RETHINKING THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATIVE

COMPETENCE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Introduction
The paper discusses the need for a direct, explicit approach to teaching communicative skills in
language syllabi and instructional materials. It suggests that an informed approach to
communicative language learning (CLT) can be beneficial regardless of one's philosophy of
language teaching. The authors distinguish between "declarative" and "procedural knowledge"
and present their own framework containing pedagogically relevant components. They discuss
existing models of communicative competence and present their own framework.

Existing Models of Communicative Competence

The Canale & Swain model of communicative competence consists of four components:
grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic
competence. Critics have questioned the validity of these components and the separation of
discourse and sociolinguistic competencies. Additionally, the model's major components were
not sufficiently defined, leading to ambiguous operationalization for assessment purposes.
Despite these criticisms, the model has been influential in defining major facets of
communicative language use and broadened the scope of language instruction and testing.
Bachman and Bachman & Palmer proposed an elaboration of the Canale & Swain model,
which divides language knowledge into two main categories and subcategories. Both models
have been used as starting points for subsequent studies on the issue.

Language and Knowledge

The text outlines three types of language knowledge: organizational knowledge, grammatical
knowledge, textual knowledge, and pragmatic knowledge. Organizational knowledge involves
controlling the formal structure of language for producing correct sentences and forming texts.
Pragmatic knowledge involves relating words and utterances to their meanings, intentions, and
contexts. In situational language use, language knowledge interacts with metacognitive
strategies, including assessment, goal-setting, and planning. Bachman and Palmer separate
knowledge of language from general cognitive skills involved in language use, which are better
understood as ability or capacity. McNamara rates Bachman & Palmer's model superior for
language testing purposes, but there is still some overlap between their illocutionary/functional
component and their strategic component.
Proposed Model of Comunicative Competence
~ schematic Representation of Communicative Competence . The model's evolution from Canale
and Swain's construct demonstrates a tendency to elaborate sociolinguistic competence. Canale
separated discourse competence and our model further narrows it by specifying actional
competence. This is rooted in Hymes' challenge to Chomsky's notion of linguistic competence,
which initially associated sociolinguistic competence with all aspects of language proficiency.
~ Chronological Evolution of The Proposed Model.
Our model distinguishes between "linguistic competence" and "sociocultural competence" to
clarify its inclusion of lexis, phonology, morphology, and syntax, and to differentiate it from
actional competence, emphasizing that language resources are in linguistic, actional, and
discourse components, while sociocultural knowledge is crucial for other components.
~ Comparison of The Proposed Model with Bachman and Palmer’s (in Preparation) Model of
communicative Language Abilities.
Bachman & Palmer's model of language use focuses on functional knowledge, similar to actional
competence. However, our pedagogical approach involves a more detailed description of speech
acts and language functions. We also place "lexical knowledge" within linguistic competence,
following Halliday's belief that the line between lexicon and grammar cannot be neatly drawn.
Bachman & Palmer's view of lexical knowledge as the realization and interpretation of meaning
in context is similar to our actional competence, which concerns getting meaning across in actual
language use.

Discourse competence
Discourse competence involves the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures,
sentences, and utterances to create a unified spoken or written text. It involves the bottom-up
lexico-grammatical microlevel intersecting with the top-down signals of communicative intent
and sociocultural context. Sub-areas contributing to discourse competence include cohesion,
deixis, coherence, generic structure, and conversational structure. Cohesion is closely associated
with linguistic competence, as it deals with the bottom-up elements that help generate texts, such
as pronouns, demonstratives, articles, and other markers signaling textual co-reference. Cohesion
also accounts for conventions of substitution and ellipsis, conjunction, lexical chains, and parallel
structure. These conventions make it easier for listeners to process a piece of text, such as 'I like
swimming and hiking'.
The deixis system is crucial for discourse competence, linking situational context with discourse,
allowing interpretation of deictic personal pronouns, spatial references, temporal references, and
textual references. Coherence is the most difficult area to describe, as it involves the degree to
which sentences or utterances are interrelated rather than unrelated. Coherence is concerned with
macrostructure, focusing on the expression of content and purpose in terms of top-down
organization of propositions. It involves using linguistic signals, such as reference markers and
lexical or semantic repetition, and organizing propositional structures according to social
relationships, shared knowledge, and genre. Coherence relates to ease of interpretation for
listeners
or readers, as they use their linguistic knowledge, sociocultural knowledge, and situational clues
to relate a piece of discourse to objects and events beyond the text.Discourse competence is a
crucial aspect of language teaching, particularly in oral conversation. It involves the turn-taking
system, which deals with how people open and reopen conversations, establish and change
topics, hold and relinquish the floor, backchannel, interrupt, collaborate, and perform preclosings
and closings. This system is closely associated with the notion of repair, which involves
correcting oneself or others in conversation. Adjacency pairs, which form discourse "chunks"
where one speaker initiates and the other responds, are also related to actional competence. Some
adjacency pairs involve giving a preferred response, while others are viewed as dispfavored and
require more effort and follow-up work. Disreferred responses occur less frequently and pose
more difficulties for learners.

