Communication and Skill

In this module on communication, the reader explores the nature and

consequences of a particular definition of communication: the expres-
sion and interpretation of meaning in a given context. Special attention
is given to context (i.e., physical setting, participants, purpose of com-
munication) and how these impact how we think about communication
in language classrooms.

Bill VanPatten is professor of Spanish and second language studies at

Michigan State University.

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 The Routledge E-Modules on Contemporary
Language Teaching
Series Editors: Bill VanPatten, Michigan State
University, USA, and Gregory D. Keating,
San Diego State University, USA

The Routledge E-Modules on Contemporary Language Teaching series is

an exciting and innovative approach to topics for the novice or in-training
teacher of languages. Written in an easily accessible style and delivered in
e-format only, specialists and experts provide the latest thinking on a variety
of issues that form the foundation of language-teacher knowledge and prac-
tice: the nature of language and communication, second language acquisi-
tion, interactive tasks, assessment, focus on form, vocabulary development,
and technology in language teaching, among many others. Each module
serves as a self-contained unit to be used on its own or as part of an intro-
ductory course on language teaching. Instructors may “mix and match”
modules to create their own readings for a course on language teaching.
The modules may serve as primary reading or as supplemental reading,
with each module offering points of reflection, discussion questions, self-
quizzes, and a reading list for those who wish to delve further into the topic.
Language
Bill VanPatten

Communication and Skill

Bill VanPatten

Second Language Acquisition

The Basics
Gregory D. Keating

Vocabulary in Language Teaching

Joe Barcroft

Interactive Tasks
Michael J. Leeser and Justin P. White

Focusing on Form in Language Instruction

Wynne Wong and Daphnée Simard

Technology in Language Learning

An Overview
Bryan Smith

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 Communication and Skill

Bill VanPatten

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 First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Bill VanPatten to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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ISBN: 978-1-315-67958-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

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 Communication and Skill
Bill VanPatten
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Overview
In this module you will explore the following topics:

• the nature of communication

• how context affects communication
• the purpose of communication
• the nature of skill
• skill as proficiency
• communication versus language
• how the above information can be used to inform contempo-
rary language teaching

If you’ve read the module on the nature of language, you know that lin-
guists define language as some kind of underlying mental representation
that is implicit and abstract in nature. As underlying mental representa-
tion, language consists of constraints on the properties of a linguistic
system such that a speaker knows not just what is possible in a given
language but also what is impossible. For example, the English speaker
knows that Does Bill drink vodka? is possible in English and that Drinks
Bill vodka? is not possible in English, while the Spanish speaker knows
that the equivalent of Drinks Bill vodka? is possible in Spanish but not
the equivalent of Does Bill drink vodka? Neither the English speaker nor
the Spanish speaker knows why the versions of the sentences just pre-
sented are impossible in each of their languages; they only know that they
aren’t. This is what makes mental representation of language implicit.
What makes this representation abstract is the subject of formal linguis-
tic inquiry, and if the reader is interested, there is some discussion in the
module on the nature of language. The point to underscore here is that
this mental representation does not resemble the types of rules found
in textbooks (e.g., “The English passive is formed by . . .”) or the kinds

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 2 Bill VanPatten

Figure 1 What is this man indicating with this gesture and facial expression?

of prescriptive rules given by teachers and language purists (e.g., “don’t

use double negatives”). Mental representation is difficult to describe in
simple terms.
Different from language is communication, although many people
tend to confuse the two. Communication is one of the things that people
do with language, although people can communicate with each other
without language (e.g., all adult North Americans know what the man
in Figure 1 above is indicating) and species that don’t have language are
very good at communicating a wide variety of messages (e.g., every dog
can read every other dog’s tail position). Before we contrast language
with communication, let’s create a working definition of communication.

The Nature of Communication

Definitions of communication abound, and experts might argue about the
specifics of a definition. But what is clear about communication is that
it involves some kind of meaning exchange between two or more people
(or, to be precise, two animate beings). For this exchange to occur, there
has to be expression and interpretation of meaning. That is, one entity
must express a meaning and another entity must understand what the
other entity is attempting to convey. Communication is never a one-way
venture in which the entire burden is on the person who is attempting
to express something. As you read these words, you are the interpreter
of meaning; I, as the author, am attempting to express meaning. Thus,
expression can be either oral or written—or signed, if we’re talking about
language used among the deaf. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking

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 Communication and Skill 3
that communication is only oral. Likewise, interpretation can involve lis-
tening to or reading something—or watching signing, if we’re talking
about language used among the deaf.
But what is meaning? Minimally, there are two levels to meaning. The
first is the face value of words or phrases. I can say, for example, It’s rain-
ing. And indeed, if you look out the window, you will see precipitation. I
am merely stating a fact. Now imagine that my partner gets ready to leave
the house, kisses me goodbye, and then heads for the door. I shout out, “It’s
raining!” He then stops by the front closet and grabs an umbrella. In this
case, although indeed there is precipitation outside, my utterance had the
additional intent of making a suggestion: you’d better take an umbrella.
What this scenario demonstrates is that a string of sounds (or gestures)
can have either “factual” information or some other hidden “intent,” or
both. These “hidden intents” are called speech acts and include such things
as suggestions, recommendations, compliments, insults, and requests. (For
detailed discussion of speaker intent and what are called speech acts, see the
module on the nature of language, specifically the discussion of pragmatics.)
But the expression and interpretation of meaning is not always success-
ful on the first go-round. In face-to-face communication (or even in chat
rooms), negotiation of meaning occurs if what was expressed was not
what was interpreted. We communicate non-comprehension by a variety
of means, such as asking for clarification, using some gesture or expres-
sion, or by saying something that clearly shows we did not understand or
misinterpreted what the person just said. This in turn triggers the other
person to do something: repeat, state another way, ask a question about
our comprehension, and so on. Following is an example:

TIM: She’s getting married.

NICOLE: LIC.
TIM: I know. It licks.
NICOLE: Licks? No, L—I—C. LIC. Like I Care.
TIM: Oh.

In this interchange, Nicole’s use of the acronym LIC (pronounced like

“lick”) is misinterpreted by Tim, who thinks it’s a verb. Nicole realizes
this by Tim’s response and enters into a repair sequence in which she clar-
ifies her intended meaning. A good deal of native-speaker negotiation of
meaning happens when there is a lack of lexical knowledge, a difference
in cultural knowledge, or the intent of a sentence is misinterpreted—and
there probably isn’t a reader of this module that hasn’t experienced this
kind of negotiation of meaning recently, if not sometime today.
To be sure, there are situations of communication in which negotiation
of meaning may not be present. This happens, for example, when one
reads, when one listens to the radio, when one watches a movie or TV. In
short, whenever there is no interaction involved. And yet, the idea that

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 4 Bill VanPatten
communication is fundamentally both the expression and interpretation
of meaning is present even in non-interactive situations. Let’s illustrate
with an example from writing. As I write this module, I am imagining an
audience of largely non-experts. This does not mean that an expert in lan-
guage teaching and communication may not read this module; it simply
suggests that I am tailoring my writing for a particular group of people. I
am casting the net as wide as possible to make what I write comprehen-
sible. This affects the way I write, the examples I use, the length of my
sentences, terminology and jargon, and so on. Why? Because, as a writer,
I am anticipating the reader’s interpretation. I am asking myself con-
stantly, “Will the reader understand what I have just written? What can I
do to make it fully accessible?” Thus, although it may seem that only the
expression of meaning is involved, I cannot write without contemplation
of the interpretive side of things. To be sure, whether I am successful is
another matter. Indeed, the reader may re-read, ask him or herself, “Did I
just understand that correctly?” and engage in other behaviors indicative
of the reader’s role of interpreter in this particular act of communication.
No matter how the act of reading unfolds, the point to underscore here is
that even in a situation in which it appears that only expression of mean-
ing is involved, the expresser may fully consider how something may be
interpreted. And, ultimately, the goal of the written expression of mean-
ing is that someone will read it—that is, interpret it. In short, there is no
expression of meaning without interpretation at some level.

The Importance of Context

Communication never happens in a vacuum. There is always a context for
communication. By context we are not referring to linguistic context (e.g.,
an article such as ‘the’ is normally followed by some kind of noun phrase),
but instead social or situational context. A variety of factors help to shape
situational context, but the main factors are the participants and the set-
ting. Regarding participants, how communication is effected depends on,
for example, the participants’ relationships to each other, their ages, gen-
der, social status, whether one is human or not, and so on. Setting refers to
the physical context of the communicative event and, to some degree, its
purpose (we will examine the purpose of communication in the next sec-
tion). Although other factors may also affect context, the point to under-
score here is that how people communicate may change depending on the
context. Let’s take a fictional 19-year-old named Jake who is attending
college. Let’s see how he asks questions in the following situations.

[talking with his best friend at lunch in the student union]

JAKE: Hey. Here’s a question only you can answer.
FRIEND: Shoot.

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 Communication and Skill 5
[in a political science class]
JAKE [raising his hand]: Excuse me, Professor. I have a question.
PROFESSOR: Go ahead, Jake.

[with his romantic partner while watching a DVD at home]

JAKE [leaning in close, lowering his voice]:
I have to ask you something.
PARTNER: Hmmmm?

In each scenario, how Jake engages another person depends on who

that person is and what that person’s relationship is to him. It also
depends on the setting and what the people are supposed to be doing at
that time. Note that the context affects both the way Jake asks a question
and the way the other person responds to him. What is more, there may
be a time when Jake has a question but the context suggests to him not
to ask it at that time. Thus, context can also affect not just how we com-
municate but whether we communicate anything at all.
Now, there could be another person, say Bobby, who is also 19 years
old and attends the same university as Jake. Bobby, however, may not
have been raised the same way as Jake, or he might be of a different
socio-economic class or sub-culture within the U.S. For Bobby, some con-
texts may blur, and he may not communicate in the same way as Jake, or
he may use other language. He may not use body language the same way
or raise his hand. What this illustrates is how fluid communication is as a
concept. We can talk about it in the abstract, but we can’t always predict
how it turns out precisely because it is context dependent, and context
can vary greatly.
The role of context has great importance when it comes to language
teaching. When learned in classrooms, the context of communication is
always fixed. That is, the physical setting and the participants, the time of
day, and other factors do not change. The teacher is always the teacher.
The students are always the students. The classroom is always the class-
room. Thus, the context of communication for classroom language learn-
ing tends to limit what is communicated and how it is communicated, a
factor that all teachers must ultimately consider when designing com-
municative curricula.
As another example of how context (participants and setting) affects
communication, let’s recall the example of writing from the previous
section. In that example, I describe how my understanding of the reader
affects both what and how I write something in this module. I under-
stand the reader to be a non-expert in language studies. Thus, the con-
text of writing this module involves me (presumably an expert) and
the “typical” reader (presumably a non-expert). Can you, the reader,
imagine how my choice of language and communicative devices would
change if I assumed the reader was an expert? To be sure, there would
be much more jargon, the text would be riddled with citations such as

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 6 Bill VanPatten
“According to Lee and VanPatten (2003) . . .”, and the writing would
surely seem different to anyone reading the two versions. So, even in
non-interactive situations, there is context and this affects the nature of
the communication.
Context also affects choice of language. For example, I am writing
this module in English. Why is that? Because once again, the context
involves me and the typical reader, who—I have to assume—may not
know Spanish (my other native language). But what happens when the
context involves bilinguals of the same language? Have you ever heard of
code-switching? Code-switching involves the use of two languages in the
same conversation. Following is an example:

MARTIN: And so me, por enojo, le digo, “Forget it.” (por enojo = because
of anger, le digo = I say to him)
ALICE: Pues, that’s how some people are. (pues = well)

Martin and Alice go easily back and forth between Spanish and
English. Although there may be formal rules on code-switching in terms
of syntax (i.e., you can’t just code-switch anywhere in the sentence),
code-switching itself is an act of communication that can only take place
between two people who know both languages. If Martin were talk-
ing to someone who (1) only knew Spanish and (2) wasn’t part of a
perceived social group with whom he could code-switch, he would stay
in Spanish. Or, if he were talking to someone who only knew English,
he would stay in English. And just because two people both know two
languages doesn’t mean they will code-switch during a communicative
interaction. I’ve noted over the years, for example, that colleagues from
Spanish speaking cultures who were raised monolingually tend not to
code-switch with me, even though their English is quite good. There is
something about the use of code-switching that involves more than the
mere knowledge of two languages. That is, there may be something social
or personal about code-switching, with “social” and “personal” clearly
pointing toward participants (i.e., context). In short, code-switching is
another example of communication that is clearly context dependent—
again, context being defined by participants and setting.

Reflection
One factor that influences context is the age of participants. Con-
sider for a moment how little kids, teenagers, and 40-year-olds are
similar or different in (1) what they talk about, and (2) how they
talk about it. What does this reflection suggest to you?

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 Communication and Skill 7
The Purpose of Communication
It is true that humans are social animals. Just like wolves, chimps, dol-
phins, dogs, and many other mammals, humans like to interact with each
other—to greater or lesser degrees, to be sure. We all know or have heard
of the curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone, who has no use for
others. Those people are few and far between. Most of us are pulled into
social interaction because it’s our nature to do so as a species. As part of
this interaction, what purpose does communication serve?
Broadly speaking, communication has two purposes. One is psycho-
social. This purpose entails communication for the establishment and
maintenance of social relationships, for the regulation of people’s roles, for
the creation of emotional bonds, and so on. When the parent says to the
four-year-old, “I said ‘no’ and I mean ‘no,’” that parent is not only com-
municating a desire, but also exerting control over a situation and subtly
reminding the child of who’s in charge. When we pass someone in the
hall and say “Hey. How’s it goin’?”, we are not really out to get detailed
information from that person about his or her life, we are simply acknowl-
edging their presence so as not to be rude. This kind of communication
sort of “greases the wheels” of interaction because without it, at least in
North American culture, interactions would seem blunt and rude. When
we approach an attractive person in a bar or social setting and say, “I think
I’ve seen you around here before,” we are using a well-known “pick up”
line with a purpose other than merely saying you recognize the person; that
is, you are hoping to meet that person and establish some kind of rapport
with him or her. And as one more example, I might introduce a friend
and say, “This is my friend Gretchen.” Pretty perfunctory. But I might
introduce her by saying, “This is my very best friend Gretchen. Be nice to
her, OK?” In this latter introduction, I am signaling to Gretchen how I feel
about her, even though what I’m saying is directed to someone else.
In the everyday world, the psycho-social use of language abounds
among native speakers. It is so woven into how we interact, we don’t
even think about it. And like all communication, it is accompanied by
gestures, facial expressions, and other non-verbal signals that indicate
the psycho-social use of language. (Imagine a “hello” from a colleague in
the hallway that is accompanied by a big smile as opposed to no smile.)
The other major purpose of communication is cognitive-informational.
This purpose involves obtaining particular information as part of some
task, either immediate or future. For example, when the teller in a bank
asks someone if he or she wants the change back in 20-dollar bills, the
teller is asking this question solely for the purpose of completing a finan-
cial transaction. When the clerk in a department store asks someone what
size he or she needs, that person is asking solely for the purpose of getting
the information needed to see if what the customer wants is in stock.
And when the flight attendant comes down the aisle with a cart and asks,

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 8 Bill VanPatten
“Something to drink?” he or she asks this question in order to find out
indeed if you want something to drink. In each of these scenarios, the
purpose of communication is to obtain information to perform a relevant
task or to verify something. In all three cases, the task is immediate; it
will be completed as soon as the information is obtained. Longer-range
tasks involve getting information either for a task that is to be completed
later or because that information will help a person organize a task to
be performed later. In a dating service, for example, a person might be
asked a series of questions such as “What is your favorite movie?” and
“What are you looking for in someone else?” This information is encoded
somewhere for the later task of finding that person someone compatible
(hopefully).
Although we can separate out psycho-social and cognitive-informational
purposes of communication, in real life such purposes often overlap.
One good example is gossip. When two people gossip, they may actually
intend to share information. At the same time, they do so in such a way
as to create a “private circle” with a special relationship between the two.
In short, gossip may involve the exchange of information that at the same
time creates or maintains a relationship between two or more people. In
addition, both psycho-social and cognitive-informational purposes of
communication can alternate within simple exchanges. Let’s expand on
the bank teller scenario touched on above to see how this works:

TELLER: Hi. How are you today? [psycho-social]

CUSTOMER: Just great, just great. And you? [psycho-social]
TELLER: I’m great, too. Thank you for asking. [psycho-social] What can
I do for you? [cognitive-informational and psycho-social]
CUSTOMER: I need to deposit this check. [cognitive-informational]
TELLER: Do you have your bank card? [cognitive-informational]
(Customer shows the card. Teller begins to type into the computer.)
TELLER: Any plans for this weekend? [psycho-social]

Everyday situations such as this one demonstrate that the purpose of

communication is fluid and layered. While we may define communica-
tion as the expression and interpretation of meaning, communication
always happens in a context. And that context creates an interesting tap-
estry of the purpose of communication. People deftly move back and
forth between psycho-social and cognitive-informational uses.
We mentioned briefly above that classrooms are fixed contexts, with
the roles/relationships of teachers and students constant and the physical
setting also constant. Classrooms are not banks, bakeries, restaurants, doc-
tors’ offices, street corners, or movie theaters, and do not involve tellers,
bakers, servers, receptionists, nurses, strangers, or any other type of person
we might encounter. The fixed context of the classroom suggests that both
psycho-social and cognitive-informational purposes of communication
may not be equally represented or distributed in the same way as they are

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 Communication and Skill 9
outside of the classroom. Indeed, one could argue that there is a tilt toward
the cognitive-informational purpose of language in classrooms, given what
classrooms are supposed to achieve. And role-playing does not circumvent
the fixed nature of classrooms. When students are assigned skits to play or
scenes to act out, they are not themselves engaging in actual communica-
tive interactions. They are engaging in a different kind of “interaction,”
and what one has to ask is to what extent are they are truly expressing and
interpreting their own meaning and for what purpose.

Reflection
Although the two most basic purposes of communication are
psycho-social and cognitive-informational, are there others? Or are
any others some specialized form of these two basic purposes? Con-
sider for a moment stand-up comedy. The context for comedy is
(1) a public setting (stage, bar, comedy club) and (2) the comic plus
the audience. What kind of communication, if any, goes on in such
a scenario? Where is the expression and interpretation of meaning?
What is the purpose of the communication?

Communication and Language Teaching

I hear some teachers say, “I teach communicatively” or “I focus on com-
munication in my classroom.” Upon probing, I find out that what is actu-
ally meant by these teachers is that they focus on speaking in some way
or another. For them, speaking is synonymous with communication. But
what do they mean by speaking? And should we take this position, that
is, that communication is about speaking only? Let’s begin by examining
what speaking means.
Just because students’ mouths are moving in a classroom does not
mean they are engaged in communication. When students are repeating
after a teacher, are they communicating? The answer should be obvious,
and it should be obvious for several reasons. First, repetition of what
someone else says does not engage either the expression or interpretation
of meaning. I can repeat something in another language with enough
practice and have no idea what I’m saying. Second, what is the purpose
of this repetition? Is it the psycho-social purpose of communication? Or
is it informational-cognitive? The answer is neither. The purpose is, well,
to repeat—presumably because this is supposed to help learn something.
In short, in order to determine whether or not an act in a classroom is
communicative, we have to ask two fundamental questions:

1. Is there expression and interpretation of some kind of meaning?

2. Is there psycho-social or cognitive-informational purpose to the act?

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 10 Bill VanPatten
Here’s another example, to which the reader is asked to apply the two
questions above. A teacher has the students open their books and proceeds
to ask students to take turns reading aloud parts of a passage in the book.
As the students read aloud, is this communicative? The answer, of course,
is no, when we apply the two questions and answer them. Reading aloud
does not involve the expression of one’s own meaning nor does it involve
the interpretation of someone else’s meaning. What is more, there is no
communicative purpose to reading aloud in this particular scenario (we
are not talking about bedtime reading aloud to a five-year-old). Yet when
I probe teachers who purport to teach communicatively, I sometimes hear
them say how they insist that students repeat, read aloud, and engage in
other similar activities. And the reason they do this is because they have,
in effect, no working definition of communication that can inform them
what it means to teach communicatively. (I will address textbooks later on.)
Here’s a third example that is a bit fuzzier. A teacher wants to practice
numbers and says, “How many fingers am I holding up?” A student says,
“Four,” and the teacher says, “Correct. Now how many fingers am I
holding up?” Is this communication? Again, if we apply our two ques-
tions, we begin to see how some acts in the classroom are borderline.
In this case, there is expression of meaning (both in what the teacher
asks and what the student says) and there is also interpretation of mean-
ing (the student must understand the teacher in order to answer and the
teacher must understand the student in order to say “correct”). But what
is the purpose of this act? With this question, we see there is no commu-
nicative purpose. The point of this act is to practice with language, not to
communicate as we’ve described it. The point being made here can easily
be seen if we describe a different context in which the language used is
very similar. A patient is sitting in a doctor’s office. She has been suffering
from headaches after a knock on the head (she turned and ran into an
open cabinet door in the kitchen that morning). As part of the examina-
tion, the doctor shines a light into her eyes, and then asks some questions.
At one point he holds up three fingers and says, “How many fingers am
I holding up?” The patient says, “Three.” The doctor moves his hand to
her peripheral vision and holds up two fingers. “How many fingers am
I holding up now?” She responds, “Two.” What makes this act commu-
nicative is two-fold. There is clearly the expression and interpretation of
meaning, just as there was in the classroom scenario we just described.
However, this time, there is cognitive-informational use of communica-
tion. The doctor asks the questions not to practice numbers with the
patient but to get information about whether there is a vision problem
or not. The patient understands this and responds accordingly. Thus,
our two test questions are answered differently in the two scenarios. In
the classroom number-of-fingers scenario, only one question gets us an
answer that points toward a communicative act. In the doctor scenario,
both questions get us an answer that point toward a communicative act.

