Communicative Competence

Helena I. R. Agustien
hagustien@yahoo.com
 Socio –
Cultural Comp. Competence
Strategic

Discourse
Competence
Competence

Actional Comp.
Linguistic Comp..
 Linguistic Competence
SYNTAX
Constituent/phrase structure
Word order (canonical and marked)
Sentence types
Sentence types
I got statements, questions, imperatives, exclamations
A!!! Special constructions
existentials (there + BE...)
clefts (It's X that/who...; What + sub.+ verb + BE)
question tags, etc.
Modifiers/intensifiers
quantifiers, comparing and equating
Coordination (and, or, etc) and correlation (both X and Y; either X or
Y)
Subordination (e.g., adverbial clauses, conditionals)
Embedding
noun clauses, relative clauses (e.g., restrictive and non-
restrictive),reported speech
 Linguistic Competence
MORPHOLOGY
Parts of speech
Inflections (e.g., agreement and concord)
Derivational processes (productive ones)
compounding, affixation, conversion/incorporation
LEXICON (receptive and productive)
Words
content words (Ns, Vs, ADJs)
function words, (pronouns, prepositions, verbal auxiliaries, etc.)
Routines
Chunks
word-like fixed phrases (e.g., of course, all of a sudden)
…
formulaic and semi-formulaic chunks (e.g., how do you do)
Formulai
Collocations O-Obj (e.g., spend money), Adv-Adj (e.g., mutually
intelligible), Adj-N (e.g., tall building) c
Idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) express-
ions…
 Linguistic Competence
PHONOLOGY (for pronunciation)
Segmentals
vowels, consonants, syllable types,
variation (changes and reductions between
adjacent sounds in the stream of speech) It’s very
Suprasegmentals imPORtant!
prominence, stress, intonation, rhythm
ORTHOGRAPHY (for spelling)
Letters (if writing system is alphabetic)
Phoneme-grapheme correspondences
Rules of spelling
Conventions for mechanics and punctuation
 Actional Competence
KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
INTERPERSONAL EXCHANGE
Greeting and leave-taking
Making introductions, identifying oneself
Extending, accepting and declining invitations and offers
Making and breaking engagements
Expressing and acknowledging gratitude Thank you!
Complementing and congratulating It’s very
Reacting to the interlocutor's speech kind of
showing attention, interest, surprise, sympathy, you…
happiness, disbelief, disappointment
INFORMATION
Asking for and giving information
Reporting (describing and narrating)
Remembering
Explaining and discussing
 Actional Competence
OPINIONS
Expressing and finding out about opinions and attitudes
Agreeing and disagreeing
Approving and disapproving I was so
Showing satisfaction and dissatisfaction embarrassed!
FEELINGS
Expressing and finding out about feelings
love, happiness, sadness, pleasure, anxiety, anger,
embarrassment, pain, relief, fear,
annoyance, surprise, etc.
SUASION
Suggesting, requesting and instructing
Giving orders, advising and warning
Persuading, encouraging and discouraging
Asking for, granting and witholding permission
 Actional Competence
PROBLEMS
Complaining and criticizing You!
Blaming and accusing Stupid idiot!!!
Admitting and denying
Regretting
Apologising and forgiving
FUTURE SCENARIOS
Expressing and finding out about wishes, hopes, and
desires
Expressing and eliciting plans, goals and intentions
Promising
Predicting and speculating
Discussing possibilities and capabilities of doing something
KNOWLEDGE OF SPEECH ACT SETS
Socio-cultural Competence
SOCIAL CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
Participant variables
age, gender, office and status, social distance, relations (power and
affective)
Situational variables
time, place, social situation
STYLISTIC APPROPRIATENESS FACTORS
