taylor-the meaning and use of the term competence

The Meaning and Use of the Term 'Competence'in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

DAVID S.TAYLORUniversity of Leeds

The term 'competence' has been used so widely and so divergently in so manydifferent contexts that it has ceased to have any precise meaning. Differentwriters interpret it in different ways for different purposes. As a result there isgreat confusion about what the term refers to in any given instance. Writersfrequently discuss the concept without taking into account the fact thatinterpretations of it differ greatly.

The article explores the different ways in which the term 'competence' hasbeen used, beginning with Chomsky's original formulation of the concept. It isshown that many current uses of the term refer to something quite differentfrom this original concept. A major problem is that subsequent writers, such asHymes, while claiming to be merely extending the notion, are in fact changingit in ways that are not always immediately apparent to the reader. An attempt ismade to elucidate these changes and to point out in particular the gravedifficulties that arise when the concept is applied outside the domain for whichit was originally intended. A confusion between state and process is noted inthese extended applications of the term. It is suggested that making a cleardistinction between 'competence' and 'proficiency' helps to resolve many ofthese difficulties.

One of the most controversial and confusing terms in use in the fields ofLinguistics and Applied Linguistics is 'competence'. The confusion arises fromthe fact that different writers use the term in different ways, very oftenapparently unaware that their use of the term differs sometimes in quitefundamental ways from that of others working in the same or closely relatedfields. The reader or student may be forgiven for thinking that the same termrefers to the same thing. The result of these divergent uses of the term is that it isvery difficult to know precisely what it means in any given context.

The basic difficulty seems to be that some writers use the term to refer tosomething absolute whereas others appear to mean by it something relative.This latter group seem to include the idea of 'ability' within competence, thusequating it with 'proficiency', which clearly admits of degrees. They conse-quendy misinterpret Chomsky and his followers who use the term in a strictlyabsolute sense. This has caused great confusion, and indeed much of thecriticism of Chomsky turns out to be invalid because it is based on thisfundamental misunderstanding.

The source of this difficulty is the widespread interpretation of competence toinclude the idea of ability. I hope to show that Chomsky's original definition of

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the term always excluded this idea, and that much confusion has been caused bythe failure of many succeeding writers, starting with Hymes, to realize this.

In what follows I am going to try to clear up the confusion by consideringcarefully what is meant by competence in different contexts. We can do this byexploring the ways in which the term is used by different writers in differentfields, or even within the same field, and by making a clear distinction betweencompetence in an absolute and competence in a relative sense.

Let us first go back to the beginning and consider Chomsky's ideas aboutcompetence as originally set out in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax andelaborated, but not fundamentally changed, in later writings. He makes theoriginal distinction, between competence and performance, as follows:

Linguistic theory is primarily concerned with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completelyhomogeneous speech community who knows its language perfectly and is unaffectedby such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shiftsof attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying hisknowledge of the language in actual performance. (Chomsky 1965:3)

Chomsky's concern here is clearly with idealization. Let us accept the necessityfor idealization in scientific investigation without further argument. The issuehas already been sufficiently discussed by, among others, Fodor and Garret(1966:135-8) and Chomsky himself (1980:219-20). But there is more tocompetence than that. Chomsky goes on to say:

We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer'sknowledge of the language) and performance, the actual use of language in concretesituations. (Chomsky 1965:4)

Later he refers to 'intrinsic tacit knowledge or competence' (1965:40).Thus is established the basic distinction between knowledge on the one hand

and use of that knowledge on the other. So far things seem relatively straight-forward. The question is, does 'intrinsic tacit knowledge' include the idea ofability! It seems to me that Chomsky sufficiently clearly equates 'competence'with 'knowledge' to exclude it. There is, after all, a clear enough distinctionbetween 'knowledge' and 'ability to use knowledge'. Later, of course, notably inRules and Representations, Chomsky explicitly addresses himself to thisproblem.

