ELT Concept #1 – Communicative Competence

ELT Concept #1 – Communicative Competence

Communicative Competence

Quan Li

What is it?

The term communicative competence was first introduced by Canale & Swain in 1980 to encompass what it takes to be able to use the second language effectively for communication. In a nutshell, it refers to one’s ability to use language well in a variety of contexts and for different purposes. The construct consists of five different but equally important competencies: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic and intercultural competence. A communicatively competent user of English can express their thoughts, opinions and feelings accurately, fluently and appropriately.

Why is it important?

Communicative competence is of great significance as it is now accepted as the main goal of language learning. Most second language programmes are now designed to help learners to achieve this goal so that they can connect and communicate with other English speakers orally or in writing, get a good job in a multi-national companies, pursue further studies overseas, and access information from the Internet without much difficulty.

Unlike in the past where the goal of language teaching was primarily to prepare students for high-stakes examinations, modern language classes (including mine) give a larger focus on teaching language as ability, not simply as knowledge. In my own teaching, I now use teaching materials and activities that can help my students develop abilities to use English for real-life purposes, rather than for test purposes. Grammar is still taught, but the focus is on basic and useful grammatical knowledge (e.g., basic sentence structures, essential rules that govern to use of tenses and modal verbs such as can, would and should). Exotic grammatical structures (e.g., subjunctive clauses) are either touched upon briefly or not taught at all.

My reflection

My adult EFL learners in China perform quite well in examinations; they have sizable vocabulary and are very familiar with the grammatical rules of English. In class, they would argue over a specific rule or the use of a certain word by referencing grammar books or dictionaries. However, when it comes to speaking skill, many cannot perform very well. Their speech may be grammatically accurate, but it often does not flow smoothly. Worse still, they are often not aware of the pragmatic conventions that govern language use, thus often sounding rather stilted and socio-culturally unsophisticated.

One main reason of this is that the language curriculum gives heavier emphasis on grammatical accuracy than fluency of use. This is hardly surprising as achieving high test scores is seen as an important indicator of students’ and schools’ success. But once the real-life situations come into the picture, high test scores does not guarantee success in communication.

A particular point in my reflection is the intercultural competence. It is of utmost importance to incorporate knowledge about culture of the target language when teaching EFL learners. Learners should be equipped with cultural awareness especially when communication takes place in the target language culture. For instance, when Chinese speakers of English converse with other users of English, they should not bring up socially or politically sensitive topics at their first meeting. Similarly, personal topics to do with age, appearance, income, etc. should also be avoided.

I believe that my students should be linguistically as well as socio-culturally competent. Focusing too much on the former while neglecting the latter would severely reduce their potential of becoming culturally competent and confident users of the language.

4 Replies to “ELT Concept #1 – Communicative Competence”

  1. Communicative competence is hard to evaluate, especially in China with such a large population. If there is an efficient and effective way to test the ability of communication as the ways to test vocabulary and grammar, an improvement in the curriculum standards may be expected.

  2. The construct of Communicative Competence is extremely important and I appreciate the author’s work on putting these ideas together. But there is some important missing information in the initial post. First, Canale and Swain did not come up with the idea of communicative competence – that was Delly Hymes (1965). While Canale and Swain tried to operationalize it (primarily with respect to SLA), Hymes’ original construct is even more far reaching in its significance as it was a counterpoint to Noam Chomsky’s trasformational generative grammar but also to Chomsky’s view of language as a set of components/knowledge primarily related to grammar (and somewhat to semantics).
    A decent quick recap can be found here: https://www.cosa.k12.or.us/sites/default/files/materials/events/65_communicative_competence.pdf
    But even better is Courney Cazden’s (2011) discussion published in Anthropology & Education, 42(4). Unfortunately that is behind a paywall but you can see the introduction here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41410139

  3. In India too the emphasis is on English as a subject,to score marks,not on the language.I absolutely agree that
    language for communication is more important than just being grammatically correct. Thank you Sir for the post.

  4. The Chinese curriculum’s heavy emphasis on passing high stake examination is also similar to that of Indonesian until recently. Learning language as an ability is not the goals in most schools. This explains why many university graduate job seeker show low communicative competence. It’s now high time for Indonesian English Curriculum to shift paradigm. Otherwise, they won’t be able to be absorbed by the job market.

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