3rd Assignment of Topics in Applied Linguistics: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Maulina Adzkiyah

2201409033

Study Group 405-406

Communicative Competence

Communicative competence can be defined as the capacity of being able to use the language for meaningful communication. The idea of communicative competence was given by Dell Hymes (1972). His original idea was that speakers of a language have to have more than grammatical competence in order to be able to communicative effectively in a language; they also need to know how language is used by members of a speech community to accomplish their purposes.

Communicative competence has four types according to Hymes. They are:

a.       What is formally possible

b.      What is feasible

c.       What is social meaning or value of a given utterance

d.      What actually occur

Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in the context of second language teaching. Their view of communicative competence is: “a synthesis of knowledge of basic grammatical principles, knowledge of how language is used in social setting to perform communicative functions, and knowledge of how utterance and communicative functions can be combined according to principles of discourse”.

 There are some language knowledge aspects including in the communicative competence. They are described as follows:

1.      Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions.

2.      Knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants (e.g. knowing when to use formal or informal speech or when to use language appropriately for written as opposed to spoken communication).

3.      Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g. narratives, reports, interviews, conversations).

4.      Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge (e.g. through using different kinds of communication strategies).

Compared to grammatical competence that focuses on text construction, communicative competence can be said as the realization of the capacity of grammatical competence. It is where the communicative competence used in the field of real communication through either spoken or written.

References

_____. 1998. Aspects of Communicative Competence. Downloaded at http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/languagelearning/otherresources/gudlnsfralnggandcltrlrnngprgrm/AspectsOfCommunicativeCompeten.htm (April 11, 2012)

Yano, Yasukata. Communicative Competence and English as an International Language. Waseda University

_____. Historical Overview of the Development of the Notion of “Communicative Competence”. Downloaded at http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kurazumi/peon/ccmodel.html (April 11, 2012)

Richard, Jack C. Communicative Language Teaching Today. Downloaded at http://www.professorjackrichards.com/pdfs/communicative-language-teaching-today-v2.pdf (March 29, 2012)