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 Communication and Skill 11
What this discussion leads us to is that acts in the language classroom
may be:

• non-communicative;
• partially communicative;
• fully communicative.

Non-communicative acts are those in which the expression and inter-

pretation of meaning are absent (purpose would not matter here). Fully
communicative acts would be those in which there is some kind of expres-
sion and interpretation of meaning, and there is either psycho-social or
cognitive-information purpose to the act. Partially communicative acts
would be those in which there is some kind of expression and interpreta-
tion of meaning but a communicative purpose is lacking. Again, we are
talking about language classrooms here, so we don’t want to extrapolate
our three-level distinction beyond this context at this point.
We see, then, that having a working definition of communication not
only helps us understand the nature of how humans interact, but it also
provides us with an easy framework with which to evaluate what we do
in classrooms as well as what textbooks provide. In 1998, I published an
article in which I discussed the problematic nature of the term “communi-
cative” as it was used by scholars on the one hand, and teachers and pub-
lishers of teaching materials on the other (see suggested readings). What I
concluded was that most teachers get their definitions of communication
and communicative language teaching not from scholars but from their
own perceptions, and more importantly, from what commercial publishers
tout as communicative and proficiency-oriented materials. One only has
to read what is said in textbook prefaces and what activities are offered to
see that there is a big difference between making a claim about what you
do and what you actually do. Most language textbooks are chock full of
activities that aren’t communicative. Here’s an example from an introduc-
tory college-level French textbook published in 2013 (fifth edition).

A. And you? Calculate the age of the following people . . . adding them
up!
Model: My sister is 32 years old and I am 24 years old. That makes
56 years.
B. Descriptions. Look at the people on page 70. What are they like?
How old are they? What color eyes do they have? And hair?
C. Your family. Describe two members of your family—or of a famous
family if you prefer. Use the example.
D. Find someone. Take a sheet of paper and number it 1–8. Then, ask
the following questions to classmates. Anyone who answers “yes”
must sign.
1. Do you have a brother named Matt?

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 12 Bill VanPatten
2. Do you look like your father?
3. Do you have grandparents?
etc.
E. Let’s get specific. Interview a partner about his or her preferences
and those of family and friends, following the example. Also respond
to his/her questions.
Model: Speaker 1: Does your family like films? Which films? Adven-
ture films?
Speaker 2: No, we prefer comedies.

According to this lesson, these activities invite the students to commu-

nicate using the knowledge they have learned during the lesson. But if we
examine them with our two questions about the nature of communica-
tive activities in class, we see they fall short of being fully communicative.
While we could argue (or quibble) about the extent to which they involve
the expression and interpretation of meaning, there is no question about
the lack of communicative purpose in all five activities. When we look
at them collectively, we still see no communicative purpose; that is, the
five activities taken as a whole do not add up to any purposeful use of
language. Another module in this series will discuss the nature of com-
municative tasks in classrooms but for now I leave the reader with the
following point: what teachers think is communicative in class may not
really be communicative after all.
Before leaving this topic, let’s return to how we started this section:
teachers may equate communication with speaking. But as we noted
from early on in this module, communication is the expression and
interpretation of meaning. Thus, if learners are engaged in a listening
activity (in which someone is expressing meaning), are they engaged
in something communicative? The answer is “yes,” because they are
interpreting what that person is saying even though they themselves
aren’t talking. Of course, what would determine the full communica-
tive nature of such a listening activity is its purpose. Does it have some
purpose that goes beyond merely practicing listening? Is there some
psycho-social or cognitive-informational purpose involved? When
people listen to the news, for example, they listen to it not to practice
listening but to learn something. When an audience listens to a lec-
ture, it is to learn something about a topic or issue. So, the question is
whether or not things like classroom (or homework) listening or read-
ing activities are communicative. In the same materials cited earlier
for French at the college level, we find the following activity, which
precedes A through E.

What age are they? Listen and decide whether what you hear is pos-
sible or not based on the drawing below.

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 Communication and Skill 13
[Teacher script to read, with numbers corresponding to people in the
drawing. 1. He is 76 years old. (Answer: not possible) 2. She is 42
years old. (Answer: possible), and so on.]

This listening activity has no purpose other than to see if students under-
stand a number when they hear it. It is devoid of any communicative pur-
pose of language we have seen so far. Thus, as a listening activity, it is, at
best, only partially communicative. In fact, we might consider that some
classroom activities are meaning-based, but not communicative. That is, the
student has to pay attention to meaning at some level of the activity but there
is no communicative purpose to what the learner and others are doing.

Reflection
Many non-linguists (teachers and students included) often conflate or
equate language and communication. Why do you think this is so?
Why is it important for us, as professionals, to maintain language and
communication as separate constructs? Consider the following: how
is communication learned? Can it be learned entirely in a classroom?

Quiz
Take the following short quiz to see what you have learned so far.
Answers are given at the end, so don’t peek.

1. Which of the following are fundamental to communication?

a. expression of meaning
b. interpretation of meaning
c. both a and b
2. Context of communication refers to . . .
a. the linguistic environment around words.
b. people, settings, and other factors.
c. both a and b.
3. Two native speakers of the same language . . .
a. will almost always communicate in similar ways.
b. may vary in how they communicate.
c. never communicate in the same way.
4. Which of the following contexts invites code-switching more
easily?
a. two monolinguals

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 14 Bill VanPatten

b. two bilinguals
c. one monolingual and one bilingual
5. Context, as defined in this section, does not affect . . .
a. word choice.
b. the use of pragmatic devices.
c. underlying competence.
6. During face-to-face interactions, negotiation of meaning
occurs . . .
a. between native-speakers.
b. between native-speakers and non-natives.
c. between any kind of speakers.
7. Communication is . . .
a. largely dependent on language.
b. partially dependent on language.
c. not dependent on language.
8. Which of the following involves psycho-social purpose of
communication?
a. [in class, an instructor says:] “Your papers are due by 5:00 pm
on Thursday.”
b. [in the clinic, the doctor says:] “Long time no see, Richard.”
c. neither a nor b.
9. Classrooms tend to be lop-sided or biased toward particular
purposes of communication because . . .
a. participants are constant.
b. setting is fixed.
c. both a and b.

[Answers: 1. c; 2. b; 3. b; 4. b; 5. c; 6. c; 7. a; 8. b; 9. c]

The Nature of Skill

Outside the field of second language research, when someone talks about
knowing another language, that person normally means communicative
ability. If, for example, you’re in an emergency room and someone says,
“Does anybody here know Japanese?” it is highly unlikely that person
wants to know if someone has a mental representation of Japanese and to
what degree it resembles that of a native speaker’s. What that person wants
to know is whether someone can communicate effectively in Japanese in
order to, for example, assist with a patient. This is what we refer to as skill.

