communicative competence in second language teaching

This paper is presented on 56th TEFLIN Conference 2009

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Rizka Safriyani

A. Introduction

Second language acquisition is the process by which people learn a second

language in addition to their native language. Those who can communicate

successfully can be considered as the one who has commnunicative competence.

Communicative competence is the ability to interact well with others.

Communication takes place in an infinitive variety of situations, and success in a

particular role depends on one’s understanding of the context and on prior experience

of a similar kind. It requires making appropriate choices of register and style in terms

of the situation and other participants.

Hence, communicative competence deals with linguistic terms which refers to

second language’s learner ability. It does not only refer to a learner’s ability to apply

and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use

these utterances appropriately and it implies to the communicative approach in

language teaching.

B. The Characteristics of Communicative Competence

Savignon (1883: 8-9) mentions that there are five characteristics of communicative

competence and those characteristics are:

1. Communicative competence is dynamic rather than static concept. It depends on

the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some

degree the same symbolic system.


2. Communicative competence applies to both written and spoken language, as well

as too many other symbolic systems.

3. Communicative competence is context specific. Communication takes place in an

infinitive variety of situations, and success in a particular role depends on one’s

understanding of the context and on prior experience of a similar kind.

4. Competence is defined as a presumed underlying ability, and performance as the

overt manifestation of that ability. Competence is what one knows. Performance

is what one does.

5. Communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the

cooperation of all the participants involved. It makes sense, then, to speak of

degrees of communicative competence.

C. Areas of Communicative Competence

Communicative competence is a broad term that involves not only the structural

features of language, but also its social, pragmatic and contextual characteristics.

Therefore, it is necessary to understand communicative competence as the sum of a

series of competences (Jaimes, 2006). There are four areas of communicative

competence, they are:

1. Grammatical competence

It refers to the ability of speakers in using the different functioning rules

of the system of their language or the linguistic code: the mastery of second

language phonological and lexicogrammatical rules and the rules of sentence

formation. It includes:


• Phonetics : Pronunciation

• Morphology : Word function and inflection

• Syntax :Structure of language

• Lexis : Vocabulary and semantics

The competence in grammar can be seen from the ability to express and

interpret literal meaning of their utterances (for examples: vocabulary, word and

sentence meaning, construction of grammatical sentences, correct spelling, etc.).

2. Sociolinguistic competence

It refers to the ability of speakers in producing sentences according to the

communicative situation. Speakers (usually) know when, where, and whom to

say things. Here, the mastery of socio-cultural rules of appropriate use of second

language can be seen from how utterances are produced and understood in

different sociolinguistic contexts (for example: understanding of speech act

conventions, the use of a language to signal social relationships, etc.).

3. Discourse competence

It refers to the ability of speakers to use the different types of discourse.

Usually language users know what is being referred to in different contexts, i.e.

they distinguish between new and old information, and are able to determine the

discourse topics. For instance, speakers know when a "he" refers to "John" or to

"the child" according to the text context in the sentence: John went to the park,


and he found a child who was sick. The young boy was crying because he

didn’t know where his mother was.

It also deals with the mastery of rules concerning cohesion and coherence

of various kinds of discourse in second language (for example: use of

appropriate pronouns, synonyms, conjunctions, substitution, repetition, etc.).

4. Strategic competence

It refers to the knowledge speakers have to maintain communication.

Therefore, this competence accounts for the strategies language users have to be

understood, and to understand others. Gestures, expressions, mimics and

intonation are among others some of the most strategies used. The mastery of

verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in second language used when

attempting to compensate for deficiencies in the grammatical and sociolinguistic

competence or to enhance the effectiveness of communication (for examples: how

to address others when uncertain of their relative social status, slow speech for

rhetorical effect, etc.).

Furthermore, Bachman proposes a design in components of communicative

language ability in communicative language use (1990: 85). It can be figured out below:


Figure 1: Components of language competence

From the above figure, we can know that grammatical and discourse competence

is called as a part of organizational competence. It explains about all rules and systems

that dictate what we can do with the forms of language, whether they are sentence-level

rules (grammar) or rules that govern how we string sentence together (discourse). Then,

sociolinguistic competence is divided into two separate pragmatic categories: functional

aspects of language (illocutionary competence – pertaining, sending, and receiving

intended emanings) and sociolinguistic aspects (politeness, metaphor, register, etc.).

To be able to communicate competently, we need strategic competence so that

we are able to communicate with others with various kinds of backgrounds. Bachman

adds that strategic competence serves an executive function of making the final decision,


among many possible options on wording, phrasing, and other productive and receptive

means for negotiating meaning. It can be seen in the following figure:

Figure 2: Components Of Communicative Language Ability

D. Developing Communicative Competence In Second Language Teaching

Brown (1994a: 245) views Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as an

approach (that is, a theoretical position about the nature of language and of language


teaching), rather than a specific method of teaching. He also describes four

underlying characteristics in defining CLT in a second language classroom:

1. Focus in a classroom should be on all of the components of

communicative competence of which grammatical or linguistic

competence is just part.

2. Classroom activities should be designed to engage students in the

pragmatic, authentic, and functional use of language for meaningful

purposes.

3. Both fluency and accuracy should be considered equally important in

second language learning classroom. And they are complementary.

4. Students have to use their target language, productively and receptively, in

unrehearsed contexts under proper guidance, but not under the control of a

teacher.

