2021

TEMARIO OPOSICIONES

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.
ANALYSIS OF ITS COMPONENTS.
TOPIC 4
TOPIC 4: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. ANALYSIS OF ITS
COMPONENTS.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
2.1. THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE AND
THE 7 KEY COMPETENCES
3. THEORIES ON COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES
3.1. THEORIES OF BASIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS
3.2. SOCIO-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
3.3. INTEGRATIVE THEORIES
4. COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
5. CONCLUSION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. INTRODUCTION

Communication (from Latin "communis", meaning to share) is the activity of

conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, speech,
visuals, signals, writing, or behavior.

Communication is defined by de Valenzuela as “any act by which one person

gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs,
desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be
intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals,
may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or
other modes.”

Communication requires a sender, a message, and a recipient, although the

receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at
the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast
distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating
parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication
process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the
sender.

Savignon, in order to design a model for naming communicative competence,

characterises communication as: "dynamic rather than... static..." It depends
on the negotiation of meaning between two or more people... Communication
takes place in an infinite variety of situations, and success in a particular role
depends on one´s understanding of the context and on prior experience of a
similar kind. (Savignon, 1983)

In addition to this, Kramsch’s discussion of communicative interaction states

that:

"Interaction always entails negotiating intended meaning, i.e., adjusting one’s

speech to the effect one intends to have on the listener. It entails anticipating
the listener´s response and possible misunderstanding, clarifying one´s own
and the other´s intentions and arriving at the closest possible match between
intended, perceived and anticipated meaning." (Kramsch 1986: 367)

So it is clear that the act of communication is seen not as an exchange of

linguistic messages, but rather as a socially meaningful matter in which the use

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of language occurs because social rules and functions are previously known
and agreed by the participants in the verbal exchange. Despite this, it is
necessary to consider the study of individual’s communicative activity in its
social setting. This implies the study not only of formal properties of utterances
but also the study of the social contexts and of the participants in acts of
communication. Taking all this into account, it is a fact the recognition of
language use as a dynamic process.

During the sixties and the seventies several developments indicate a change in
language pedagogy. What we find is a more differentiated view of language
teaching which can be applied to the different situations in which second
language teaching happens. In terms of language pedagogy, the functional-
notional syllabus.

The functional-notional syllabus had its origins in the work of the council of
Europe and in its various Modern Language Projects. These projects focus on
the of what should be taught rather than on how it should be taught. Besides,
the functional-notional syllabus has developed into what is called
communicative approach. So it should be noted that the communicative
approach is the base of language teaching in the first half of the 1980s. It has
centred on speaking and listening skills, on writing for specific communicative
purposes and on authentic reading texts.

Nowadays the action-oriented project-based learning (PBL), a variety of the

communicative approach, is the main teaching method applied in teaching
English as a foreign language in Europe according to the CEFR. PBL was
popularized by N. Prabhu while working in Bangalore, India. Prabhu noticed
that his students could learn language just as easily with a non-linguistic
problem as when they were concentrating on linguistic questions. Major
scholars who have done research in this area include Teresa P.
Pica and Michael Long.

The basic and initial point of organisation is the project; classwork is organised
as a sequence of tasks to carry out a project and it is tasks that generate the
language to be used. The main focus is on the project to be done and language
is seen as the instrument necessary to carry it out. PBL thus highlights the
instrumental value of language, its usefulness in different contexts.

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2. DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Learning a foreign language is, from both a linguistic and a communicative

view, a matter of mastering "competence" and "performance’.

The American linguists Noam Chomsky, in 1965, made a distinction similar to

the one that Ferdinand Saussure had made between langue and parole. The
distinction made by Chomsky was between " competence", — a speaker
intuitive knowledge of the rules of his native language- and "performance", what
he actually produces by applying the rules.

Chomsky's view of what it means to know a language is reflected in his

distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance. In
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) Chomsky writes:

"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 interest, and errors in applying
his knowledge of the language in actual performance".

The perfect knowledge referred to here is the mastery of the abstract system of
rules by which a person is able to understand and produce any and all of the
well-formed sentences of his language, i.e. his linguistic competence. The
actual use of language in concrete situations, affected by what he calls
grammatically irrelevant conditions, and identified with the criterion of
acceptability, not grammaticality, is the domain of linguistic performance.

Chomsky’s concept of linguistic competence was criticised due to its exclusive

attention to formal linguistic elements.