Linguistic competence
Linguistic competence is a crucial aspect of communication, encompassing sentence patterns,
constituent structure, morphological inflections, lexical resources, and phonological and
orthographic systems. It is not just about knowing sentence composition rules but also about
knowing partially pre-assembled patterns and formulaic frameworks. Lexical phrases, defined as
form/function composites, are separate from idioms and clichés and belong to linguistic
competence. They fall under actional and discourse competencies, depending on their functional
roles. Lexical knowledge should belong to both areas, with systematic aspects belonging to
linguistic competence and lexical phrases to actional and discourse competencies.

Actional Competence
Actional competence refers to the ability to convey and understand communicative intent in
linguistic form, based on an inventory of verbal schemata. It is closely related to interlanguage
pragmatics, which studies nonnative speakers' use and acquisition of linguistic action patterns in
a second language. Components of linguistic competence include syntax, metaphor, lexicon,
rules, pronunciation, and spelling conventions. Syntax includes constituent/phrase structure,
word order, sentence types, special constructions, modifiers/intensifiers, coordination,
subordination, and embedding. Morphology involves parts of speech, lexicon, rules, and
pronunciation.
Actional competence in written communication is closely related to rhetorical competence,
which involves analyzing the moves and lexical routines typical of any given written genre.
Although speech act theory is increasingly losing favor in pragmatics and applied linguistics,
actional competence remains an important interactional knowledge from a pedagogical
perspective. Speech acts and language functions have traditionally formed the "linguistic" base
for CLT theory, and the addition of actional competence to the Canale & Swain model was
motivated by the inability to include functional taxonomies under any of the four traditional
constituent competencies. The recent emphasis on language learning tasks and task-based
syllable in language teaching theory also highlights the importance of language functions and
speech act sets in a pedagogically motivated model. Language functions in educational
applications are often separated from contextual and stylistic variables. actional competence,
divided into knowledge of
language functions and speech act sets. It categorizes functions into seven areas: interpersonal
exchange, information, opinions, feelings, suasion, problems, and future scenarios. Indirect
speech acts are rarely covered in foreign language teaching syllable.

Native speakers recognize the illocutionary force of indirect speech acts by pairing the
situational information with the context of the utterance. The functions and realizations of speech
acts interact with participant characteristics and individual perception of the situation. To
develop student awareness of language functions and speech acts, it is crucial to present them in
larger pragmatic contexts for interpretation and emphasize their situational constraints. Actional
competence involves knowledge of speech act sets, which are conventionalized patterns of
interaction surrounding a particular speech act. Existing research on speech act sets is useful, but
it is problematic as most descriptive data is elicited rather than naturalistic.

Suggested Components Of Actional Competence

Actional Competence includes understanding language functions such as interpersonal exchange,
information, opinions, feelings, suggestions, and opinions. It also involves understanding speech
act sets and their components. Complaining, criticizing, admitting, denying, apologizing, and
forgiving are essential skills. Future scenarios involve expressing wishes, hopes, and desires, and
predicting and speculating. Knowledge of speech act sets is also crucial.

SOCIOCULTURAL COMPTENCE
The text explains the importance of having sociocultural competence in language learning.
Sociocultural competence involves understanding how to convey a message appropriately within
a social and cultural context, as well as considering pragmatic factors associated with variations
in language use. Language is not only a communication system but also an important part of
individual identity and the social structure of society. Many language learners experience
difficulties when trying to use their second language knowledge in everyday communication, as
second language teaching often does not pay attention to social and cultural contexts. Errors in
social or cultural aspects can cause more serious communication difficulties than errors in
linguistic aspects. Therefore, second language learners need to improve their understanding of
social and cultural aspects to use language efficiently in daily life.
We have divided the relevant sociocultural variables into four main
categories: SOCIAL CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
- Participant variables
o age, gender, office and status, social distance, relations (power and affective)
- Situational variables
o time, place, social situation
STYLISTIC APPROPRIATENESS FACTORS
- Politeness conventions and strategies
- Stylistic variation degrees of formality
o field-specific
registers CULTURAL FACTORS
- Sociocultural background knowledge of the target language community living conditions
(way of living, living standards); social and institutional structure; social conventions and
rituals; major values, beliefs, and norms; taboo topics; historical background; cultural
aspects including literature and arts
- Awareness of major dialect or regional differences
- Cross-cultural awareness
o differences; similarities; strategies for cross-cultural
communication NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIVE FACTORS
- Kinesic factors (body language)
o discourse controlling behaviors (non-verbal turn-taking signals)
o backchannel behaviors
o affective markers (facial expressions), gestures, eye contact
- Proxemic factors (use of space)
- Haptic factors (touching)
- Paralinguistic factors
o acoustical sounds, nonvocal noises
- Silence

