Communicative Competence

1. Communicative Competence • mid-60s Chomsky drew a distinction between competence and performance • wanted to explain how children could acquire competence (rule-governed creativity) despite parents’ performance errors and problems • But Chomsky put too much emphasis on syntax

2. Communicative vs. Linguistic Competence • “Communicative competence” invented by Dell Hymes, a sociolinguist, to cover social and functional aspects of language • Based on the functions as well as the structure of language • Interpersonal as well as intrapersonal

3. Aspects of Communicative Competence (Canale & Swain) Grammatical competence – morphology, syntax, semantics, lexis, phonology – even this is broader than Chomskyan syntax – e.g. it would reject “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”-- subtle semantic differences, “my lust for the Polish people”, may be disastrous or amusing, “ send me to the station”

4. Discourse Competence • Discourse – language bigger than a sentence • Transfer often a problem especially in writing – “they” used without a preceding noun • Academic prose is very conventional – hedges are common in English scientific writing but boosters infrequent • Turn-taking and silence rules

5. Sociolinguistic Competence • A knowledge of sociolinguistic rules • Levels of formality • Gender-specific pronouns • Taboo words and euphemisms • Race-specific titles • terms of endearment “darling, love, duck”

6. Strategic Competence • What you do when you don’t what to say. • Strategies used to compensate for lack of competence or performance errors • May be nonlinguistic • Paraphrase, avoidance, gestures, appeal for help etc..

7. Bachman’s Classification • Language Competence Grammatical competence Textual Competence (Discourse) – cohesion and rhetorical organization • Pragmatic Competence Illocutionary Competence (ideational, manipulative, heuristic, imaginative functions

8. Continued • Sociolinguistic competence (variety, register, culture, metaphor) • Strategic competence not considered as part of language competence

9. Language Functions • Language may perform several functions • Illocutionary competence is the ability to recognize, realize and respond to these functions • Instrumental – to makes things happen “go away!” • Regulatory – something happens when something is said “I name this ship… I now pronounce you… I sentence you to…”

10. Continued • Representational – to give information, whether true or untrue • Interactional – to maintain social relationships • Personal – to express emotions • Heuristic – to acquire information • Imaginary – to create world that have a mental reality

11. Failures of Communicative competence Pragmatic or sociolinguistic failure • Response to compliments • Expressions of gratitude (intensity and occasion) • Directness of requests • Duplication of politeness markers • Intensification of apologies

12. Stages in Pragmatic Competence • Message-orientated and unsystematic – context, simplification, formulae • Interlanguage-orientated and potentially systematic– sociolinguistic features, variety of strategies, pragmatic transfer • Interculturally-orientated and potentially systematic – approximates native speaker competence, residual transfer such as sensitivity to status

13. Teaching Communicative Competence • Development of functional syllabuses • Based on language functions rather than structure • Advocated by Council of Europe • But violated natural order • Not always contextualised • Return to structural syllabuses with parallel teaching of functions

14. Testing Communicative Competence Communicative approach -- Widdowson 1978 existing tests criticised -- claimed that language was interaction-based, unpredictable,contextual [situation, textual], purposeful, performance- based, authentic [i.e. not simplified], behaviour-based [test success should be measured by outcomes]

15. Continued Communicative language tests • should be criterion-referenced -- performance of specified tasks • should be authentic -- involve real activities, e.g. listening to radio news or lecture • assessment is holistic [subjective?] • direct tests