Communication Competence (Topic 1, 2, 3, 4, 14)

The communicative approach in second language teaching starts from a theory of language as
communication, stating as the goal of teaching to develop what has been referred to as
“communicative competence”. Through the next lines we are going to see the different views about
this topic according to some of the most respected scholars.

Chomsky and the critique of behaviourism

Chomsky argued that is impossible for people to acquire a language by repetition. Children do not
learn languages this way, for they not, in fact, repeat what adults say, but produce their own
sentences which they may have never heard before. They also make mistakes, he said, and no
correction will stop they from doing. They construct the grammar anew, Chomsky concluded.

But even if this is the case with children learning their mother tongue, we could not assume that
adults and teens who learn a FL do it on the same way. We can also argue that Chomsky's model
appears to construct an ideal image of the language user, Chomsky, by extending Saussere concepts
of langua and parole, created a distinction between competence and performance; the language
produced in everyday situations and innate knowledge of grammar that everyone has, being the
latter the object of study for linguists.

In the end, he also said that we must turn away from real usage and look to the prior knowledge of
grammar, that all speakers possess and which has nothing to do with other situations. From the start,
his view aroused critics, as we are going to see now.

Hymes and communicative competence

The first critic that Hymes made about Chomsky's model was against the notion of the ideal speaker
which is, at least, optimistic and misleading due to Chomsky establishing the children as learners
and the adults as users.

According to Hyme, a normal child acquires knowledge not only about the grammar but also about
the appropriacy of language, when to speak, when not, what to say to whom… In short a child
becomes able to accomplish repertoire of speech acts, take part in them and evaluate himself by the
interaction with other speakers.

He suggests than that linguistic competence is nothing but a sub-division of a greater whole:
communicative competence.

Finally he distinguished four components of Communicative Competence in a way to define it

FOSA

• Feasibility a native speaker knows what is possible in the languages

• Occurrence a native speaker knows how often something occurs in a language and acts
accordingly
• Systematic Potential A language system has the potential to create a lot of language
• Appropriacy Native speakers know what language is appropriate in different situations

Canale and Swain theory

Following Hymes, Canale & Swain stated that the term “communicative competence” is commonly
defined as the knowledge of the rules of language and “grammatical competence” as knowledge of
the rules of grammar. But from their point of view, both knowledges are entwined, being the real
“Communicative Competence” the addition of different abilities.

A series of studies in this topic took us from the two original ideas to the four components stated by
Canale in 1983: Grandes Socios Descubren Soluciones
• Grammatical competence
• Sociolinguistic competence
• Discourse competence
• Strategic competence

Savignon's Competence

To put the icing on the cake, Savignon (1983) defined communicative competence as “a dynamic
rather than a static concept. It depends on the negotiation between two or more persons who share
to some degree the same symbolic system. In this sense, the communicative competence can be said
to be an interpersonal trait”.

With this, is following Hymes introduction of the social dimension of the communicative
competence. More consequences follow: “Communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and
depends on the cooperation of all the participants involved. It makes sense, then, to speak of
degrees of communicative competence”.

As we see, she clearly goes away from Chomsky's view on the topic. Another important difference
what that she stated the difference between the different ability and their ability to perform. But, in
the end, she understands the communicative competence in a L2 as the ability to perform, not
giving a clear definition of what she means with the word competence.

Summing up, Savignon proposes a model where Canale's four factors interact constantly.

To conclude with the communicative competence, we cannot forget to mention how it is present in
our education system: LOMCE highlights the importance of developing oral and written skills in
the six years of Primary Education. All these contents aim to help students become competent in the
foreign language. Also, the New Decree 126/2014 (28th February) establishes the following blocks
for the curriculum of foreign language in Primary Education: block 1: comprehension of oral tests.
Block 2 production of oral texts. Block 3 comprehension of written texts. Block 4 production of
written texts, expressions and interactions

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crystal, David “The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language” Cambridge: C.U.P., 2003 (2nd Ed.)