Communicative Competence (www.nclrc.

org/essentials)

Language teaching in the United States is based on the idea that the goal of language acquisition is
communicative competence: the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately to accomplish
communication goals. The desired outcome of the language learning process is the ability to communicate
competently, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native speaker does.

Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and
strategic.

 Linguistic competence is knowing how to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a language.
Linguistic competence asks: What words do I use? How do I put them into phrases and sentences?
 Sociolinguistic competence is knowing how to use and respond to language appropriately, given the
setting, the topic, and the relationships among the people communicating. Sociolinguistic
competence asks: Which words and phrases fit this setting and this topic? How can I express a
specific attitude (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when I need to? How do I know what
attitude another person is expressing?
 Discourse competence is knowing how to interpret the larger context and how to construct longer
stretches of language so that the parts make up a coherent whole. Discourse competence asks: How
are words, phrases and sentences put together to create conversations, speeches, email messages,
newspaper articles?
 Strategic competence is knowing how to recognize and repair communication breakdowns, how to
work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the language, and how to learn more about the language
and in the context. Strategic competence asks: How do I know when I’ve misunderstood or when
someone has misunderstood me? What do I say then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know
the name of something or the right verb form to use?

In the early stages of language learning, instructors and students may want to keep in mind the goal of
communicative efficiency: That learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current
proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message (due to faulty pronunciation,
grammar, or vocabulary); to avoid offending communication partners (due to socially inappropriate style);
and to use strategies for recognizing and managing communication breakdowns.

 Aspects of communicative competence

Source:http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/languagelearning/otherresources/
GudlnsFrALnggAndCltrLrnngPrgrm/AspectsOfCommunicativeCompeten.htm

Introduction
Communicative competence is a concept introduced by Dell Hymes and discussed and redefined by
many authors. Hymes' original idea was that speakers of a language have to have more than
  grammatical competence (cf. Chomsky’s view) in order to be able communicate effectively in a
language; they also need to know how language is used by members of a speech community to
accomplish their purposes.
The modules in this section identify eight aspects of communicative competence. They are grouped
 
together in two groups of four:

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 Linguistic aspects
 Phonology and orthography
   Grammar

 Vocabulary

 Discourse (textual)
Pragmatic aspects
 Functions
 Variations

   Interactional skills
 Cultural framework

Linguistic aspects of communicative competence

Introduction
The linguistics aspects of communicative competence are those that have to do with achieving an
internalized functional knowledge of the elements and structures of the language.
 
What is phonological competence?
Definition

Phonological competence is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive meaningful sounds
 
of a language, including:
 consonants
 vowels
 tone patterns

   intonation patterns
 rhythm patterns
 stress patterns

 any other suprasegmental features that carry meaning

Related to phonological competence is orthographic competence, or the ability to decipher and
 
write the writing system of a language.
Example
  In Korean there are three kinds of velar stops: aspirated, fortis and lenis. It is important to be able to
distinguish these sounds, because there are a number of different words that are pronounced the same,
except for the difference in these stops. It is also important to be able to pronounce these consonants
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 correctly so that Korean speakers can tell which word the language learner means.
What is grammatical competence?

Definition

Grammatical competence is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive grammatical
 
structures of a language and to use them effectively in communication.

Note:
  Grammatical competence as defined by Noam Chomsky would include phonological competence.
Examples
Learners of French need to learn to understand the different time references of sets of words such as je
partais, je parte, je parterai, and to be able to make appropriate time reference when speaking or
  writing.
What is lexical competence?

Definition

Lexical competence is the ability to recognize and use words in a language in the way that speakers
  of the language use them. Lexical competence includes understanding the different relationships
among families of words and the common collocations of words.
Example
Learners learning English need to be able to recognize the concept of chair and what makes it different
from a stool, a sofa, or a bench. They also need to know that a chair is a piece of furniture, and that
there are various kinds of chairs, including easy chairs, deck chairs, office chairs, rocking chairs and
  so on. They also need to understand how chair is now used in an extended sense for what used to be
termed a chairman, especially when referring to a woman, as in Julie Wright is the chair of the
committee.
What is discourse competence (textual)?

Definition

Discourse competence is used to refer to two related, but distinct abilities. Textual discourse
competence refers to the ability to understand and construct monologues or written texts of
different genres, such as narratives, procedural texts, expository texts, persuasive (hortatory) texts,
 
descriptions and others. These discourse genres have different characteristics, but in each genre
there are some elements that help make the text coherent, and other elements which are used to
make important points distinctive or prominent.