Communicative competence implies linguistic competence but its main focus is

the intuitive understanding of socio-cultural rules and meanings. Chomsky’s
definition of competence omits almost everything of socio-cultural significance.

5
In the 1970s, research on communicative competence distinguished between
linguistic and communicative competence so as to establish the difference
between knowledge about language rules and forms and knowledge to cope
with different situations in order to communicate and undertake the different
speech acts.

Jürgen Habermas preserves Chomsky's distinction of competence and

performance but criticises his conception of competence as a monological
capability, on the grounds that it provides an inadequate basis for the
development of general semantics and because it fails to take account of the
essential dimension of communication (in a highly idealised sense).

His view of communicative competence as comprising knowledge of the

universal formal features of language that makes human communication
possible has more in common with Halliday at the latter's most idealised level
of theorising.

Michael Halliday’s approach to the question of the language user's

competence is different from others because he rejects the distinction between
competence and performance as being of little use in a sociological context. He
is interested in language in its social perspective and so he is concerned with
language use to account for the language functions realised by speech. These
language functions are defined in terms of formal features of language which
enable communication to take place. In this sense Halliday's macro-language
functions relate to Habermas' communicative competence.

In 1972, Dell Hymes also underlines that Chomsky’s definition forgets the
competence for language use. Hymes said "There are rules of use without
which the rules of grammar would be useless" He defined communicative
competence as the mastery that the native speaker possesses to know “when
to speak, what to talk about, with whom, when, where and in what manner."

In a similar way, James Cummings (1979, 1980) established a distinction

between CALP (a cognitive-academic language proficiency) and BICS (basic
interpersonal and communicative skills). CALP assesses those aspects of
proficiency in which the learner manipulates or reflects upon the surface
features of language outside the interpersonal context. It is what learners often

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use in classroom exercises and tests which focus on form. BICS is the
communicative capacity that all children acquire in order to be able to function
in daily interpersonal exchanges.

In the definition of communicative competence, Bachman includes strategic

competence as a completely separate element of “communicative language
proficiency". In Bachman’s model, organisational competence corresponds to
Canale and Swain’s grammatical ‘and discourse (textual) competence, but the
latter’s sociolinguistic competence now is seen to have wider connotations as a
major element of pragmatic competence. Strategic competence, according to
Bachman, is a set of general abilities that utilise all of the elements of language
competence and of psychomotor skills as well. Bachman’s model seems more
descriptively adequate than Canale and Swain’s.

Canale and Swain adopted the term communicative competence, or

knowledge of the rules of grammar, and socio-linguistic competence or
knowledge of the rules of language use. Communicative competence is to be
distinguished from communicative performance, which is the realization of these
competencies and their interaction in the actual production and comprehension
of utterances.

Following Breen, Candlin, Morrow and Widdowson, communication is

understood to have the following characteristics:

1. It is a form of social interaction. One is not dealing with perfect competence in

a homogeneous speech community but the reality of differential competence in
a heterogeneous speech community.

2. It involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and

message.

3. It takes place in course and socio-cultural contexts.

4. It is carried out under psychological conditionings, memories constrains,

fatigue and distractions.

5. It always has a purpose (promise, order ....).

6. It involves authentic contexts.

7. It is judge as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes.

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 2.1. THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE AND
THE 7 KEY COMPETENCES

According to Royal Decree 1105/2014, and following the European Council

Recommendations 2018/C 189/01, students should develop seven key
competences. The KeyCoNet Project was developed in order to provide the
educative community useful tools to manage, develop and assess KCs.

In the last years, one of the main concerns on education of European Union has
been to develop the seven key competences on students. The key
competences for lifelong learning are a combination of knowledge, skills and
attitudes appropriate to the context. One of these competences is the linguistic
competence, closely related to the communicative competence of students. The
KCs are particularly necessary for personal fulfillment and development, social
inclusion, active citizenship and employment. They are essential in a knowledge
society and guarantee more flexibility in the labour force, allowing it to adapt
more quickly to constant changes in an increasingly interconnected world. They
provide a reference framework to support national and European efforts to
achieve the objectives they define, according to the CEFR, which has had its
descriptors extended in February 2018 beyond the area of modern languages
to encompass aspects relevant to language education across the curriculum.
There is a need for an integrated approach to language education across the
curriculum. In this sense, linguistic communication programmes such as
Comunica and School Linguistic project are present in our schools. The
LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE is based on linguistic,
pragmatical-discursive and socio-cultural knowledge and should not only be
worked by the linguistic subjects, but all the subjects should be implied. A
School Linguistic Project can be elaborated in order to organize how every
subject is going to develop this competence or schools can be part of the
"Comunica" programme to promote the development of linguistic skills in all
the departments.

