Features of the Different Models of Communicative Competence by Canale & Swain (1980),
Bachman & Palmer (1996), and Celce-Murcia (2007)
Expansion of the Concepts Presented by
Previous Authors and Linguists
Major Changes in the Explication of
Sociolinguistic Competence
The Presentation of Discourse
Competence
Canale & Swain (1980)
 Cease to use the term ‘performance’
and began to use ‘actual
communication’.
 Advance on the idea of considering
both psychological and contextual
variables when modeling
communicative competence and
performance.
 Refer only to sociocultural rules, and
the rules of discourse have been
taken into the new category of
discourse competence.
 Incorporate pragmatics and
proxemics as it involves
appropriateness of meaning and of
form, and the appropriateness of
non-verbal behavior and awareness
of physical spaces and distances in
communication respectively, in the
creation of ‘social meaning’.
 Define it as the ability to produce ‘a
unified spoken or written text in
different genres using cohesion in
form and coherence in meaning.
Bachman & Palmer (1996)
 Point out that affective schemata
interact with topical knowledge to
produce reaction to which the test
developer should be sensitive.
 Classified the use of language into
two aspects: the formal and
conventional aspects.
 Define this as ‘the sensitivity to, or
control of the conventions of
language use; it enables one to
perform language functions in ways
that are appropriate to that context’
(cited in Bachman, 1990). Relevant
components identified are: dialect or
variety, differences in register,
sensitivity to naturalness and
cultural references and figures of
speech.
 Split up cohesion and coherence.
Cohesion occurs explicitly under
textual competence, while
coherence as a title disappears and
is subsumed under illocutionary
competence.
Celce-Murcia (2007)
 Introduces interactional
competence which comprises of
actional, conversational and non-
verbal/paralinguistic competencies.
 Introduces formulaic competence as
a counterbalance to linguistic
competence.
 Shows the importance of the
integration of cultural and cross-
cultural instruction alongside
language instruction.
 Re-labels this as sociocultural
competence ‘to better distinguish it
from actional competence’,
advancing grammatical competence
into linguistic competence.
 Concurs with Canale & Swain’s
original concept, but added two
more sub-areas which are deixis
and generic structure.

Major Changes in the Explication of
Strategic Competence
General Implication of the Model when
Applied in Language Testing and
Assessment
 Claim that these are strategies that
enhance the effectiveness of
communication such as changing
the speed or pitch of delivery for
rhetorical effect.
 Point out that pencil and paper
tests of knowledge alone cannot
directly indicate whether a language
learner can actually speak or write
in a communicative situation.
 Because communicative
competence was only generally
viewed as knowledge, they argue
that using discrete point tests, as
seen useful – though heavily
criticized during the 1970’s, is not
theoretically sound.
 Suggest that the model, especially if
more ‘fine grained’, could be used
to develop criteria for the
evaluation of language
performance, at different levels of
proficiency.
 Introduce this as a set of
metacognitive strategies, or ‘higher-
order processes’ that explain the
interaction of the knowledge and
affective component of the language
use.
 Emphasize that this is affected by the
knowledge structures (world
knowledge) of the language user
(cited in Bachman, 1990).
 Argue that this is best seen in terms
of psycholinguistic model of speech
production which is made up of
assessment, planning and execution
components.
 Suggest that their model can be
used directly as a checklist to aid in
the design and development of
language tests.
 Adds three more important
purposes of learning strategies
which were taken from the idea of
Oxford (2001). These are the
cognitive, metacognitive and
memory-related strategies.
 Suggests that the model aims at
giving learners the knowledge and
skills they need to be linguistically
and culturally competent in a
second or foreign language that
should be considered in the
principles for design and
implementation of language
courses.