Historical overview of the development of the notion of "communicative competence".

1.1. The model development

Chomsky (1965) in "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax."

• competence and performance

• competence is the perfect knowledge of an ideal speaker-listener of the language in a homogeneous speech community.

• linguistic knowledge is separated from sociocultural features

• "Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interests, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. (1965 p.3)"

Hymes (1972)

• points out that Chomsky's competence/performance model does not provide an explicit place for sociocultural features.

• also points out that Chomsky's notion of performance seems confused between actual performance and underlying rules of performance.

"Communicative Competence"

1. Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;

2. Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available;

3. Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;

4. Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed and what its doing entails.

It can be said that these four represent the four aspects of language user's knowledge and ability. by Munby (1981)

1. grammatical

2. psycholinguistic

3. sociocultural

4. de facto

Halliday (1971,72)

• rejects dichotomy of competence/performance

• "meaning-potential" covers both knowing and doing

• the notion of language functions

• macro- and micro- functions

Macro-functions

1. ideational

2. manipulative

3. heuristic

4. imaginative

(Firthian view of language) affected by Malinowski

language is as a mode of human behavior (social interaction)

the context of situation provides a first approximation to the specification of the components of the communication situation

Widdowson (1978)

• use and usage

• usage --- manifestation of the knowledge of language system

• use --- realization of the language system as meaningful ` communicative behavior

• both are the aspects of "performance"

The distinction of "usage" and "use" is based on the notion of "effectiveness for communication" This means that an utterance with a well-formed grammatical structure may or may not have a sufficient value for communication in a given context.

Whether an utterance has a sufficient communicative value or not is determined in discourse. This is why Widdowson's approach is considered as discourse-based approach.

cohesion and coherence --- emphasized discourse

Munby (1978)

1. linguistic encoding

2. sociocultural orientation

3. sociosemantic basis of linguistic knowledge

4. discourse level of operation

Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983)

four components of Communicative Competence (just a list!)

1. grammatical competence

concerned with mastery of the language code itself

2. discourse competence

concerns mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres

3. sociolinguistic competence

addresses the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors

4. strategic competence

is composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action for two main reasons: (a) to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to limiting conditions in actual communication or to insufficient competence in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence; and (b) to enhance the effectiveness of communication

Savignon (1983)

• interactional approach

• the development of learners' communicative competence is defined as "expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning involving interaction between two or more persons or between one person and a written or oral text".

The central characteristics of competence in communication are associated with:

1. the dynamic, interpersonal nature of communicative competence and its dependence on the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some degree the same symbolic system

2. its application to both spoken and written language as well as to many other symbolic systems

3. the role of context in determining a specific communicative competence, the infinite variety of situations in which communication takes place, and the dependence of success in a particular role on one's understanding of the context and on prior experience of a similar kind

4. communicative competence as a relative, not absolute, concept, one dependent on the cooperation of all participants, a situation which makes it reasonable to speak of degrees of communicative competence.

Bachman (1990) tree model of CC

1. Language Competence

a. Organizational Competence

(i) grammatical competence

(II) textual competence

+ cohesion/coherence

+ conversational analysis

Grice (1975), Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), Hatch (1978), Hatch and Long (1980), Richards and Schmidt (1983)

b. Pragmatic Competence

(i) illocutionary competence

+ speech acts

Austin (1962), Searle (1969)

+ language functions

Halliday (1973) macro- and micro-functions

(ii) sociolinguistic competence

sensitivity to differences in (a) dialects, or varieties, (b) register, (c) naturalness

ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech