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An Overview on Communicative Competence in Language Acquisition

Being interested in foreign language development; The knowledge, analysis and

reflection of the nativist and interactionist perspectives in the theory of language

acquisition, serve us as a guideline to broaden and intervene the horizons in our

educational practice. Within this reflection, those theories that are intuitively present in

the constituents of the acquisition and learning of the language and that, in some way,

produce significant learning in the apprentices become aware. The task is not easy; The

intervention requires great openness and conviction, and the experiment in finding the

most suitable means and strategies to innovate and succeed in our way of proceeding in

the classroom.

Seen in this way, it should be addressed that the processes of learning and

language acquisition, aim to develop the communicative competence, in which the

language user's grammatical knowledge on syntax, morphology, phonology, as well as

the social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately and from the

educational contexts, the grammatical and lexical production is attended to in different

scenarios performed within the classroom.

Within a particular case, la Ley General de Educación in Colombia establishes as

one of its purposes the study and critical understanding of the national culture and the

ethnic and cultural diversity of the country, and within it, they are set as objectives, the
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acquisition of conversation and reading elements, at least in a foreign language together

with the understanding and ability to express oneself in a foreign language, English.

In order to support the above, the Ministry of National Education and the National

Bilingual Program propose Los Estandares Básicos de Competencias as a guide for

teachers, with the function of achieve citizens capable of communicating in English, so

that they can insert the country into the processes of universal communication, in the

global economy and in cultural openness, with internationally comparable

standards[CITATION Min06 \l 9226 ]. This implies the development of communication

skills throughout the education system so that the expected learning is achieved,

according to the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages, seeking to reach level B1 in the last grade level.

The CEFR provides a general framework which indicates what language learners

need to learn to be able to use a foreign language effectively in practice. The CEFR

indicates in each of its levels, the use of the language, according to a number of

component parts: including linguistic, socio-linguistic and pragmatic competences. Each

of these made up of knowledge, aptitudes and skills. Taking into account that, the CEFR

establishes that communicative competence from the nativist and interactionist

perspectives in the theory of language acquisition, but cannot confine itself to the

knowledge, skills and attitudes learners will need to develop in order to act as competent
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language users, but must also deal with the processes of language acquisition and

learning, as well as with the teaching methodology. [CITATION Eur01 \l 9226 ]

Many other theories are approached from the acquisition and learning of

languages, for example, from a nativist perspective, Noam Chomsky formulated a theory

on language acquisition based on the postulates of generative grammar, arguing that the

only plausible explanation of the efficiency with which Children acquire the mother

tongue is that they are born with an innate ability to learn the language. That is, children

have a special ability to discover the grammatical rules that govern language from the

linguistic input to which they are exposed. [ CITATION Noa65 \l 9226 ]

The foundations of Chomskian theories, proposed to explain the acquisition of the

mother tongue, were extended to second language learning by Krashen in his monitor

model, where acquisition is a process of personal evolution, in which learners do not need

to speak or write to learn, but, when they listen or read and understand fragments of the

target language, they learn it. The language that students produce when speaking or

writing is the result of learning and not the cause of it. [ CITATION Sus12 \l 9226 ]

Taking into account the previous perspectives, the case of the San Pedro Claver

school in the city of Tulua is discussed, where teaching foreign language is aimed at the

proposal of Ministerio de Educación Nacional, seeking to develop the communicative

competence in students from the theory of foreign language acquisition, from which, the
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formative processes of the students are generated with a pedagogical model of social

constructivism, with which the learners develop the language from a pragmatic way,

determined by the needs of satisfying the communication requirements, towards a

syntactic way, which implies the mastery of the forms and their nuances. From this, a

methodological approach is established with didactic strategies based on the

communicative approach. Through this, Jack C. Richards states, a learner can develop

communicative competence by maintaining communication despite linguistic limitations

through the use of different strategies and varying the use of language according to the

setting and participants. [ CITATION Jac05 \l 9226 ]

With the applied strategy in the institution, an analysis is made of the results

obtained in the types of evaluation applied in the school: diagnostic, formative and

summative, the standardized external evaluation Pruebas Saber 11 and the pilot tests by

the company Tres Editores; where, the search of interaction of the students in the

language learning is effective to develop their communicative competence. The school is

certified in ICONTEC quality and this thanks to the fact that, in the previous evaluation

measures, positive results have been achieved, obtaining the B + and B1 level according

to CEFR in 70% of the population in the last three years in progress.

The aforementioned in this paper, realizes that the processes from linguistics

applied in the development of communicative competence in the Colombian context,

reflect that, the measures taken at the disposal to take any theory or methodological
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strategy, at the free will of the teachers and each of the institutions are a functional tool to

ensure that the country achieves the goal of being competent in a foreign language,

although the results still show a distance between the proposed and the expected, a

greater social impact must be met for the language acquisition strategies to be plausible to

the goals set.

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References

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Massachusetts: The M.I.T Press.
Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Cambridge, University press. Obtenido de https://rm.coe.int/16802fc1bf
Malone, S. (2012). Theories and Research of Second Language Acquisition . Bangkok.
MinEducación, M. d. (2006). Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas
Extranjeras (Inglés). Bogotá: Imprenta nacional.
Richards, J. (2005). Communicative Language Teaching Toda.