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 Learning a language involves learning how to relate these different types of discourse in such a
  way that hearers or readers can understand what is going on and see what is important. Likewise it
involves being able to relate information in a way that is coherent to the readers and hearers.
Note Many authors use the term discourse to refer to conversational interaction, so that
: discourse competence could also refer to the ability to participate effectively in
 
conversations. In the Language Learning Bookshelf conversational interaction is
considered a part of interactional competence.
Example
  Consider the following short discourse in English:
Once upon a time there was an old woman named Mother Hubbard, who had a dearly-loved dog
  named Bowser. Mother Hubbard was very poor and didn't always have enough food for herself and
her pet.
One day Bowser came running up and barked hopefully to show his mistress how hungry he was.
  Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor doggie a bone, because she felt sorry for
him. But when she got to the cupboard it was bare, and so poor Bowser went hungry.
Discussion
This story starts with the phrase Once upon a time, which tells us that it is a fairy tale. The first
paragraph goes on to introduce the two characters: Mother Hubbard and Bowser. It also tells us the
background information we need to know about Mother Hubbard. Even though this is such a short
 
story we need to keep track of the two participants and the props: the cupboard and the bone. Note the
words used to refer to Mother Hubbard: an old woman, herself, his mistress, she and those used to
refer to Bowser: a dearly-loved dog, her pet, her poor doggie, him, poor Bowser.
The second paragraph starts with the words One day, which introduce an event we expect to be
 
important. (In fact, it is the only episode in our story!) This episode has three main events:
 Bowser ran up and barked hopefully

   Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard

 The cupboard was bare

There is also some further information in subordinate clauses, which are linked to the main clauses by
 
words that show the relationship between them:
 to show his mistress how hungry he was tells us the purpose for which Bowser barked.
 because she felt sorry for him tells us the reason why Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.
 
 to get her poor doggie a bone tells us the purpose of going to the cupboard.

 and so poor Bowser went hungry tells us the result of the cupboard being bare.
The words But when she got there introduce the climax of the story: She expected the bone to be there,
 
but it wasn't so poor Bowser went hungry.
  So even in a short story such as this, we can identify cohesive and prominence elements in an English
narrative text. Children learn intuitively as they are learning English, but adult learners may be helped
by conscious attention to such elements.

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 Pragmatic aspects of communicative competence

Introduction
The pragmatic aspects of communicative competence are those that have to do with how language is
  used in communication situations to achieve the speaker's purposes.
What is functional competence?

Definition

Functional competence refers to the ability to accomplish communication purposes in a language.

 
There are a number of different kinds of purposes for which people commonly use language.
Examples
Greeting people is one purpose for which we use language. What we actually say in English could be
  Good morning, Hi, How ya doin, or Yo, depending on who we are and who we are talking to.
What is sociolinguistic competence?

Definition

Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to interpret the social meaning of the choice of linguistic
 
varieties and to use language with the appropriate social meaning for the communication situation.
Note Sociolinguistics is a very broad discipline and the term sociolinguistic competence could
  : be used much more broadly than it is here, where we have restricted its use to refer to the
recognition and use of appropriate varieties of language.
Examples
When greeting someone in a very formal situation an American might say, Hello, how are you? or
Nice to see you again, but if he were meeting a friend in an informal situation it would be much more
  appropriate to say Hi, or Hey, whatcha been doing?
What is interactional competence?

Definition

Interactional competence involves knowing and using the mostly-unwritten rules for interaction in
various communication situations within a given speech community and culture. It includes, among
  other things, knowing how to initiate and manage conversations and negotiate meaning with other
people. It also includes knowing what sorts of body language, eye contact, and proximity to other
people are appropriate, and acting accordingly.
Examples

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 A conversation with a checker at the check-out line in a grocery store in the US or England shouldn't
be very personal or protracted, as the purpose of the conversation is mainly a business transaction and
it would be considered inappropriate to make the people further back in the queue wait while a
  customer and the checker have a social conversation. Other cultures have different rules of interaction
in a market transaction.
What is cultural competence?

Definition

Cultural competence is the ability to understand behavior from the standpoint of the members of a
culture and and to behave in a way that would be understood by the members of the culture in the
  intended way. Cultural competence therefore involves understanding all aspects of a culture, but
particularly the social structure, the values and beliefs of the people, and the way things are
assumed to be done.
Examples
It is impossible to speak Korean or Japanese correctly without understanding the social structure of
  the respective societies, because that structure is reflected in the endings of words and the terms of
address and reference that must be used when speaking to or about other people.

Source: http://cefanewsletter.blogspot.com/2008/11/communicative-competence.html

Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers to a learner's L2 ability. It not only refers to a
learner's ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use
these utterances appropriately. The term unlies the view of language learning implicit in the communicative
approach to language teaching.

