Assignment 3: Communicative Competence

Based on Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, and Thurrell in Communicative Competence: A Pedagogically Motivated Model with Content Specifications, there are five competences included in communicative competence:

Discourse Competence

Discourse competence concerns the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written text. There are many sub-areas that contribute to discourse competence:

♪      Cohesion

♪      Deixis

♪      Coherence

♪      Generic structure

♪      Conversational structure

Linguistics Competence

Linguistic competence comprises the basic elements of communication: the sentence patterns and types, the constituent structure, the morphological inflections, and the lexical resources, as well as the phonological and orthograhic systems needed to realize communication as speech or writing. There are suggested components of linguistics competence:

☺     Syntax

☺     Morphology

☺     Lexicon

☺     Phonology

☺     Orthography

Actional Competence

It is defined as competence in conveying and understanding communicative intent, that is, matching actional intent with linguistic form based on the knowledge of an inventory of verbal schemata that carry illocutionary force (speech acts and speech act sets).

Suggested components of actional competence:

        Knowledge of language functions: interpersonal exchange, informations, opinions, feelings, suasion, problems, future scenarios

        Knowledge of speech act sets

Sociocultural Competence

It refers to the speaker's knowledge of how to express messages appropriately. The suggested components of sociocultural are:

♪      Social contextual factors

♪      Stylistic appropriateness factors

♪      Cultural factors

♪      Non-verbal communicative factors

Strategic Competence

We conceptualize strategic competence as knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them. The suggested components of strategies are:

☺     Avoidance or Reduction Strategies

☺     Achievement or Compensatory Strategies

☺     Stalling or Time Gaining Strategies

☺     Self-Monitoring Strategies

☺     Interactional Strategies

                                                

Source: Celce-Murcia, M., Dornyei, Z. and Thurrell, S. (1995) Communicative Competence: A Pedagogically Motivated Model with Content Specifications,retrieved from   http://escholarship.ucop.edu/uc/item/2928w4zj#page-1, on April 7, 2012 on 8 pm.