3. THEORIES ON COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES

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It is useful to consider in some detail some of the theories of communicative
competence that have been proposed: Theories of basic communication skills,
integrative theories and sociolinguistic perspectives.

3.1. THEORIES OF BASIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS

A theory of basic communication skills can be characterized as one that

emphasises the minimum level of (mainly oral) communication skills needed to
cope with the most common second language situations the learner is likely to
face. It is not clear just what skills are included in theories of basic
communication skills. For example, Savignon makes explicit reference only to
grammatical skills (pronunciation, vocabulary). Van Eck emphasises "language
functions".

According to Canale and Swain, it is important to consider two principles in

relation to the theories of basic communication skills:

•These theories can be said to specify a minimum level of communication skills.

•That more effective second language learning takes place if emphasis is put
from the beginning on getting one’s meaning across (on making one’s meaning
understandable), and not on the grammaticalness (grammaticality) and
appropriateness of one’s utterances.

Considering the first principle, there is no clear sense in which theory of

language that we are familiar with specifies what minimum level of skills is
necessary to communicate in a given language. Considering the second
principle with respect to emphasis on meaning in relation to grammaticalness, it
is quite reasonable to assume that since in acquiring a first language the child
seems to focus more on being understood than on speaking grammatically.
Then, second language acquisition might be allowed to proceed in this manner.
Furthermore, since in the first language acquisition most parents and peers
seem to be more interested in finding out what a child has to say than in how
he/she says it, then the 2nd language teacher might assume a similar role to
provide a more natural context for second language learning.

Second language learners may already have acquired an adequate knowledge

of appropriateness conditions for their basic communicative needs in the

9
second language just by having acquired such knowledge for communicative
needs in the first language.

It seems that an appropriate conclusion to draw from these studies is that focus
on grammatical competence in the classroom is not a sufficient condition for the
development of communicative competence. However, it seems quite
reasonable to hold off an explicit emphasis on socio-cultural aspects of
language use at the early stages of 2nd language study in general programs.

3.2. SOCIO-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNICATIVE

COMPETENCE

Although there have perhaps been few direct applications of this research to
general second language programs, the work of Halliday and Hymes in
particular has inspired many of the communicative approaches that have been
proposed. It is worthwhile then to examine some of the assumptions and
components of their theories of language in its social context.

Halliday is interested, as I have already said, in language in its social

perspective and so he is concerned with language use to account for the
language functions realized by speech. These language functions are defined in
terms of formal features of language which enable communication to take place.
In writing of the early l970s, Halliday develops a socio-semantic approach to
language and the speaker’s use of language.

In 1973, Halliday developed a theory of language with three level of analysis:

behaviour potential, meaning potential and lexical-grammatical potential. At the
heart of this approach is his language-defining notion of meaning potential; the
sets of options in meaning that are available to the speaker-hearer. This
meaning potential relates behaviour potential to lexicaI-grammatical potential:
what the speaker can do —> can mean -> can say. These stages display
systematic options at the disposal of the speaker. That is, a social theory
determines behaviour options (what the speaker can do which are translated
linguistically as semantic options (what he can mean) which are encoded as
options in linguistic forms (what he can say), the options at each stage being
organised as network of systems.

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 In Hymes’s view, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires
both knowledge and ability for language use. This includes concepts of
appropriateness and acceptability -notions which in Chomsky are associated
with performance- and the study of competence which will inevitably take into
consideration such variables as attitude, motivation, and a number of socio-
cultural factors. The actual theory of communicative competence that he
suggests implies four types of knowledge:

1. Whether something is formally possible —> Grammatical System

2. Whether something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation

available —> Psycholinguistic

3. Whether something is appropriate in relation to a context in which is used

and evaluated —> Socio-cultural

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

—> Probabilistic

Communicative competence is thus viewed by Hymes as the interaction of

grammatical, psycholinguistic, socio-cultural and probabilistic systems of
competence.

Hymes (1967) employs the notion of speech event to refer to activities that are
governed directly by rules of language use. A major aspect of the ethnography
of speaking is the analysis of speech events in relation to their constitutive
components. These are:

Participants (speaker and hearer). Setting (physical time and place). Scene
( psychological or cultural setting). The actual form of a message (a linguistic
description of the message). Topic (what the message is about). Purpose
(goal, intention). Key (serious, mock). Channel (oral, written). Code (language-
variety within a language). Norms of interaction (loudness of voice, when and
how to interrupt, physical distance between participants). Norms of
interpretation (how different norms of interaction or violation of them are
interpreted). Genre (casual speech, poem, prayer, letter form).

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According to Hymes, these components of speech events are crucial to the
formulation of rules of language use and to the analysis of the social meaning of
utterance.

Sandra Savignon (1972) defined communicative competence as "the ability to

function in a truly communicative setting -that is in a dynamic exchange in which
linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total informational input, both
linguistic and paralinguistic of one or more interlocutors". Successful
communication, however, would depend not only on the individual willingness to
take a risk and express oneself in the foreign language, but also on one’s
resourcefulness in using the vocabulary and structures to make oneself
understood. Several years later, in 1983, Savignon notes furthermore that
communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the
cooperation of all the participants involved. She points out the following
characteristics:

1. Communicative competence is a dynamic rather than a static concept which

depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who
share some knowledge of the language.

2. Communicative competence applies to both written and spoken language.

3. Communicative competence is context-specific, in that communication

always takes place in a particular context or situation.

4. It is important to bear in mind the theoretical distinction between competence

and performance. "Competence is what one knows. Performance is what one
does".

5. Communicative competence is relative and depends on the cooperation of all

those involved.

The theories of communicative competence that we have examined so far have

focussed mainly on the interrelation between language and social context.
These theories cannot be considered to be integrative since they devote
relatively little attention to how individual utterances may be linked at the level of
discourse and do not provide an integration in the different components of
communicative competence.

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 3.3. INTEGRATIVE THEORIES

Few theories have succeeded in integrating the two different points of view. The
most recent one has been articulated by Munby. His model of communicative
competence consists of three major components: Socio-cultural orientation,
socio-semantic view of linguistic knowledge, and rules of discourse. The most
recent and comprehensive of such theories is that proposed by Munby. In
Munby’s view, an integrative theory of communicative competence may be
regarded as one in which there is a synthesis of knowledge of basic
grammatical principles, knowledge of how language is used in social contexts to
perform communicative functions so that they can be combined according to the
principles of discourse. These theories might also be viewed as integrative in
that they focus on speaking, listening, writing and reading rather than on a
subset of these skill areas.

4. COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

The essential aspects of the theoretical framework presented here concern the
nature of communication, the distinction between communicative competence
and actual communication and the main components of communicative
competence. Canale and Swain have proposed a theoretical framework for
communicative competence. This framework includes four main competencies:

1. Grammatical competence refers to the degree to which the language user

has mastered the linguistic code (verbal or non verbal) It deals with the
knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, sentence formation,
pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics. Grammatical competence will
be an important concern for any second language program.

2. Sociolinguistic competence concerns to the way grammatical forms can be

used appropriately in various contexts to convey specific communicative
functions (Persuading, describing, narrating, etc) i.e. the knowledge of the
socio- cultural rules of language and discourse. It addresses the extent to which
utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different
sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as status of
participants, purposes of interaction, and norms or conventions of interaction.

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Appropriateness of utterances refers to both appropriateness of meaning and
appropriateness of form:

o Appropriateness of meaning concerns the extent to which particular

communicative functions (commanding, complaining and inviting)
attitudes (politeness and formality) and ideas are judged to be proper in
a given situation.

o Appropriateness of form concerns the extent to which a given meaning is

represented in a verbal and/or non-verbal form that is proper in a given
sociolinguistic context. (E.g. Waiter: "OK. What are you and this broad
gonna eat?"). Sociolinguistic competence is crucial in interpreting
utterances for their social meaning.

3. Discourse competence complements grammatical competence through the

ability to combine ideas in order to achieve cohesion in form and coherence in
thought. It concerns the way of how to combine, grammatical forms and
meaning to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres. By genre
we understand the type of text: oral and written narrative, an argumentative
essay, a scientific report; each represents a different genre. Unity of text is
achieved through cohesion in form and coherence in meaning.