STRATEGIC COMPETENCE
We conceptualize strategic competence as knowledge of communication strategies and how to
use them. Work on communication strategies has typically highlighted three functions of strategy
use from three different perspectives:
1. The psycholinguistic, interactional, and continuity/maintenance perspectives of
communication provide an understanding of communication strategies. In the psycholinguistic
perspective, communication strategies are verbal strategies used by speakers to overcome
problems in the planning and execution stages of communication. It is related to avoiding
problems or compensating for vocabulary ignorance.
2. The interactional perspective highlights communication strategies that involve requests for
help, assistance, and cooperative problem-solving behaviors when problems arise during the
communication process. It involves negotiation of meaning and repair mechanisms.
3. The communication continuity/maintenance perspective emphasizes strategies used to
maintain communication channels and deal with communication difficulties, including taking
time to think and make alternative plans. This overall perspective provides an understanding of
how communication strategies are used to achieve communicative goals.
Based on the three functions above, our description of strategic competence consists of five main
parts:
AVOIDANCE or REDUCTION STRATEGIES
- Message replacement
- Topic avoidance
- Message abandonment
ACHIEVEMENT or COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES
- Circumlocution (e.g., the thing you open bottles with for the corkscrew)
- Approximation (e.g., fish for carp)
- A II-purpose words (e.g., thingy, thingamajig)
- Non-linguistic means (mime, pointing, gestures, drawing pictures)
- Restructuring (e.g.. The bus was very... there were a lot of people on it)
- Restructuring (e.g.. The bus was very... there were a lot of people on it)
- Word-coinage (e.g., vegetarianist)
- Literal translation from L1
- Foreignizing (e.g., L1 word with L2 pronunciation)
- Code-switching to L1 or L3
- Retrieval (e.g., bro... bron... bronze)
STALLING or TIME-GAINING
STRATEGIES
- Fillers, hesitation devices, and gambits (e.g., well, actually..., where was I...?)
- Self and other-repetition

SELF-MONITORING STRATEGIES
- Self-initiated repair (e.g., I mean...)
- Self-rephrasing (over-elaboration) (e.g., This is for students... pupils... when you're at
school...)
INTERACTIONAL STRATEGIES
- Appeals for help
o direct (e.g., What do you call...?)
o indirect (e.g., I don't know the word in English... or puzzled expression)
- Meaning negotiation strategies

Indicators of non/misunderstanding
o requests
 repetition requests (e.g., Pardon? or Could you say that again please?)
 clarification requests (e.g., What do you mean by...?)
 confirmation requests (e.g., Did you say...?)
 expressions of non-understanding
  verbal (e.g., Sorry, I'm not sure I understand...)
 non-verbal (raised eyebrows, blank look)
interpretive summary (e.g., You mean...? / So what you're saying
is...?)
Responses
o repetition, rephrasing, expansion, reduction, confirmation, rejection, repair
Comprehension checks
o whether the interlocutor can follow you (e.g., Am I making sense?)
o whether what you said was correct or grammatical (e.g., Can I/you say that?)
o whether the interlocutor is listening (e.g., on the phone: Are you still there?)
o whether the interlocutor can hear you
Many of the techniques now used to explicitly teach structure, vocabulary, speech act sequences,
and so on, can also be used to teach communication strategies.

CONCLUSION
Recent research on communicative competence and language use has provided the basis for
developing more detailed models in language teaching. Practitioners need a comprehensive and
accessible description of the components of communicative competence for better development.
The researcher would like to emphasize that the applicability of the communicative competence
model is relative, not absolute. The meaning and weight of communicative competence may
differ depending on the learners and learning objectives in a particular context. The model can be
adjusted and reinterpreted according to the communicative needs of the learner group to which it
is being applied. The researcher refers to Hoekje & Williams' study that applied Canale &
Swain's framework in an international teaching assistant development and assessment program.
Despite problems and modifications, it was concluded that the communicative competence
framework provides an integrated and principled basis for designing language programs.
Researchers emphasize that communicative competence is relative and can be adapted to learner
needs.