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