COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO L2 TEACHING

History eme ng communic approach

The learning theories that make up the overall framework of theories for language education have been
the main topic of our discussion up to this point. In order to fully comprehend the communicative
competency models that have been suggested to improve the effectiveness of L2 instruction, we believe
that this broad knowledge is essential. So, in this section, we review these models and talk about some
of their drawbacks.

Canale and Swain's (1980) model of communicative competence is regarded as the pioneering work on
which the theoretical foundations of communicative approaches to second language teaching have been
founded, and it has been expanded by Canale (1983).

This model provided an integrative theoretical framework comprised of four major competencies:
grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence.

The first component of the model, grammatical competence, refers to knowledge of the language code.
It includes vocabulary knowledge, pronunciation and spelling rules, word formation, and sentence
structure.

Sociolinguistic competence is the understanding of the sociocultural rules of use in a specific context.

Strategic competence entails understanding how to use verbal and nonverbal communication strategies
to deal with communication breakdowns.

The model's final component, discourse competence, is concerned with the knowledge of achieving
coherence and cohesion in a spoken or written text.

According to the authors, knowing these four components was critical in preparing learners to face their
communicative needs in the L2. However, they did not provide a description of the relationship between
these components, which was taken into account in Savignon's model of communicative competence
(1983). In savignon’s model the four main competencies are included and it adopted the shape of an
inverted pyramid to show how an increase in only one component produces an increase in the overall
level of communicative competence.

This assumption is supported by the fact that measuring both sociolinguistic and strategic competencies
without knowledge of grammatical competence can help someone improve their communicative
competence (i.e., without the use of language, a person can communicate through gestures or facial
expressions).

Bachman (1987), who developed a model of communicative language ability in which three components
were included: language competence, strategic competence and psychomotor skills.

Organizational and pragmatic competence are the two subcategories of language competence. On the
one hand, organizational competence is made up of grammatical competence and textual competence,
which are comparable to the concepts of grammatical and discourse competence proposed by Canale
(1983) and Savignon (1983), respectively.

On the other hand, pragmatic competence is further divided into two subcomponents, namely
illocutionary competence, and sociolinguistic competence,

illocutionary competence - which refers to the knowledge of the pragmatic conventions for performing
acceptable language functions

sociolinguistic competence - with the knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions for performing
language functions appropriately in a given context. This last competence, thus, is similar to the one
proposed by Canale and Swain (1980) and Savignon (1983) although for these authors sociolinguistic
competence was considered to be one of the four main components, while Bachman includes it within
pragmatic competence.

Additionally, Bachman (1987, 1990) also considered two more components of communicative
language ability, namely strategic and psychomotor skills (Bachman 1987) or psychophysiological
mechanisms (Bachman 1990). The former allows language users to employ the elements included within
language competence depending on the context in which communication takes place in order to
negotiate meaning. The latter involves the receptive or productive mode in which competencies
performed through a particular type of channel: oral or visual in the case of receptive language use, and
aural or visual in the case of productive language use.

This theoretical framework developed by Bachman (1987, 1990), made a distinction with regard to
pragmatic competence and took into account the psychophysiological mechanisms which are
essential for performing utterances. However, the author did not try to establish any relationship
among these constituents, as Savignon (1983) had already done.

A few years later, Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) presented a detailed model of
communicative competence in which the authors not only incorporated pragmatic competence as
actional competence and the receptive and productive skills as discourse competence, but also
highlighted the connection that exists between these components, as well as the linguistic,
sociocultural, and strategic competencies that comprise such a model.

In analyzing these components, Celce-Murcia, Dorney, and Thurnell (1995) start with the core, that is to
say, discourse competence, which

Discourse competence - concerns the selection and sequencing of sentences to achieve a unified text,
whether it be spoken or written.

Linguistic competence entails the basic elements of communication, such as sentence patterns,
morphological inflections, phonological and orthographic systems, as well as lexical resources(i.e.,
formulaic constructions, collocations or phrases related to conversational structure).

Sociocultural competence refers to the speaker's understanding of proper message expression within
the social and cultural context of communication. This ingredient is connected to the sociolinguistic
competence of Canale and Swains (1980), Savignon (1983), and Bachman (1990). Similar to Celce-, it is
often referred to as socioccultural competency. Thurrell, Murcia, and Dörnyei (1995).
Actional competence involves the understanding of the speakers’ communicative intent by performing
and interpreting speech act sets.

At last, the fourth component, strategic competency, influences the others since it is concerned with
understanding of communication techniques and how to employ them. Communication competence
should be placed on the same level as the other skills since the goal is to establish discourse and
discourse competence while enabling communicative capacity to grow concurrently with the other
components. This model depicts the interdependence of all organizational components in a
straightforward manner.

So far, we've looked at communicative competency models for language education that were created in
the 1980s and 1990s.

More recently, Alcón (2000) also proposes a model of communicative competence, which is a hybrid of
the models proposed by Bachman (1990) and Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995).

In this model, similar to Bachman's (1990) model, communicative competence is divided into three main
sub-competences that are interconnected, namely discourse competence, psychomotor skills and
competencies, and strategic competence.

Discourse competence is the core of communicative competence in line with the model put forward by
Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) and is, in turn, broken down into the three constituents of
linguistic, textual, and pragmatic components.

Linguistic competence refers not only to grammatical knowledge but to all aspects of the linguistic
system including those lexical resources such as formulaic speech.

Textual and pragmatic elements are required for the formation and interpretation of speech, and
pragmatic competence is analogous to Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell's (1995) actional competence
in this regard.

In terms of psychomotor skills and competences, Alcón (2000) contends that discourse competence
impacts the abilities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, all of which are connected in order to
utilize the language for communicative purposes.

Finally, strategic competence encompasses both communication and learning strategies, broadening the
concept of strategic competence presented in the model of Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995),
which focused solely on communication strategy knowledge and application.

Three aspects of Alcón’s (2000) model are of particular interest:

1) discourse competence is the core of the model;

2) an explicit function is given to the four psychomotor skills (speaking, listening, reading and

writing), and

3) strategic competence is an important component in its own right that incorporates both

communication and learning strategies.

However, although it may be assumed that Alcón (2000) includes sociolinguistic (Canale and Swain
1980; Savignon 1983) or sociocultural (Celce-Murcia,Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995) competencies under
pragmatic competence by following Bachman (1987, 1990), it is our view that these competencies
should be considered separately, as in Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell’s (1995) model, given the
increasing recognition nowadays associated to cultural aspects.

According to Cortazzi and Jin (1999), culture is a broad framework of values, beliefs, attitudes, and
behaviors that are used to subjectively evaluate the acts and patterns of thought of others. Given the
subjective nature of this idea, it is important for learners of foreign languages to become aware of many
cultural aspects in order to understand the target language correctly.

Now for this reason, in order to foster second language learners’ knowledge of the abilities needed for
successful intercultural communication, as well as the development of intercultural communicative
competence, should be incorporated into a communicative approach to second language teaching.

Meyer (1991) defines this competence as "the ability of a person to behave adequately in a flexible
manner when confronted with the actions, attitudes, and expectations of representatives of foreign
cultures." Indeed, Byram (1997) proposed a model of intercultural communicative competence,
recognizing the need to integrate the teaching of intercultural communication skills as part of classroom
instruction.