COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Michael Canale and Merrill Swain
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1. Background
1.1 Grammatical and communicative approaches
Paragraph 1 Second Language courses are organized mainly under a grammar-based or grammatical approach and, on the other hand, some of them are organized under a communicative or functional approach.
Paragraph 2 There is a third approach which may be organized under the different situations in which the learner of the second language may be involved. But in this paper the situational approach will be part of either the grammatical or the functional approach.
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Paragraph 1 The term approach refers to principles of syllabus construction and not to the materials and methods used in the classroom.
1.2 Competence and Performance
Paragraph 2 Researchers use the terms competence and performance in discussion of second language approaches.
Paragraph 3 Chomsky introduced these terms in 1965
Paragraph 3 Competence refers to knowledge of grammar and competence refers to the actual use of the language.
Paragraph 4 Chomsky claims that the competence refers to the system a native speaker has internalized and that performance refers mainly to the psychological factors involved in the production of speech.
Theory of competence versus theory of performance
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Paragraph 2 Campbell and Wales ( 1970) The most important ability is to be able to produce utterances which don’t need to be grammatically correct but useful in a communicative situation.
Paragraph 3 A child acquires knowledge of a language not only its grammar but also the knowledge of when to use the language appropriately.
Paragraph 4 Campbell and Wale s propose the notion of Communicative Competence.
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Paragraph 2 Munby ( 1978) Communicative Competence includes grammatical Competence.
Rules of language use and rules of grammar are equally important.
Paragraph 3 Kempson (1965) claims that competence is grammar and performance is communicative competence.
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Paragraph 1 The study of sociolinguistic competence is as important as the study of communicative or grammatical competence.
Paragraph 2 “ If a communicative approach to second language teaching is adopted, then principles of syllabus design must integrate grammatical and sociolinguistic competence.” Page 6 Canale and swain.
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Paragraph 3 Communicative performance includes factors such as volition, motivation and pathology.
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2. Some theories of Communicative Competence
- Theories of basic communication skills
- Comprehensive and integrated theories
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Paragraph 1 Theories of Communicative Competence:
A theory of basic communication skills emphasizes the minimum level of communication skills you need to be part in a language situation.
Van Ek (1976) “ threshold level
Paragraph 3 Van Ek (1976) He emphasizes communicative functions and notions. He supplies a list of functions.
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Paragraph 2 To have an effective language learning emphasis should be put from the beginning on getting one’s meaning across, and not on grammatically correct utterances.
Paragraph 3 Van Ek ( 1976) There are levels in the threshold level of a native language that learners of second languages must be able to attain.
Paragraph 4 Grammaticalness and appropriateness of utterances versus getting one’s meaning across.
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Paragraph 2 Savignon ( 1972) It is not clear enough if learners will be accurate in the use of grammar if the emphasis is not put in it from the very beginning.
Interlanguage: a system that satisfies the basic communicative needs in the classroom.
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Paragraph 2 Some findings suggest that native speakers are tolerant of the mistakes a second language learner may make.
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Paragraph 1 Communicative tasks: getting one’s meaning across.
CC group: Communicative competence group versus Culture Lab and Grammatical competence group. CC group has a higher score in a test.
Paragraph 2 Tucker : individuals who were not able to get high scores in grammar were able to communicate as good as individuals of high measured proficiency in English.
Paragraph 3 conclusion It is not a sufficient condition to focus on grammar to develop communicative competence.
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Paragraph 1 Language use skills: the attention to basic communication skills interferes in the development of grammatical skills.
Paragraph 3 There are no strong theoretical reasons to emphasize getting one’s meaning across over grammatical accuracy at early stages. Conclusion: aspects of grammatical competence should be taught at early stages.
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Paragraph 1 Combination of grammar and communication.
Paragraph 2 Adoption of at least a basic communicative approach = acquisition of basic communication skills.
Paragraph 3 Social context which is ethnography of speaking.
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Paragraph 1 Communicative Competence: grammatical, psycholinguistic, socio cultural and probabilistic systems of competence.
Paragraph 2 to express in a native like way
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Paragraph 1 Hymes (1967) uses the notion of Speech event : participants, setting, message, topic, key, code, norms of interaction, norms of interpretations and genre.
Paragraph 2 Hymes these components are crucial.
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Paragraph 1 Halliday System of language potential
Paragraph 2 Munby ( 1978) meaningful communication is not possible without grammar.
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Paragraph 3 Halliday and Hymes have been concerned with: social context, grammar, and social meaning
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Paragraph 1 Integrative theories of communicative competence focus on speaking, listening, writing and reading.
Paragraph 2 Widdowson makes a distinction between cohesion and coherence.
Cohesion is how structures are linked and coherence is the relationship among the meanings in an utterance.
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Paragraph 2 Conversational analysis, analysis of classroom discourse, discourse routines, choice of utterances and social status.
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Paragraph 1 Threshold level can be offered as the minimum objective for the teaching of foreign languages , it is not “the” objective .
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Paragraph 3 The most practical concern of a second language programme would be the communicative purpose which will develop a more positive attitude of the learner towards the language.
Paragraph 4 You can not associate language only with communication.
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Paragraph 1 Children acquire forms they need to use.
Paragraph 2 In communication the attention goes to the language use and not to the grammatical usage.
Paragraph 3 A methodology should be focused to the use of language.
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General Comments
Paragraph 1 breakdowns in communications- authentic communicative situations- communicative channel
Paragraph 3 Carroll ( 1978) distinguishes three levels of performance: basic-intermediate and advanced.
Evaluation criteria: size-complexity, range, speed and flexibility.
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Paragraph 1 performance assessment : accuracy ,appropriacy , independence, repetition, hesitation)
Paragraph 2 terms to assess communicative interaction: settings, topic,function,modality adopted by speaker/ writer, presuppositions behind the utterances, role of speaker/ writer, status of the utterance, formality, mood of speaker / writer
Paragraph 3 Morrow (1972) includes grammatical accuracy for integrative tests but excludes grammar from tests of communicative competence.
Paragraph 4 Munby classifies language skills and Morrow proposes the use of a communicative approach.
Page 27 Paragraph 2 There are five important principles that guide the development of a communicative approach:
- Communicative competence: grammatical-sociolinguistic competence and communication strategies.
- A communicative approach responds to the learners’ needs.
- The learner needs the opportunity to take part in meaningful communicative situations.
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- Optimal use of aspects developed in the learning process of the native language.
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- Interaction in the second language.
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Paragraph 1 Reduction of uncertainty.
Paragraph 3 They envisage an integrative communicative approach.
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Paragraph 2 Sociolinguistic competence: Socio cultural rules of use and rules of discourse.
Paragraph 5 Strategic competence: paraphrase grammatical forms and those related to sociolinguistic competence.
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Paragraph 1 Stern ( 1978) strategies acquired by experience in real life communication.
Paragraph 2 Authentic texts must be used in the classroom from the beginning.
Three components of communicative competence.
Paragraph 4 Four main areas of language teaching: syllabus design, methodology, teacher training, and materials development.
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Paragraph 2 a functionally organized communicative approach different from a grammatically based communicative approach.
Negative attitude towards the language and towards the speakers of the language.
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Paragraph 1 Communicative incompetence projects a negative attitude towards the language.
Paragraph 3 Communication activities must be as meaningful as possible,
Paragraph 4 Teacher must have an activating role as the instigator of situations.
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Paragraph 1 Fruitful empirical investigation, native texts should be incorporated.
Paragraph 3 Measure communicative competence with integrative type tests.
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Paragraph 3 Reliable score procedures.
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