Comunicative Competence Essay

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COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE If a language learner is asked what they think the goal of a language course is, they would probably answer that it is to teach the grammar and vocabulary of that language. However, if they are asked what their goal is as language learners, they would most probably answer that it is to be able to communicate in that language. I am not saying that in actuality the goal of a language course is to teach solely grammar and vocabulary — well, at least it shouldn’t be just that anymore. (I’ve been in a course with such an outdated approach, and the results were, of course, poor). Fortunately, the focus of second language teaching has moved from purely teaching grammar and vocabulary, to providing the skills for effective communication. In linguistics terminology, a language course should not only have “linguistic competence” as its goal, but “communicative competence” in general. But what do these terms mean? Communicative competence is a term coined by Dell Hymes in 1966 in reaction to Noam Chomsky’s (1965) notion of “linguistic competence”. Communicative competence is the intuitive functional knowledge and control of the principles of language usage. As Hymes observes: “…a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others.” (Hymes 1972, 277) In other words, a language user needs to use the language not only correctly (based on linguistic competence), but also appropriately (based on communicative competence). Of course, this approach does not diminish the importance of learning the grammatical rules of a

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