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 Communication and Skill 15
In everyday language, skill is a term used to mean that someone is good
at something, as in “he’s a skilled carpenter” or “she’s a skilled politi-
cian.” But skill has a technical definition and it is that definition we want
to work with here. Skill refers to the accuracy and fluency with which a
person can perform an activity—from playing tennis to typing to speaking
another language. Accuracy refers to how error-free someone performs an
activity. We can shorthand error-freeness as “sloppiness,” with “sloppy”
defined by the skill itself (e.g., what is sloppy in tennis is quite different
from what is sloppy in wallpaper hanging). Fluency refers to the speed and
ease at which someone can perform an activity. However, both accuracy
and fluency may be context dependent and what each contributes to what
it means to be skilled at something may vary. A highly skilled typist/word
processor would be someone who types relatively fast (is highly fluent)
and produces text that is relatively error-free (not sloppy). A very skilled
surgeon is someone who makes no mistakes during surgery, leaves minimal
scars, and for whom patients don’t die. Fluency may be less important in
the operating room (i.e., we might want surgeons to take their time during
a procedure). In most situations, accuracy and fluency go hand in hand
to determine skill, but what is acceptable accuracy and what is accept-
able fluency depends on context. For example, I used to play in a men’s
tennis league, a non-competitive group in which playing tennis and mak-
ing friends on the court was more important than trophy winning. This
context is quite different from, say, the French Open, where the point is
to both earn trophies and money. Thus, the demands on my accuracy and
fluency back when I played tennis were different than what is demanded
of someone like Rafael Nadal (who at the time of this writing had just
won his ninth championship title at the French Open). Sloppy tennis for
Rafael Nadal is quite different from sloppy tennis for me. To offer one
more example, the reader is invited to ponder something as simple as mak-
ing an omelet. Is making an omelet at home by the non-chef the same
context as making an omelet for brunch at the five-star Bellagio Hotel in
Las Vegas? Clearly it is not. What is expected out of the omelet maker at
home and what is expected out of the omelet maker at the Bellagio are two
different things, so that the accuracy and fluency of omelet making varies
between the two contexts.
In the case of the emergency room scenario we began with in this sec-
tion (“Does anyone know Japanese?”), the activity involved is speaking.
(Skill in language, however, can also mean skill in writing, reading, or lis-
tening, among others.) Because skill is determined by accuracy and flu-
ency, a highly skilled speaker of Japanese speaks quickly and effortlessly,
and produces few things that sound non-nativelike. A low skilled speaker
of Japanese may speak slowly while searching for words and phrases,
while backtracking to self-correct, and sound non-nativelike. And there
are degrees of skill in between. In short, skill is not absolute. It is not an
either/or situation. Accuracy and fluency fall on a scale—and in language
situations we sometimes refer to this as proficiency.

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 16 Bill VanPatten
Skill as Proficiency
Although a dictionary definition of proficiency may refer to degree in
knowledge or ability, an examination of any proficiency-oriented rating
for language clearly points to skill and not underlying mental represen-
tation (implicit knowledge) of language. For example, below are two
descriptions of roughly the same level of ability with language, one from
the United States and the other from Europe.

Speakers at the Advanced-High level perform all Advanced-level

tasks with linguistic ease, confidence and competence. They are able
to consistently explain in detail and narrate fully and accurately in all
time frames. In addition, Advanced-High speakers handle the tasks
pertaining to the Superior level but cannot sustain performance at
that level across a variety of topics. They can provide a structured
argument to support their opinions, and they may construct hypoth-
eses, but patterns of error appear. They can discuss some topics
abstractly, especially those relating to their particular interests and
special fields of expertise, but in general, they are more comfort-
able discussing a variety of topics concretely. Advanced-High speak-
ers may demonstrate a well-developed ability to compensate for an
imperfect grasp of some forms or for limitations in vocabulary by
the confident use of communicative strategies, such as paraphras-
ing, circumlocution, and illustration. They use precise vocabulary
and intonation to express meaning and often show great fluency and
ease of speech. However, when called on to perform the complex
tasks associated with the Superior level over a variety of topics, their
language will at times break down or prove inadequate, or they may
avoid the task altogether. (From the American Council on the Teach-
ing for Foreign Languages—ACTFL—Oral Proficiency Guidelines)

The independent user . . .

• can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes
regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without
strain for either party;
• can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and
explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and
disadvantages of various options. (From the Common European
Framework of References for Language—CEFR)

Clearly, the concern in describing the Advanced-high speaker or the

Independent User is not what that person knows, but what he or she can
do, as referenced by phrases such as “cannot sustain performance,” “a
well-developed ability,” “great fluency and ease of speech,” and “can
interact . . . without strain.” Thus, proficiency is about skill and not

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 Communication and Skill 17
knowledge. It is about what people do, not what exists in their mental
representation.
Such descriptions and all proficiency ratings are useful if not necessary
in the real world of job performance, academic work, and other domains.
They let us know how well a person can function and what communi-
cative tasks that person can do. We wouldn’t want a first grade teacher
in Columbus, Ohio, for example, to be of the lowest levels of English
proficiency and be in charge of 33 students who are going to learn things
through the medium of English. And just to remind ourselves, skill is not
limited to speaking. One can find descriptions for reading, writing, and
listening similar to those we have just seen for speaking.
As mentioned earlier, skill is not absolute or either/or. In fact, most
proficiency ratings place someone on a scale. The ACTFL scale, for
example, places people on a range from Novice to Superior, with shades
of differences even in particular range (e.g., one could be Advanced-low,
Advanced-mid, or Advanced-high). The same is true of the Common
European Framework, which has three levels (Basic User, Independent
User, Proficient User) with two sub-levels within each major level. To be
sure, the move from one level to the next is not just a move in, say, accu-
racy (i.e., people get less “sloppy” with their abilities as they move up the
scale) and fluency (i.e., people speak with more ease). In both the ACTFL
and European scales, there is a qualitative difference among levels. As
one simple example, at the lowest levels, language users may be limited to
speaking in sentences and phrases and be largely reactive to what people
ask of them or say to them. At higher levels, speakers may string sen-
tences together, use discourse connectors to link ideas, and initiate topics
and interactions rather than merely being reactive. Thus, when it comes
to communication, as one gets more skilled, one’s ability to participate in
wider and wider kinds of communicative situations also changes.
Some rating systems for skill or proficiency exist in what are called
“can do” statements (see the ACTFL website at www.actfl.org for dis-
cussion of these kinds of statements). For example, at Michigan State
University (MSU), we have enacted a series of five “can do” statements
for each semester of language study that refer not to what students know
about Spanish or French but what they can do. Here are examples from
the first semester of study:

1a. I can answer basic questions about my daily schedule including

classes, work, and study time.
1b. I can ask someone basic questions about his or her daily schedule
related to classes, work, and study time.
2a. I can introduce myself, tell someone where I’m from, and tell
that person it is a pleasure to meet him or her.
2b. I can ask someone his or her name and ask them where he/she is
from.