Moreover, students’ success in acquiring communicative competence in their

target language is that easy. Here are some teaching learning activities which can be

applied in the second language classroom so that the communicative competence still

can be maintained:

1. Use of Audiovisual Recordings,

Second language learners can get benefit from viewing and reviewing

audiovisual recordings such as videotapes and visual hypermedia software of their

own communicative interactions and model interactions by native speakers. In

learning how to make requests, for example, the students can not only participate in,

say, pair work as part of their function-building exercise, but also film their actual


performance to collect data for analysis. The data ideally cover a wide range of

situations in which they make or receive requests, in terms of social status and role of

interlocutors, degree of imposition internal to the act of the request being made, and

so on. Through close examination of their recordings and introspection, the students

will have a chance to reflect on what they said to make requests (grammatical

competence).

To measure the success of the students’ performance, the teacher can, then, play

a video clip that shows model performance by native speakers of the target language,

in order for them to see how different or similar their communicative performance of

requests is, when contrasted with how native speakers execute the same act. Here, the

students can both review their grammatical precision in use and learn about the socio-

cultural appropriateness of the communicative event. Moreover, the very nature of the

audiovisual material enables the students to see and analyze their own and native

speaker’s nonverbal communication as well. It is, thus, advisable that the students

study their own communicative experience and the nature and characteristics of social

interaction in their target language so as to develop their L2 sociolinguistic

competence (Erickson, 1996).

2. Role-play

Role play is an effective way to develop students’ communicative competence,

especially the sociolinguistic and strategic competence. It also helps the students

acquire what Saville-Troike (1996) describes as interactional knowledge. Learning a

language for a wide range of social and expressive functions requires more than just

learning word- and sentence-formation, correct pronunciation, and orthography;


rather, one learns “a system of use whose rules and norms are an integral part of

culture” (Schiffrin, 1996: 323).

Usually, role-plays are properly framed, yet open-ended, bilateral, interactive,

and above all, highly contextualized in nature. However, Clark (1987),

acknowledging the value of role-plays in a foreign language classroom, cautions us

that a form of role-play in which the students simply act out a predetermined script

made by someone else would result in mere memorization of stereotypical

expressions that may or may not have real-life application in actual communicative

exchange. Instead, the teacher must structure his or her role-plays in a way that their

students engage in “role-making” and “role-negotiating” as they interact.

3. Speech Act

The speech act, or performative use of language, is an area that many

Japanese students have trouble dealing with. It is because speech acts are generally

difficult for second language learners to realize in terms of grammar and vocabulary,

formulas and conventionalized expressions, and socio-cultural difference between

their first and second language, and because in many cases Japanese students are not

taught explicitly in the classroom how to signal their intent in performing an

illocutionary act, beyond the semantic meanings of syntactic structures.

Below is an example of communicative failure in an act of apology that I have

come across:

Student A : I need the notebook I lent you. do you have it now?

Student B : I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was bad. I’m sorry. Can you excuse me?

Student A : Well,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


All this indicates that the students do not necessarily “pick up” complex speech behavior

and sociocultural strategies and sociolinguistic forms. Therefore, explicit teaching of

speech act strategies will be needed for students to gain illocutionary competence

(Cohen, 1996).

4. Interactive Language Instruction

Interactive language instruction involves the teacher and learners engaging in

activities that create conditions that foster language use, which lead to further

language development. First and foremost, the teacher is the initiator of interaction.

That does not mean that the teacher is always in control of the discourse, such as in

models where the teacher initiates, the students respond, and the teacher provides

feedback. It means that the teacher is responsible for providing opportunities for

interaction in which learners control the topics and discourse (Brown, 2001; Ellis,

1999).

Interactive language instruction may be new for some learners. Learners may

have expectations of how instruction should proceed based on their experience with

school-based education and previous language instruction. For these reasons,

discussing with learners the benefits of and the rationale for having them interact with

each other during class time, in meaningful discourse, is difficult but important.

Teachers can begin the discussion by brainstorming with learners the things they do

that help them learn English. Teachers can introduce the phrase “use it or lose it!” and

learners can be asked to talk about what it means.

The classroom setup can hinder or enhance interaction opportunities. If the desks

are in neat rows with every one facing the chalk board and the teacher, learner-to-


learner interactions are more difficult to initiate. Round tables, desks arranged in

small groups, or even a semicircle of desks help make interactive tasks easier.

E.Conclusion

Communicative competence have been defined and discussed in many different

ways by language scholars of different fields. With the change of focus from

grammar to communicative approach, second language teachers and researchers can

see the notion of the communicative competence within language learning. Here,

Communicative competence has come to play an important role in the field

pedagogic.


References

Brown, H. D. (1994a). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New Jersey:

Prentice Hall Regents

Brown, H. D. (1994b). Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy . New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents.

Savignon, Sandra J. 1983. Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice.

Massachucets: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and

comprehensible output in its development. In S. M. Gass and C. G. Madden, eds.

Input in Second Language Acquisition . Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

About the writer

Rizka Safriyani is an English teacher of SMA YPPI-II Surabaya. She was born on

September 14th 1984. She has been teaching English for three years. She graduated from

the undergraduate program (S1) of The State University of Surabaya (UNESA) majoring

English Literature on 2006. Next, she continued her study at graduate program (S2) of

The State University of Surabaya (UNESA) majoring Education of Language and

Literature and she graduated on 2009.

Details:

Full Name : Rizka Safriyani

Address : Kencanasari Timur xx / 19 Surabaya

Contact Number : +6285730122874 / 03177474818

Email : [email protected]

Institution : SMA YPPI-II Surabaya

The purpose of

Paper : Implementing the communicative approach to the second

language teaching