Sociocultural background knowledge of the target language community
living conditions (way of living standards); social and institutional
structure; social conventions and rituals; major values, beliefs, and
norms; taboo topics; historical background; cultural aspects
including literature and arts
Awareness of major dialect or regional differences
Cross-cultural awareness
differences; similarities; strategies for cross-cultural communication
 Socio-cultural Competence
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIVE FACTORS
When
Kinesic factors (body language) should I
discourse controlling behaviours (non- speak?
verbal turn- taking signals) Should I
backchannel behaviours move my
affective markers (facial expressions), hands?
gestures, eye contact
Proxemic factors (use of space)
Haptic factors (touching)
Paralinguistic factors
acoustical sounds, nonvocal noises
Silence
 Strategic Competence
AVOIDANCE or REDUCTION
Message replacement
Topic avoidance
Message abandonment
ACHIEVEMENT AND COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES You
Circumlocution (e.g., the thing you open the bottle with for know…
corkskrew)
thingimejig
Approximation (e.g., fish for carp)
Like the
All purpose words (e.g., thingy, thingamajig)
thing…
Non-linguistic means (mime, pointing, gestures, drawing
pictures)
Restructuring (e.g., The bus was very... there were a lot of
people on it)
Word-coinage (e.g., vegetarianist)
Literal translation from L1
Foreignizing (e.g., L1 with L2 pronunciation)
Code switching to L1 or L3
Retrieval (e.g., bro... bro... bronze)
 Strategic Competence
STALLING or TIME-GAINING STRATEGIES
Fillers, hesitation devices and gambits (e.g., well, actually..., where was
I...?)
Self and other-repetition
SELF-MONITORING STRATEGIES
Self-initiated repair (e.g., I mean)
Self-rephrasing (over-elaboration) (e.g., This is for students... pupils...
when you're at school...)
INTERACTIONAL STRATEGIES What
Appeals for help did you
- direct (e.g., what do you call?) say?
- indirect (e.g., I don't know the word in English...
or puzzled expression)
Meaning negotiation strategies
Indicators of non/mis-understanding
Requests
- repetition requests (e.g., Pardon? or Could you say that
again please?)
- clarification requests (e.g., What do you mean by...?)
- confirmation requests (e.g., Did you say...?)
Strategic Competence
Expressions of non-understanding
- verbal (e.g., Sorry, I am not sure I understand...)
- non-verbal (raised eyebrows, blank look)
Interpretive summary (e.g., You mean...?/So what you're
saying is...?)
Responses I beg your
repetition, rephrasing, expansion, reduction, confirmation, rejection, pardon?
repair
Sorry…?
Comprehension checks
- whether the interlocutor can follow you (e.g., Am I
making sense?)
- Whether what you said was correct or grammatical (e.g.,
Can I/Can you say that?)
- whether the interlocutor is listening (e.g., on the phone:
are you still there?)
- whether the interlocutor can hear you
 Discourse Competence
COHESION
Reference (anaphora, cataphora)
Substitution/ellipses
Conjunction And
then…
Lexical chains (related to content schemata), they did it
parallel structure again
DEIXIS after…
Personal (pronouns)
Spatial (here, there; this, that)
Temporal (now, then, before, after)
Textual (the following chart; the example above)
 Discourse Competence
COHERENCE
Organized expression and interpretation of content and
purpose (content schemata)
Thematization and staging (theme-rheme development)
Management of old and new information
Propositional structures and their organizational First of all…
Secondly…
sequences, temporal, spatial, cause-effect, Therefore…
condition-result, etc. Finally…
Temporal continuity/shift (sequence of tenses)