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 18 Bill VanPatten
3a. I can describe three to four of my basic personality traits to
someone.
3b. I can ask someone else what his or her personality is like.
4a. I can describe different types of clothing I see at a store, includ-
ing what articles of clothing I see, how much different items cost,
and what colors they are.
4b. I can ask a salesperson different questions about clothing he/she
sells.
5a. I can describe my immediate and extended family members and
what they look like.
5b. I can ask someone about their family and what his/her family
members look like.

We ask students to self-assess on each of these “functions” using the

following scale:

• I can perform this function with ease.

• I can perform this function, but not easily.
• I am not sure I can perform this function.

The reader will immediately note two things about these types of self-
rating statements. The first is that they are focused, referring to very
particular communicative events and topics. However, the idea is that
such statements, when added up across several semesters of study, serve
as indicators of a proficiency rating. For example, across four semesters
of study, our MSU students have a total of 20 such statements that, when
viewed together, form a profile of typical Intermediate-mid ability on the
ACTFL oral proficiency scale. The second thing a reader might notice
is that in such statements, accuracy is normally left out of the picture,
as students may not know if they are accurate with language and com-
munication or not. The idea behind “can do” statements is to allow a
language learner to self-reflect and then to even test him/herself. At MSU,
for example, students rate themselves and then are asked to perform an
activity that gets at the particular function. They are then asked to re-rate
themselves to see if they were on target during the first rating. Note that
as a measure of skill, the statements are about what learners can do, not
about what they know.
Returning to the issue of the context dependent nature of skill, we
should acknowledge here that communication as skill is context depen-
dent and also topic/situation dependent. And this is true of native speak-
ers as well as non-native speakers. Someone could be fairly well skilled in
everyday one-on-one situations but have a terrible time trying to explain
why people fall in love. Or the opposite could be true: someone could
develop relatively good skills in communicating abstract topics due to

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 Communication and Skill 19
on-the-job experience, but have difficulty in certain everyday situations.
That is, skill may break down in certain domains because the person just
doesn’t have experience in that domain. Again, this is as true of native
speakers as it is of non-native speakers.
So far, we have talked about skill as something measurable by a rating
system, with clear descriptors. But there may be something intangible
about communication that is not reflected in such rating scales. That
intangibility has to do with perception of interlocutors about how effec-
tive a person is. I can think of no way better to illustrate this point than
to offer a quote from the anthropologist Margaret Mead, known for
her work in the South Pacific. Here is what Mead said about her own
language ability:

I am not a good mimic and I have worked now in many different

cultures. I am a very poor speaker of a language, but I always know
whose pig is dead, and when I work in a native society, I know what
people are talking about and I treat it seriously and respect them
and this in itself establishes a great deal more rapport, very often,
than the correct accent. I have worked with other field workers who
were far, far better linguists than I, and the natives kept saying they
couldn’t speak the language, although they said I could!1

What is illuminating about this quote is the role of perception of others

that Mead clearly indicates, suggesting that we all don’t have to be good
speakers of another language to be good communicators. At the same
time, context of communication raises its head and we have to ask our-
selves whether Mead’s experience in the South Pacific would be the same
as in West End London or one of the environs of Paris or the suburbs of
Chicago. Even if our answer is no, Mead’s point is well taken; commu-
nication is in the eye of the beholder, pointing us always to context: the
participants and the setting of communication.

Reflection
What do you think is more important: what a person’s proficiency
rating is on a scale or how others view that person’s ability?

Communication and (versus) Language

If we take language to mean the underlying mental representation that
people possess for such things as phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax,
and pragmatics (see the module on the nature of language), then clearly
communication and language are not the same thing. This dissociation

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 20 Bill VanPatten
sometimes causes some consternation in some people, so if you, the
reader, are one of these people, we can approach the issue by asking
these two questions: (1) Do dogs communicate with each other? (2) Do
they have an underlying mental representation of language (phonology,
morphology, lexicon, syntax, and so on)? The answer to the first ques-
tion is clearly “yes”—dogs do communicate with each other. All spe-
cies do in some form or another. Canine specialists can tell a person all
about how dogs signal information through body posture, eye contact,
tail position, vocalizations, smell, and movement, among other indica-
tors. César Milán—the Dog Whisperer—has made a career out of help-
ing people communicate with dogs. But it is equally clear that dogs do
not have language. They have no mental representation that could ever
come close to what is involved in the abstract properties of language. For
example, a growl might mean ‘danger’ or ‘warning’ but dogs cannot indi-
cate differences such as ‘will warn,’ ‘has warned,’ ‘was about to warn,’
and they do not have morphology that interfaces with lexical roots to
form ‘warn,’ ‘warns,’ ‘warned,’ ‘warning,’ and so on. They do not pos-
sess syntax that governs the way subjects behave in sentences. They cannot
embed clauses. They do not have passive and active sentence structure.
In short, dogs are simply not hardwired for language. Humans are. Of
course, humans aren’t hardwired for certain things that dogs possess,
but that’s another story.
What is more, human communication itself may or may not involve
language. In the Jake examples from above, he communicates something
by raising his hand. His eyes may indicate something. Leaning in close
to his partner before speaking is an act that communicates something.
Thus, the use of language for humans may be part of a larger act we call
“communication,” but communication can involve more than language.
What does it mean, for example, if someone winks at you? What does
it mean if someone gives you a sign with his thumb up? What does it
mean if someone applauds or stands up while applauding? These are all
examples of human communication without language. As such, they are
not language (e.g., there is no phonological system behind applauding,
there is no syntax of giving a thumbs up, there is no inflectional mor-
phology in winking). And as in the Jake examples, communication can
be language plus something else, such as a visual cue (e.g., Jake raises his
hand to ask a question in class). In fact, many communication experts
would say that communication has to be more than language, that is
has to involve non-verbal signals. Researchers such as Albert Mehrabian
have conducted analyses and have proposed percentage amounts of how
much verbal and non-verbal communication contribute to interactions.
His findings suggest that non-verbal indicators of meaning are used more
than verbal indicators; that is, people unconsciously rely on “body lan-
guage” more than they do the words they hear. (It is not clear how this
applies to signed language).

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 Communication and Skill 21
More on Context
Although context defined as participants and setting influences communi-
cation, it does not influence underlying representation. We can take syntax
as an example. Syntactic competence does not change, for example, depend-
ing on context. People may select one way over another to say something,
but the underlying syntactic competence that governs sentence structure
and the relationships among words in a sentence does not change. Let’s
take a fundamental difference between Spanish and English as an example.
Spanish allows what are called null subjects (i.e., a subject pronoun is not
required to make a sentence grammatical). When talking about a third
person, for example, once we know who is being talked about, we don’t
need to use a subject pronoun, as in the following exchange:

ROBERT: Ya regresó Alicia. ‘Alice has come back.’

JOHN: ¿Y cómo se ve? ‘And how does she look?’
ROBERT: Bien, más o menos. ‘Fine, more or less.’

When John responds to Robert, he does not need to use either Alicia
or the subject pronoun ella (‘she’) in his response. His sentence is per-
fectly grammatical without either. But notice how in English, this is not
possible:

ROBERT: Alice has come back.

JOHN: And how does look?
ROBERT: Fine, more or less.