The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966, reacting against the perceived inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's
(1965) distinction between competence and performance. Hymes' ideas about communicative competence
were originally research-based rather than pedagogical. Specifically, to address Chomsky's abstract notion of
competence, Hymes (1972; 1977; 1994) discussed the ethnographic-oriented exploration of communicative
competence that included 'communicative form and function in integral relation to each other. His research-
oriented ideas have undergone an epistemic transformation: from empirically oriented questions to an
idealized pedagogic doctrine' (Leung, 2005).

Chomsky's view of linguistic competence, however, was not intended to inform pedagogy, but serve as part
of developing a theory of the linguistic system itself, idealized as the abstract language knowledge of the
monolingual adult native speaker, and distinct from how they happen to use and experience language.
Hymes, rather than Chomsky, had developed a theory of education and learning.

Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of four components:

1. grammatical competence: words and rules

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2. sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness
3. discourse competence: cohesion and coherence
4. strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

Canale and Swain's definition has become canonical in applied linguistics.

A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into the broad headings
of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence,
and "pragmatic competence," which includes both sociolinguistic and "illocutionary" competence.

Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted that
communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice
(e.g. Savignon 1998). This is in contrast to previous views in which grammatical competence was
commonly given top priority. The understanding of communicative competence has been influenced by the
field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts as described in large part by John
Searle and J.L. Austin.

Testing Communicative Competence

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kitao-Testing.html

Testing language has traditionally taken the form of testing knowledge about language, usually the testing of
knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. However, there is much more to being able to use language than
knowledge about it. Dell Hymes proposed the concept of communicative competence. He argued that a
speaker can be able to produce grammatical sentences that are completely inappropriate. In communicative
competence, he included not only the ability to form correct sentences but to use them at appropriate times.
Since Hymes proposed the idea in the early 1970s, it has been expanded considerably, and various types of
competencies have been proposed. However, the basic idea of communicative competence remains the
ability to use language appropriately, both receptively and productively, in real situations.

The Communicative Approach to Testing

What Communicative Language Tests Measure

Communicative language tests are intended to be a measure of how the testees are able to use language in
real life situations. In testing productive skills, emphasis is placed on appropriateness rather than on ability
to form grammatically correct sentences. In testing receptive skills, emphasis is placed on understanding the
communicative intent of the speaker or writer rather than on picking out specific details. And, in fact, the
two are often combined in communicative testing, so that the testee must both comprehend and respond in
real time. In real life, the different skills are not often used entirely in isolation. Students in a class may
listen to a lecture, but they later need to use information from the lecture in a paper. In taking part in a group
discussion, they need to use both listening and speaking skills. Even reading a book for pleasure may be
followed by recommending it to a friend and telling the friend why you liked it.

The "communicativeness" of a test might be seen as being on a continuum. Few tests are completely
communicative; many tests have some element of communicativeness. For example, a test in which testees
listen to an utterance on a tape and then choose from among three choices the most appropriate response is

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more communicative than one in which the testees answer a question about the meaning of the utterance.
However, it is less communicative than one in which the testees are face- to-face with the interlocutor
(rather than listening to a tape) and are required to produce an appropriate response.

Tasks

Communicative tests are often very context-specific. A test for testees who are going to British universities
as students would be very different from one for testees who are going to their company's branch office in
the United States. If at all possible, a communicative language test should be based on a description of the
language that the testees need to use. Though communicative testing is not limited to English for Specific
Purposes situations, the test should reflect the communicative situation in which the testees are likely to find
themselves. In cases where the testees do not have a specific purpose, the language that they are tested on
can be directed toward general social situations where they might be in a position to use English.

This basic assumption influences the tasks chosen to test language in communicative situations. A
communicative test of listening, then, would test not whether the testee could understand what the utterance,
"Would you mind putting the groceries away before you leave" means, but place it in a context and see if the
testee can respond appropriately to it.

If students are going to be tested over communicative tasks in an achievement test situation, it is necessary
that they be prepared for that kind of test, that is, that the course material cover the sorts of tasks they are
being asked to perform. For example, you cannot expect testees to correctly perform such functions as
requests and apologies appropriately and evaluate them on it if they have been studying from a structural
syllabus. Similarly, if they have not been studying writing business letters, you cannot expect them to write a
business letter for a test.

Tests intended to test communicative language are judged, then, on the extent to which they simulate real
life communicative situations rather than on how reliable the results are. In fact, there is an almost inevitable
loss of reliability as a result of the loss of control in a communicative testing situation. If, for example, a test
is intended to test the ability to participate in a group discussion for students who are going to a British
university, it is impossible to control what the other participants in the discussion will say, so not every
testee will be observed in the same situation, which would be ideal for test reliability. However, according to
the basic assumptions of communicative language testing, this is compensated for by the realism of the
situation.