GENRE/GENERIC STRUCTURE (formal schemata)

narrative, interview, service encounter,
research report, sermon, etc.
 Discourse Competence
CONVERSATIONAL STRUCTURE (inherent to the
turn-taking system in conversation but may extend
to a variety of oral genres)
How to perform openings and reopenings
Right…
Topic establishment & change
huh uh…
How to hold & relinquish the floor I see…
How to interrupt
How to collaborate & backchannel
How to do preclosings and closings
Adjacency pairs (related to actional competence)
first and second pair parts (knowing
preferred and dispreferred responses)
 Discourse Competence
Discourse competence concerns the selection,
sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures
and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or
written text. (Celce-Murcia et al. 1995:13)

Utterances
should ‘hang
together’.
Why Celce-Murcia et al.’s model?

The proposed model has been motivated by their “belief

in the potential of a direct, explicit approach to the
teaching of communicative skills, which would require
detailed description of what communicative competence
entails in order to use the sub-components as a content
base in syllabus design” (1995:6)
 Text

Explicit in the statement is that communication

happens in text, spoken or written.
Thus communicating is creating text,
and this involves more than simply
creating grammatical sentences.

We PUSH
students from
sentence to
TEXT.
 CULTURE
Genre (Purpose)

Situation

Who is involved?
(Tenor)

Subject matter Channel

(Field) (Mode)

Register

TEXT
 Text
A semantic unit
Created in context
Context determines language choice
Right… when it is
So… a text must not meaningful,
be meaningful. there is no
communication.
 Communication
The creation of text
The text produced is usually larger than a
clause
Major issue: how can learners put clauses
together to create text?
We create text by
negotiating…
 Elements of Context /
Register Variables

Field: the subject matter; topic – vocabulary

Tenor: interpersonal relationships established by
participants; power relation – Mood, Modality ,
intonation, appraisal etc.
Mode: spoken or written – different features (lexical
density, clause / sentence etc.)
Field, tenor and mode
determine our
language choice.
 Genre
Communicative purpose
Text structure
True. There are
Linguistic features unique
communicative
events in every
Every culture culture.
produces genres
or text types.
 Spoken Genres
Transactional Conversation
Interactional / interpersonal conversation
Monologues (in various genres)
Short functional texts (announcements etc.)

We speak with
different purposes
 Written genres
Essays (in various genres: procedure, recount,
descriptive, narrative etc.)
Short functional texts (road signs, notices etc.)

We write with
And with sense of
sense of
audience too.
purpose
 SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
CONTINUUM

Most Spoken Most Written

Language accompanying action Language as reflection

Spoken Language
Written Language

Where is the
boundary?
 Spoken and Written Language
Turn taking organisation
Context dependent
Dynamic structure
 Interactive staging
 Open ended
Spontaneity phenomena
(false start, hesitation etc.)
Monologic organisation
Context independent
Synoptic structure
 Rhetorical staging
 Closed / Finite
Final draft/polished
(indication of earlier draft
removed)
 Spoken and Written Language
Everyday lexis Prestige lexis
Non-standard grammar Standard grammar
Grammatical complexity Grammatical simplicity
Lexically sparse Lexically dense

But in this
context… I have to
use standard
grammar.
 Spoken Language
Hey, I tell you what! Yesterday I went to… you
know this place? They call it Guci. It’s
somewhere around this city… what do you
call it? The city that people plant those
shallots and also lots of salted duck eggs? I
think it starts with B or something. From here
it’s rather far… I think it’s after Tegal or…
 Written Language
Yesterday I went to a little town called Guci. It
My written
assignment.
is a small cool city located at a cool
Lots of noun mountain slope not far from Brebes.
phrases… Usually people come to Guci to enjoy
some hot-water springs that are believed
to have strong soothing effects to those
who suffer from water-born skin diseases
caused by badly managed sewage
sanitation.
 Literacy Levels

Performative Level (Primary)

Functional Level (Junior High)
Informational Level (Senior High)
Epistemic Level (University)

Literate…
Just like me
 Performative Level
(Language accompanying action)

Learners can
Use English to accompany actions
participate in classroom and
school interactions,
Recognise simple written English

Hey… Wait for

me, please…
 Functional Level
Learners can
* use English to get things done
* use English for survival purposes
(buying and selling, asking and giving permission,
making and canceling appointments,
read and write simple texts, read popular science, etc.)

Look, I can read

the instructions
here …
 Informational Level
Lucky I
understand
English…
Learners can Otherwise I
* use English to access cannot do this
accumulated knowledge project.

(Science etc.)
* use English in informal
and formal contexts
 Epistemic Level
Okay
everyone…
Let me begin
Learners can with the first
issue…
* use English to transform knowledge
(doing reasearch, writing reports,
lecturing etc.)

* use English for aesthetic purposes