Without using she, John’s sentence just isn’t English. (There’s much
more to the null-subject nature of Spanish than what is presented here,
but this example will suffice.) Returning to our fictional college student
Jake, he would not use null subjects in English the way a Spanish speaker
would when speaking Spanish. Null subjects are just not part of Jake’s
syntactic competence. Nor would Jake invert verbs and subjects in English
(as in Spanish or Italian), no matter what he was communicating. And
Jake would never make use of object-verb order like Japanese and Turkish
(e.g., I apple am eating) because English does not allow such orders. What
we are saying here is that context does not affect language itself; that is,
it doesn’t affect mental representation. Of course, bilinguals must draw
upon two distinct sets of competences depending on what language they
engage at a given moment. But this switch does not change the underlying
competence of one language or the other. Thus, the context for a Korean-
English bilingual’s use of one language over the other to communicate
does not alter his or her mental representation of Korean or English.
Now there is the possibility that bilinguals may borrow words between
two languages, but does this mean they are changing underlying knowledge?

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 22 Bill VanPatten
Not at all. Two examples will suffice. Some Cuban-American dialects have
coined the term friquearse, which means to “freak out.” Clearly, one can
see the similarity between the Spanish word and its English origin. But
note that in order to borrow the word in Spanish, (1) it had to be assigned
a verb class (it is an –a verb, meaning it will have certain endings and not
others), (2) when used, it has to be inflected like any other verb (for tense,
person-number, mood), and (3) it uses the se morpheme to indicate it is a
particular kind of intransitive verb whose subject is not the same kind of
subject as “eat” or “run.” All of these things show that although the word
is borrowed, once borrowed, the Spanish underlying system asserts control
over the properties of the verb for it to be used correctly.
Our second example comes from everyday English. Did you know that
about 25% of everyday words are from Old French? Here are a few:
soldier, blond, table, flower, eagle, depart, to marry, and the list goes
on. Yet, how many of you are speaking French when using these words?
How French does “table” sound to you when you say it? And how much
of English sentence structure has changed because of these French words?
The answers are that English is English and French is French. Borrowing
words (and even phrases) does not alter underlying competence. Indeed,
it’s the other way around: underlying competence asserts itself over any-
thing borrowed from another language. This competence requires the
borrowed word to have our phonology and behave in sentences like
other elements of its kind (e.g., if it’s a verb, it must behave like a verb
and do what verbs in our language do).
When it comes to decisions about sentence structure, to be sure, people
can make decisions depending on context. For example, should I use an
active or a passive sentence to express something? But note that such
decisions do not affect the underlying competence of the speaker. That
person can make this kind of decision only because the language in that
person’s head already contains the linguistic representations from which
to choose. As another example, in some context I might say I don’t have
any. In another context, I might say I ain’t got none. I did not suddenly
go from English, which doesn’t normally allow double negatives, to using
something like Spanish syntax where double negatives are permissible,
and in some cases obligatory. Actually, I have both don’t and ain’t in my
English repertoire and know how to use each correctly and in what kinds
of communicative contexts. So, context does not alter competence or
underlying mental representation, but it might affect choice of structures
(and words) that a person uses to communicate an idea.

Some Final Words on the Distinction between

(Communicative) Skill and Mental Representation
Language and communication must be connected in some way, but that
connection is not quite clear. For example, when we say a person can

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 Communication and Skill 23
“narrate smoothly in the past with few errors,” this does not tell us how
the abstract concepts of temporality (past, present, future) and aspect
(whether an action, process, or state is reported as finished, starting, or in
progress at a certain point in time) are constructed in his or her head with
regard to linguistic devices for expressing such concepts. Such a descrip-
tion also does not reference what abstract rules related to discourse
structure (how sentences and ideas are organized to create coherence)
exist in the mental representation. Furthermore, because proficiency rat-
ings tend to be holistic or global and deal with functions (e.g., narrating,
asking questions) and not particular linguistic features, we may not be
able to use ratings to pinpoint particular aspects of a learner’s mental
representation. Finally, we know that mental representation of language
is as much about knowing what is impossible in a language as what is
possible. For example, as a speaker of English, I know that Does Bill
study linguistics? is a perfectly fine yes/no question in English but Stud-
ies Bill linguistics? is not. Yet I only speak in sentences that are possible;
that is, I would never say Studies Bill linguistics? in a conversation to find
something out about Bill. Thus, communicative use of language only tells
us what is permissible in a speaker’s underlying system. Samples of lan-
guage do not reliably indicate what is impossible. This situation makes
speaking tests not the most suitable for ascertaining what exists in mental
representation, and vice versa—tests of representation don’t necessarily
tell us what people do to effectively communicate ideas and intents.
To offer one more example, let’s look at null subjects in Spanish once
again. Spanish permits null subjects, but they are constrained by dis-
course and pragmatic features of language. That is, although null sub-
jects are permitted in Spanish, they are governed by certain non-syntactic
aspects of language such as topic-shift (e.g., one sentence is about John
but the next sentence is about someone else), emphasis, disambiguation,
and so on. We can imagine a second language learner of Spanish taking a
proficiency test. That learner tends to overuse—if not use consistently—
explicit subject pronouns where native speakers would use null subjects.
For example, that learner might say Juan llegó a la fiesta. Él vio a una
chica. Él la invitó a su casa ‘John arrived at the party. He saw a girl.
He invited her to his house.’ A native speaker would normally say Juan
llegó a la fiesta. Vio a una chica. La invitó a su casa, avoiding the use of
the explicit subject pronoun él because in such situations, a null subject
pronoun would normally be used when the subject-topic of one sentence
does not shift from one sentence to the next. Does the learner’s overuse
of subject pronouns in Spanish mean that the second language learner
does not have a “null subject grammar” in his head? Not necessarily.
Most likely he does have a null subject grammar, and if we give him cer-
tain tests for what’s in his mental representation, we could ascertain this.
What that learner most likely lacks is whatever interface there is between
the mental representation and real time speaking.

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 24 Bill VanPatten
In short, mental representation and skill are distinct, but both are
equally important concepts depending on what one is interested in mea-
suring. The question for the second language context is how these aspects
of language and communication develop. That is the topic for a different
module.

Reflection
Some languages have something like noun-adjective agreement in
which an adjective must be inflected in certain ways to “agree”
with the noun. Gender is one example. In French, for example,
one would have to say la maison blanche ‘the white house’ but
le livre blanc ‘the white book.’ Imagine you collect data on sec-
ond language learners of French and find that they generally have
no trouble producing noun-adjective agreement with gender in a
noun phrase (la maison blanche), but you also notice many errors
when the adjective appears in a different part of the sentence, as in
Mon frere ne acheterait pas une maison qui n’était pas *blanc ‘My
brother wouldn’t buy a house that wasn’t white.’ Is this error one
of skill or one of a deficit in mental representation?

