginative function: create or extend our own environment for humorous or esthetic purposes, where the value derives from the way in which the language itself is used.

Sociolinguistic Competence

• sociolinguistic component is the sensitivity to, or control of the convections of language use that are determined by the features of the specific language use context ; it enables us to perform language functions in ways that are appropriate to that context.

• Here are 4 abilities under sociolinguistic competence

Language Competence

1. Sensitivity to differences in dialect or variety : in every language there are variations in use that may be associated with different geographic regions or different social groups. These can be characterized by different conventions and the appropriateness of their use will vary, depending on the features of the language use context.

Sociolinguistic competence

2.Sensitivity to differences in register : register refer to variation in language use within a single dialect or variety. We distinguish differences in register in terms of 3 aspects of the language use context : 1) field of discourse. 2) mode of discourse 3) style of discourse.

Language Competence

3.Sensitivity to naturalness: It allows the user to either formulate or interpret an utterance which is not only linguistically accurate, but which is also phrased in what researchers called a native like way.

4.Ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech : It allows to use and interpret cultural references and figures of speech. Knowledge of the extended meaning given by a specific culture to particular events, places, institutions or people is required are referred to in language use.

Language Competence

• textual competence is Knowledge of the conventions for joining utterances together to form a text

• Convention (Halliday): semantic relationships such as references, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

• Convention (Grice): given and new information• Conventions Of rhetorical organization: narration, description,

comparison, classification, process analysis.• Conventions of conversational language: establishing,

maintaining, terminating conversations, attention getting, topic nomination, topic development and conversation maintenance.

Sociolinguistic Competence

• Appropriateness of these functions and their varieties in language use context

• Sensitivity to differences in dialect or variety• Sensitivity to differences in register• Sensitivity to naturalness• Ability to interpret cultural references and figures of

speech.

Strategic Competence

• Interactional definition (Tarone: 1981): the mutual attempt by two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations where the requisite meaning structures do not seem to be shared. Problem: some communicative language use involves only one individual.

• Canale and Swain (1980): the definition of strategic competence includes both the compensatory characteristic and enhancement characteristic.

• Faerch and Kasper (1983): speech production includes a planning phase and an execution phase.

• Planning phrase: communicative goals and planning process

Psycholinguistic Description of Strategies

Psycholinguistic Description of Strategies

• Communicative goals: an actional element associated with speech acts, an modal element associated with the role relationship and a prepositional element associated with the content of the communicative event.

• Planning process: interaction of three components—the communicative goal, the communicative resources and the assessment of the communicative situation.

• Execution phase: neurological and physiological processes of implementation of the plan.

Bachman’s strategic competence

• Assessment component

• Planning component

• Execution component

Assessment Component

Enables us to:• Identify the information• Determine what language competencies are at our

disposal.• Ascertain the abilities and knowledge that are shared

by our interlocutors.• Following the communication attempt, evaluate the

extent to which the communicative goal has been achieved.

Planning Component

• The planning component retrieves relevant items from language competence and formulates a plan whose realization is expected to achieve the communicative goal.

Execution Component

• The execution component draws on the relevant psychophysiciological mechanisms to implement the plan in the modality and channel appropriate to the communicative goal and the context.

The influence of strategic competence on language test performance

• It wants to extent to which strategic competence affect scores on language test. Some types of test tasks may measure strategic competence almost by design.

• The type of scanning used can also be expected to

influence the effect of starting competence on test performance . If a test is scored solely on the basis of the practical effect of the language performance, the potential contribution of strategic competence may be high.

Can we measure strategic competence?

• Intelligence is distinct from language abilities. It may be inaccurate to identify strategic competence with intelligence . At the same time, to simply dismiss strategic competence as a general ability whose effects on language test performance we can't measure is to beg the question.

Psychosiological mechanisms

• In order to fully characterize language use, it is necessary to consider the psychophysiological mechanisms that are involved in language use. These are essentially the neurological and physiological processes that include the execution phase language use . thus we can distinguish the visual from the auditory channel and the productive from the receptive mode.

• That are shared by our interlocutor following the communication attempt , evaluate the extent to which the communicative goal has been achieved.