Evaluation

There is necessarily a subjective element to the evaluation of communicative tests. Real life situations don't
always have objectively right or wrong answers, and so band scales need to be developed to evaluate the
results. Each band has a description of the quality (and sometimes quantity) of the receptive or productive
performance of the testee.

Examples of Communicative Test Tasks

Speaking/Listening

Information gap. An information gap activity is one in which two or more testees work together, though it is
possible for a partner or colleague of the examiner rather than a testee to take one of the parts. Each testee is
given certain information but also lacks some necessary information. The task requires the testees to ask for

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and give information. The task should provide a context in which it is logical for the testees to be sharing
information.

The following is an example of an information gap activity.

Student A

You are planning to buy a tape recorder. You don't want to spend more than about 80 pounds, but you think
that a tape recorder that costs less than 50 pounds is probably not of good quality. You definitely want a tape
recorder with auto reverse, and one with a radio built in would be nice. You have investigated three models
of tape recorder and your friend has investigated three models. Get the information from him/her and share
your information. You should start the conversation and make the final decision, but you must get his/her
opinion, too.

(information about three kinds of tape recorders)

Student B

Your friend is planning to buy a tape recorder, and each of you investigated three types of tape recorder.
You think it is best to get a small, light tape recorder. Share your information with your friend, and find out
about the three tape recorders that your friend investigated. Let him/her begin the conversation and make the
final decision, but don't hesitate to express your opinion.

(information about three kinds of tape recorders)

This kind of task would be evaluated using a system of band scales. The band scales would emphasize the
testee's ability to give and receive information, express and elicit opinions, etc. If its intention were
communicative, it would probably not emphasize pronunciation, grammatical correctness, etc., except to the
extent that these might interfere with communication. The examiner should be an observer and not take part
in the activity, since it is difficult to both take part in the activity and evaluate it. Also, the activity should be
tape recorded, if possible, so that it could be evaluated later and it does not have to be evaluated in real time.

Role Play. In a role play, the testee is given a situation to play out with another person. The testee is given in
advance information about what his/her role is, what specific functions he/she needs to carry out, etc. A role
play task would be similar to the above information gap activity, except that it would not involve an
information gap. Usually the examiner or a confederate takes one part of the role play.

The following is an example of a role play activity.

Student

You missed class yesterday. Go to the teacher's office and apologize for having missed the class. Ask for the
handout from the class. Find out what the homework was.

Examiner

You are a teacher. A student who missed your class yesterday comes to your office. Accept her/his apology,
but emphasize the importance of attending classes. You do not have any extra handouts from the class, so
suggest that she/he copy one from a friend. Tell her/him what the homework was.
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Again, if the intention of this test were to test communicative language, the testee would be assessed on
his/her ability to carry out the functions (apologizing, requesting, asking for information, responding to a
suggestion, etc.) required by the role.

Testing Reading and Writing

Some tests combine reading and writing in communicative situations. Testees can be given a task in which
they are presented with instructions to write a letter, memo, summary, etc., answering certain questions,
based on information that they are given.

Letter writing. In many situations, testees might have to write business letters, letters asking for information,
etc.

The following is an example of such a task.

Your boss has received a letter from a customer complaining about problems with a coffee maker that he
bought six months ago. Your boss has instructed you to check the company policy on returns and repairs and
reply to the letter. Read the letter from the customer and the statement of the company policy about returns
and repairs below and write a formal business letter to the customer.

(the customer's complaint letter; the company policy)

The letter would be evaluated using a band scale, based on compliance with formal letter writing layout, the
content of the letter, inclusion of correct and relevant information, etc.

Summarizing. Testees might be given a long passage--for example, 400 words--and be asked to summarize
the main points in less than 100 words. To make this task communicative, the testees should be given
realistic reasons for doing such a task. For example, the longer text might be an article that their boss would
like to have summarized so that he/she can incorporate the main points into a talk.

The summary would be evaluated, based on the inclusion of the main points of the longer text.

Testing Listening and Writing/Note Taking

Listening and writing may also be tested in combination. In this case, testees are given a listening text and
they are instructed to write down certain information from the text. Again, although this is not interactive, it
should somehow simulate a situation where information would be written down from a spoken text.

An example of such a test is as follows.

You and two friends would like to see a movie. You call the local multiplex theater. Listen to their recording
and fill in the missing information in the chart so that you can discuss it with your friends later.

Theater Number Movie Starting Times

1 Air Head

2 4:00, 6:00, 8:00

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 3 4:35, 6:45, 8:55

4 Off Track
Summary

Communicative language tests are those which make an effort to test language in a way that reflects the way
that language is used in real communication. It is, of course, not always possible to make language tests
communicative, but it may often be possible to give them communicative elements. This can have beneficial
backwash effects. If students are encouraged to study for more communicative tasks, this can only have a
positive effect on their language learning.

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