A Peculiar Communication Strategy for Second Language

Learners Only
When engaging in communication, both native and non-native speak-
ers of a language engage in a variety of strategies that compensate for
either a lack of underlying knowledge or less-than-optimal skill. For
example, both native and non-native speakers, when having to give a
formal speech for the first time, may employ strategies such as note cards,
cheat sheets, and practice in an attempt to provide a good speech. In the
middle of an interaction, both native and non-native speakers may forget
a word for something and may employ circumlocution (talk around the
word), make an appeal for assistance (“Help me out here. You know
what I’m talking about . . .”), or use some other device. Both native and
non-native speakers may simply not say something, particularly in situa-
tions in which they have no experience and don’t know what to say. The
point is that both native and non-native speakers may “get stuck” at a
particular point in communicating something and have to resort to some
kind of compensatory strategy to get around being stuck.
There is one strategy for communication, however, that is different for
second language learners that is not available to native speakers. That
strategy is relying on the L1 to generate what to say and then dressing

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 Communication and Skill 25
it up in L2 words. As one example, imagine the language learner who
does not have in his or her mental representation how to express age in
Spanish and French, both of which use the verb “to have” and not “to
be” to tell age (i.e., “I have 30 years” versus “I am 30 years old”). Let’s
further imagine that learner in a situation requiring the expression of
age. Not knowing what to do, that learner thinks in English and dresses
this up somehow in French: Je suis treinte ans. The result is an effort
that has L2 words but sounds like an L1 structure. Teachers often clas-
sify this as a problem of first-language transfer in learning or even as
grammatical or lexical “error,” but in reality, it is a communication
strategy. It is a strategy learners routinely engage when asked to per-
form beyond their current underlying knowledge and ability. For this
reason, the strategy is particularly prevalent at the beginning and inter-
mediate levels of proficiency. At these stages, learners may be asked to
speak in complete sentences (or feel the pressure to do so) or to com-
municate ideas for which they have gaps in their mental representation
(be they lexical gaps or gaps in sentence structure and form). Thus,
L1-like behavior in early and intermediate stages of proficiency may be
a function not of the transfer of the native language to the second lan-
guage as a learning device, but as a communication strategy because of
task-induced requirements on the learner. This is not to say that native-
language influence doesn’t happen in acquisition (the topic of another
module). The point here is that early and intermediate-staged commu-
nication may have its fair share of L1-like production because of how
learners unconsciously deal with the demands placed on their abilities.

Quiz
Take the following short quiz to see what you have learned in this
section. Answers are given at the end, so don’t peek.

1. A technical definition of skill involves the intersection of accu-

racy and . . .
a. fluency.
b. knowledge.
c. both a and b.
d. neither a nor b.
2. Skill is similar to communication in that it is partially shaped
by . . .
a. practice.
b. context.

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 26 Bill VanPatten

c. speed.
d. meaning.
3. “You either have skill or you don’t.” This statement is false
because . . .
a. skill is absolute.
b. speaking involves two people.
c. there are degrees of skill.
d. none of the above.
4. Proficiency ratings normally do not refer to . . .
a. how well someone can do something.
b. what a person knows.
c. interactive abilities.
d. reading and listening.
5. “Can do” lists are primarily used as . . .
a. tests of competence.
b. proficiency objectives.
c. self-assessment tools.
d. none of the above.
6. Which of the following is true?
a. Communication and language are basically the same thing.
b. Communication does not require language.
c. All higher order animals have some degree of language.
d. All higher order primates communicate in similar ways.
7. From the discussion, it is clear that context . . .
a. may influence linguistic choices but does not affect underly-
ing representation.
b. affects both communication and underlying representation
of language.
c. minimally impacts how we perceive communication.
d. plays different roles with different languages.
8. Both native and non-native speakers engage in strategies to
effect communication, except that . . .
a. natives are better at it.
b. non-natives are better at it.
c. natives have more strategies.
d. non-natives have a strategy that natives do not.

[Answers: 1. a; 2. b; 3. c; 4. b; 5. c; 6. b; 7. a; 8. d]

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 Communication and Skill 27
Summary and Conclusion
In this module, we have sketched out the nature of communication, dis-
tinguishing it from language. In so doing, we have described the expres-
sive and interpretive sides of communication, along with the concept
of negotiation of meaning. We have also demonstrated that commu-
nication is a complex enterprise that is context dependent, with con-
text determined by setting and participants. Finally, we have seen that
communication always has a purpose, usually either psycho-social or
cognitive-informational. Thus, for an event to be deemed communica-
tive, it must involve the expression and interpretation of meaning and
have a purpose. Using this framework, we can ask ourselves to what
extent we teach communicatively and to what extent our activities are
communicative in nature.
We have also examined skill as the intersection of accuracy and flu-
ency, and—like communication—we have determined that skill is con-
text dependent. Distinguishing skill from knowledge (underlying mental
representation), we explored the idea that proficiency rating systems are
about what people can do, not what they know.
All of the ideas touched upon in this module are informative of con-
temporary language teaching that has a communicative or proficiency-
oriented curriculum. When we sit back and examine what we have
reviewed, we can conclude that there is no such thing as “the com-
municative method,” as some people mistakenly refer to contempo-
rary language teaching. Instead, there can be an array of approaches
to teaching communicatively—approaches that share in the idea that
the context dependent nature of meaning exchange informs choices
in materials, activities, and even expectations. These are the princi-
ples that each teacher must develop, and through continued reading
about language, language acquisition, tasks in the classroom, assess-
ment, and other related matters, each teacher should be able to fashion
an approach to the classroom and say, “This is why my teaching is
communicative.”

Discussion Questions and Projects

1. Ask a friend who is not in a field related to language teaching, lin-
guistics, or language acquisition what the difference is between
language and communication. What kinds of ideas surface in that
person’s answer? How do they compare to the ideas presented in this
module? Do you think beginning students have these same ideas?
2. Explain the communicative purpose (psycho-social, cognitive-
informational) of the following:
• diary writing;
• taking notes in a lecture;
• reading the instructions on a new medication;

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 28 Bill VanPatten
• a counseling session with a troubled teen;
• an attorney’s summation at the end of a trial.
3. Although you may read about acquisition later, how do you think
communication develops for second language learners? Can it be
taught in the traditional sense of “teaching”?
4. Interview three males and three females. Ask them if the other gender
communicates differently from their own. If they say “yes,” what
kinds of examples do they offer?
5. Examine three to four textbook prefaces. What do they claim about
being communicative or proficiency-oriented? Follow this up with an
examination of a string of activities. What is your conclusion about
the communicative nature of the materials?
6. In the conclusion to this module, teachers are exhorted to develop
their own principles that guide communicative language teaching.
Based on what you have read in this module, begin to develop those
principles. What are they and how many are there? Can you explain
these principles to a fellow teacher or colleague?

Note
1. This quote comes from Sandra Savignon’s 1983 book on communicative com-
petence, and she attributes it to Ruth Cryme’s 1980 article “Current trends in
ESL instruction” (TESOL Newsletter, 14, pp. 1–4).

Suggested Further Reading

Communication
Peasons, J. C., Nelson, P. E., Titsworth, S., & Harter, L. (2001). Human commu-
nication. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Savignon, S. (1997). Communicative competence: Theory and classroom practice:
texts and contexts in second language learning. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Skill
Anderson, J. R. (2000). Learning and memory: An integrated approach. New
York: John Wiley & Sons. [See especially the chapter on skill acquisition.]
DeKeyser, R. (2015). Skill acquisition theory. In B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.),
Theories in second language acquisition (pp. 94–112). New York: Routledge.
VanPatten, B. (1998). Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term communica-
tive. Hispania, 81, 925–932.
VanPatten, B. (2013). Mental representation and skill in instructed SLA. In J.
Schwieter (Ed.), Innovative research and practices in second language acquisi-
tion and bilingualism (pp. 3–22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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