3.
Communicative competence is a construct that
has been a topic of interest for at least four
decades, recent trends have put less emphasis
on structural and cognitive characteristic of
communication and more on the myriad social,
cultural, and pragmatic implications of what it
means to communicate in a second language.
Communicative
competence
5. The term CC was coined by Dell Hymes (1972,
1967), a sociolinguist who was convinced that
Chomsky’s (1965) notion of competence (see
chapter 2) was too limited.
James Cummins (1980, 1979) proposed a
distinction between cognitive/academic
language proficiency (CALP) and basic
interpersonal communicative skills (BICS)
6.
In Canale and Swain’s and later in Canale’s
(1983) definition, four different components, or
subcategories, made up the construct of CC the
first subcategories reflected the use of the
linguistic system itself the last two defined the
functional aspects of communication.
Subcategories reflected the use of the linguistic
system.
1. Grammatical competence
2. Discourse competence
10.
Functions are essentially the purposes that we
accomplish with language
e.g.
- Stating (How much does that cost?)
- Requesting (I can’t find my umbrella)
- Responding (I want some ice cream)
- Greeting (Good morning)
- Parting (Good night)