In the theory of discourse, according to Canale and Swain, the clearest and
most directly and applicable description of discourse for second language
teaching is that discussed by Widdowson (1978). He makes a fundamental
distinction between cohesion and coherence in spoken or written discourse.
Coherence is a semantic concept concerned with the meaningful connections.
Cohesion is a relational concept concerned with how propositions are linked
structurally in a text and how literal meaning of a text is interpreted. In the work
of Halliday and Hasan (1976), four main types of cohesion are distinguished;

a. Anaphoric reference: use of pronouns to refer to something previously

mentioned.

b. Ellipsis: omission of a grammatical element expressed already( ... nor do I).

c. Conjunctions, which involve the use of grammatical connectors such as: as

soon (temporal), and (additive), although (adversative).

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d. Lexical cohesion, direct repetition of the same term to refer to the same
object rather than the use of different terms to refer to the same object. Other
approaches to the analysis of discourse are those on conversational analysis:
Grice (1975), the definition and classification of speech acts (1962), Searle
(1976).

4. Strategic competence: This component is composed 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. E.g. momentary inability to recall an idea or
grammatical form or to insufficient competence in one or more of the other
areas of communicative competence.

b. To enhance the effectiveness of communication (deliberately slow and soft

speech for rhetorical effect). For example, when one does not remember a
given grammatical form, one compensatory strategy that can be used is
paraphrasing, Eg. Train station ‘ the place where trains go".

Learners must be encouraged to use such strategies (rather than remain silent
if they cannot produce grammatically accurate forms) and must be given the
opportunity to use them.

Bachman and Palmer (l962) found some support for the distinctness of
components of what they called "communicative proficiency". It includes
language competence, strategic competence and psychomotor skills.

Language competencies were classified into two types: Organisational

competence (morphology, syntax, vocabulary, cohesion and organisation) and
pragmatic competence includes not only elements of Bachman and Palmer’s
sociolinguistic competence, but also those abilities related to the functions that
are performed through language use. Each of these consists of several
categories in language use, these components all interact with each other.

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 COMMUNICATIVE
LANGUAGE
PROFICIENCY

1.- LANGUAGE 2.- STRATEGIC 3.- PSYCHOMOTOR

COMPETENCE COMPETENCE SKILLS

1.A Organisational 1.B Pragmatic

Productive Receptive
competence competence

Grammatical Illocutionary
Oral Aural
competence competence

Lexis Ideational functions Visual Visual

Manipulative
Morphology
functions

Phonology Heuristic function

Textual Imaginative
competence function

Socio-linguistic
Cohesion
competence

Rethorical
Register and dialect
organisation

Cultural reference
and figures of
speech

Naturalness

1.a . Organisational competence comprises those abilities involved in

controlling the formal structure of language for producing or recognising
grammatically correct sentences, comprehending their propositional content,
and ordering them to form texts. These abilities are of two types:

- Grammatical competence: includes those competencies involved in

language use. These consist. of a number of relatively independent
competencies such as the knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and
phonology/graphology.

- Textual competence includes the knowledge of the conventions for joining

utterances together to form a text. Textual competence is involved in
conversational language use. Conventions have been discussed in terms of "
maxims" (Grice, 1975).

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1b. Pragmatic competence refers to the organisation of the linguistic signals
and how they are used to refer to persons, ideas and feelings. Pragmatics is
concerned with the relationship between utterances and the acts that speakers
intend to perform through these utterances.

- Illocutionary competence:

Speech acts: Searle defines utterance acts (act of saying something)

o J.L. Austin distinguishes three types of speech acts:

- Propositional acts (referring to something or predication)

- lllocutionary acts (function performed in saying something)

- Perlocutionary act (as the effect on the nearer)

o Language functions: several macro functions can be considered:

- Ideational function (to express meaning in terms of our experience of the

world)

- Manipulative function (to affect the world around us)

- Regulatory function (to control the behaviour of others)

- Interactive function (to form, maintain or exchange relationships)

- Heuristic function (to extend our knowledge of the world)

- Imaginative function (aesthetic purposes to extend our environment)

- Sociolinguistic competence: is the sensitivity to or control of the

conventions of language use that are determined by the features of the specific
language use context. It enables us to perform language functions in ways that
are appropriate to the context (sensitivity to differences in dialect or variety to
differences in register and naturalness the ability to interpret cultural references
and figures of speech). Sociolinguistic competence involves sensitivity to
variations in register, since the illocutionary force of utterances virtually depends
on the social contexts in which they are used.

