UNIVERSITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT

Fr. Selga St., Bankerohan / Bonifacio St., Davao City

International Webinar on Sociolinguistics

“Together We Can Learn”: Sociolinguistic Awareness as Weapon to Global Competence in

Facing the Inevitably Changing World

Karl Patrick Bano Amper

Last October 22, 2022, an international webinar was conducted and organized for the attendees
to understand the sociocultural nature of human language. Two (2) brilliant guest speakers of the event
were Dr. Djuwari and Dr. Sawitri. Based on their relevant discussions, I have learned so many things that
helped me have a deeper knowledge of how language and society work.

Dr. Djuwari focused on the perspective of sociolinguistic competence such as grammatical

competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. According to
him, grammatical competence manipulates and combines words to create longer meaning units can be
characterized as having good grammar. A student who understands grammar has mastered and can
apply these principles to express themselves in the acceptable use of the language forms. These rules
control how units of meaning may be created in any language. Therefore, an appropriate variety of
linguistic forms must be created to categorize the words and other possible aspects. It is crucial to realize
that the cognitive terms provided to these categories are largely arbitrary; rather, the importance of the
labels is determined by how they are employed in the rules and lexicon.

This is supported by Richards (2016) who stated that grammatical competence refers to the
understanding of the parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, and syntactic structures used to make
grammatically sound sentences in English. Grammar is the set of rules used to construct sentences.
Sentence grammar governs how to construct grammatically sound sentences. In like manner,
grammatical competency is defined as every task that the students are asked to perform, and that results
in a clear outcome. The task's sole purpose is to engage the students engagingly and difficulty with the
content they will be practicing.

The next thing he discussed is sociolinguistic competence where he clearly stated that the
teachers' understanding of the significance of the development of sociolinguistic competence, they are
one of the most significant factors in the language development of students. Regarding the idea of
sociolinguistic competence, it is vital to take into account the social component in the form of social rules
that set the limits of appropriate behavior on the one hand while also highlighting the other end of the
politeness scale. In addition, Kramsch (2014) makes a connection between the lack of proficiency in
language use in everyday situations and the demands placed on teachers to guide their charges toward a
particular degree of competence. She makes the implication that macro-level decisions dictate how
lessons are taught in classrooms. Additionally, they must cover the language teaching materials by the
 UNIVERSITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Fr. Selga St., Bankerohan / Bonifacio St., Davao City

prescribed curricula and syllabuses. With this, I believe that it is not an easy undertaking that could be
changed easily to teach language usage in a classroom context. Learning a second or foreign language is
a holistic process that necessitates internalizing sociolinguistic norms to help learners choose the most
appropriate forms in addition to mastering structural, discourse, and strategic rules.

The next topic Dr. Djuwari discussed is discourse competence. The skill to comprehend and
produce elaborate speech and writing features that support connectedness and coherence in various
spoken and written texts/genres is referred to as discourse competency. Defining discourse competence
entails not only linguistic knowledge but also the effective application of this knowledge in cultural, social,
and contextual situations. However, to make linguistics a discipline that is relevant to teaching and
learning, we must analyze these components for language learning objectives. Thus, the knowledge and
abilities required to produce texts that adhere to the structural schemata and linguistic conventions of
common discourse styles, both oral (debates, conversations, anecdotes, interviews, public presentations,
etc.) and multimodal (personal electronic communication, blogs, professional websites, etc.), are referred
to as discourse competence.

According to Hui (2021), mastery of discourse competence is required by the social context.
Along with the other competencies, teachers should contribute to its development. Contrary to Chomsky's
theory, which holds that language acquisition takes place in the student's mind independently of context,
Canale and Swain emphasize the significance of social use in language acquisition. They separate the
four elements of communicative competence into linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic
competence. The ability of the learner to comprehend and produce texts in all four domains—listening,
speaking, reading, and writing—is assumed by discourse competence. It relates to the coherence and
cohesion of the text. Therefore, the structure and interpretation of the text are influenced by discourse
competence. As they struggle to understand the distinctions between how texts and discourses are
structured and constructed in their native language and those structures of the target language, it is seen
to be a difficulty for students. Because of the high level of linguistic material in the target language that the
students are unfamiliar with, the new environment could give students different ambiguities.

The last area of language competency he discussed is strategic competency. He defined

strategic competence as how to communicate one's intended meaning through language is known.
According to Anil (2015), communication must be primarily strategic if one wants to be globally
competitive and establish a strong foundation for overall communicative competence. This viewpoint
leads to confusion about the communication strategies students are using in the classroom to
demonstrate strategic communicative competence and how frequently second language learners are
used in the communicative context of the classroom to ensure success in the communication process.
 UNIVERSITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Fr. Selga St., Bankerohan / Bonifacio St., Davao City

The sociolinguistic approach to teaching foreign languages is the topic of Dr. Sawitri. No one
denies the fact that language only emerges and develops as a method of communication in society at this
time. Language is therefore a social phenomenon. As a result, linguists have been interested in the issue
of the connection between language and society since the beginning of the science of language.
Language serves as a tool for any community to gather, preserve, and transfer the knowledge it has
acquired. As a result, society and the social, economic, and cultural changes that are occurring there
must have an impact on the various linguistic levels. Language also has a big influence on society.

As an educator, I believe that common knowledge is one of the most crucial qualities of today's
dynamic professionals is the ability to speak a foreign language. In this sense, the system of higher
professional learning prioritizes the learning of at least one foreign language as a second language for
communication. As a result, learning a foreign language is not only a requirement for professionals who
are experts, but it also contributes to a person's overall cultural development. Therefore, it's crucial to
master the sociolinguistic speech communication conventions that are specific to this society in order to
properly utilize the language of that community. This means thoroughly understanding how social
circumstances affect the speech behavior of communication.

The area of linguistics known as sociolinguistics examines how language affects society and how
society affects language. It discusses the difficulties associated with learning a language, including how to
do so and how to adapt one's language to different social contexts. By doing this, we also interact with a
language's conventional meaning, which we would not have otherwise known. As a result, sociolinguistics
is crucial to understanding both the broad philosophy of language and how society affects language.

According to Faizin (2015) that when a language is studied for different purposes and used in
different ways by different people, there are many different uses for each language. To interact effectively
with others, which may be the ultimate goal, these factors must be taken into account. Therefore, in
teaching language today, the teacher largely focuses on vocabulary, grammar, and textual content
without fully considering interaction, whereas in learning a language to use, relevant places and cultural
aspects of the language must be taken into account to ensure that students never speak another
language fluently.
 UNIVERSITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
POST GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Fr. Selga St., Bankerohan / Bonifacio St., Davao City

References

Anil, B. (2015). Acquisition of English as a second language at the college level - an empirical study. I-
Manager's Journal on English Language Teaching, 5(4), 39-47.
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1766272390? accountid=141440

Faizin, A. HS. (2015). Sociolinguistics In Language Teaching (Sosiolonguistik Dalam Pengajaran

Bahasa). Mabasan, 9(2), 66-77.

Hui, P. (2021). On enhancing students’ discourse competence in reading. Journal of Higher Education
Research, 2(1), 2021.

Kramsch, C. (2014), Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern

Richards, Jack (2016). Definition of Grammar. Retrieved from http://www.profes sor j

ackrichards.com/definitionof-grammar/.