2. Strategic competence: is the recognition of language use as a dynamic

process, involving the assessment of relevant information in the context, and a

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negotiation or meaning on the part of the language user. We can consider three
components in relation to the strategic competence:

- Assessment: enables us to identify the information that is needed for realising

a particular communicative goal in a given text or to identify what language
competencies are at our disposal (native language, second or foreign language)
and also to evaluate the extent to which the communicative goal has been
achieved.

- Planning: formulates a plan whose realization is expected to achieve the

communicative goal.

- Execution: draws on the relevant psychophysiological mechanisms to

implement the plan in the modality and channel appropriate to the
communicative goal end the context.

3. Psychophysiological mechanism: In order to fully characterise language

use, however, it is also necessary to consider the psychophysiological
mechanisms that are involved in language use. We can distinguish the visual
from the auditory channel and the productive from the receptive mode. In
receptive language use, auditory and visual skills are employed, while in
productive use the neuromuscular skills are employed.

5. CONCLUSION

To end up, I will deal with some ideas regarding communicative competence:

Communication is a very complex phenomenon involving a number of different

variables. The role of context is essential when analysing the meaning
conveyed by any communication act.

All these ideas will influence the methodology we will follow when designing our
teaching programme.

Learning based on key competences gives communication an important role:

the LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE is based on linguistic,
pragmatical-discursive and socio-cultural knowledge and should not only be
worked by the linguistic subjects, but all the subjects should be implied in
programmes such as School Linguistic Project and Comunica.

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English should be taught in context so that our students will know different
meanings in different situations. For our purposes in teaching a second
language, we must consider the nature of discourse, and how best to teach it
and to transfer from grammatical competence, a knowledge of sentences, to
communicative competence.

Guiding principles for a communicative approach (Project-based learning:

PBL)

The main goal of PBL is to prepare and encourage learners to exploit in an

optimal way their limited communicative competence in the second language in
order to participate in actual communication situations by accomplishing a given
project. When designing our teaching programme, we should take into account
all these methodological principles. The five guiding principles according to
Canale & Swain are as follows:

1. Coverage of competence areas: including four areas of knowledge and skill;

grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence
and strategic competence. The primary goal of PBL must be to facilitate the
integration of these types of competencies in equal proportion.

2. Communication needs: a PBL must be based on and respond to the learners

communication needs and interests.

3. Meaningful and realistic interaction: learners must have the opportunity to

take part in meaningful communicative interaction with highly competent
speakers of the language in order to accomplish their projects. This principle is
important not only with respect to classroom activities but to testing as well.

4. The learners native skills: The primary objective of a communication-oriented

second language program must be provided to the learners with the
information, practice and much of the experience needed to meet their
communication needs in the second language. In addition, the learners should
be taught about language, drawing as much as possible from the first language
program, and about the 2nd language culture, drawing as much as possible
from other subjects or areas. It is thought that such a curriculum wide approach
may facilitate a natural integration of knowledge of the second language,

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knowledge of the second language culture and knowledge of language in
general.

5. A curriculum-wide approach. The learners should also be taught about

language and about second language culture, drawing as much as possible
from other subject areas (interdisciplinary links), such an approach would
facilitate a natural integration of knowledge of the second language, knowledge
of its culture and knowledge in general. CLIL learning is focused on this
aspect.

In short, both subjective and objective feedback can play important roles in
research on a theory on communicative competence and its application to
foreign language learning.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Crystal, D. "Linguistics". Penguin, 1971

-Halliday, MAK. "An Introduction to Functional Grammar" E. Arnold, London

1985.

-Halliday, MAIC & Hassan, K. "Language, Context and Text: Aspects of

Language in a Social Semiotic Perspective". OUP, 1990.

-Hymes, D. (1970). ‘On Communicative Competence’, in Gumperz and

Hymes (eds)

- Meyer, C.F., "Introducing English Linguistics", CUP, 2012.

-Neil McLaren & Daniel de la Madrid, "A handbook for TEFL", Marfil 1996.

-Widdowson, HG. "Teaching Language as Communication". OUP, 1985.

- http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/topical.html (Linguistic links)

- http://linguistlist.org/ (International linguistic community online)

https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-
2018/1680787989

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