The term 'competence' entered the technical literature in an effort to avoid entangle-ment with the slew of problems relating to 'knowledge', but it is misleading in that itsuggests 'ability'—an association I would like to sever. (Chomsky 1980:59)

The clarity of the distinction drawn by Chomsky between 'knowledge' asrepresented by competence and 'putting to use that knowledge' is furthermorefirmly established by such statements as the following:

A person who has learned a language has acquired a system of rules that relate soundand meaning in a certain specific way. He has, in other words, acquired a certaincompetence that he puts to use in producing and understanding speech. (Chomsky1970:184)

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150 THE MEANING AND USE OF THE TERM 'COMPETENCE'

It is sometimes said that Chomsky is in fact working with two definitions ofcompetence—a 'strong' version and a Veak' version. This idea can be tracedback to Campbell and Wales (1970), who, in a rather confused discussion,distinguish between three versions of competence. Their account is difficult tofollow, but the main thrust of their argument, is, I take it, to deplore the fact thatChomsky's conception of competence, whether supposedly Sveak' or 'strong',leads to a very restricted view

from which by far the most important linguistic ability has been omitted—the ability toproduce or understand utterances which are not so much grammatical but, moreimportant, appropriate to the context in which they are made. (Campbell and Wales1970:247)

They are clearly trying to extend the term 'competence' to cover 'communica-tive competence', a term which they in fact use. We shall come back to thisquestion later when discussing the work of Dell Hymes. As far as the 'weak' and'strong1 versions of competence are concerned, if the Campbell and Walesdiscussion is hard to follow, then I suggest that it is at least partly because theyconfuse competence with ability, as is already apparent in the quotation above.But earlier (1970:246) they explicitly state that 'competence in any sphere isidentified with capacity or ability' and later on speak of 'those linguistic abilitiesexplicitly accounted for by recent transformational work', failing to recognizethat it is not the abilities that are being directly accounted for, but the knowledgeunderlying those abilities.

A better discussion of the so-called Sveak' and 'strong' versions of com-petence is to be found in Greene (1972). The weak or neutral version is purelydescriptive and

such an analysis would have nothing to say about the actual rules or operations bywhich a language user achieves this output (...) What this amounts to is that there is nonecessary connection between the set of rules providing the best descriptive account ofa speaker's intuitions and the set of operations by which the speaker himself arrives atthese same intuitions. (Greene 1972:95-6)

Chomsky himself has been at pains to point this out (1965:9). But Greene goeson to say:

However, despite this logical distinction, it is very difficult not to slip into theassumption that, if a language user's intuitive knowledge is best described by a set ofrules, then these rules must in some way be represented in his mind, even though hemay not be consciously aware of them. But this involves a shift from the neutraldefinition of competence to the stronger interpretation that the rules of grammar areinternalized in the head of the speaker and provide the basis for his understanding oflinguistic relations. In other words, a step has been taken from a description of what thelinguistic usage consists of to a hypothesis about how he. operates when using language.(op.citl972:96)

But this does not follow at all. Even if 'the rules of grammar are internalized inthe head of the speaker' (and it is not necessarily the rules of grammar that are

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internalized but rather knowledge that can be characterized by rules ofgrammar), this does not imply anything about how the speaker makes use of theknowledge represented by these rules. No step has in fact been taken (except byGreene herself, and before her, Campbell and Wales). Greene makes this claimon the basis of two statements made by Chomsky, the first in Aspects of theTheory of Syntax (1965:9) and the second in the 1970 quote given above.

Let us look more closely at what Chomsky actually says. In Aspects he statesthat generative grammar 'attempts to characterize in the most neutral possibleterms the knowledge that provides the basis for actual use of language by aspeaker-hearer' (1965:9). Taking this together with the 1970 quote alreadygiven, where Chomsky talks of the 'system of rules' that a person acquires and of'a certain competence which he puts to use in producing and understandingspeech' (1970:184), Greene maintains that Chomsky is making claims aboutcognitive processes (1972:99-100). But Chomsky is merely talking about waysof characterizing knowledge. He is not talking about using that knowledge oreven the ability to use that knowledge. Clearly, as Chomsky says, the knowledge'provides the basis for actual use of language', but the way the knowledge ischaracterized (in the form of rules) says nothing about the way the knowledge isused. So, the very quote that Greene appeals to in fact clearly makes the distinc-tion that she accuses Chomsky of failing to observe. And in the passage fromGreene just quoted; she herself makes exactly that distinction when she talksabout 'the stronger interpretation that the rules of grammar are internalized inthe head of the speaker and provide the basis (emphasis added) for hisunderstanding of linguistic relations' (1972:96). Regardless of whether or notthe actual rules of grammar are internalized, this does not seem to suggestanything about use. The distinction between knowledge and use is stillpreserved. Any alleged 'shift' is made by Greene, and not by Chomsky. This shiftis not surprising in view of the fact that Greene states earlier that 'competence istaken as referring to language in the sense of what constitutes ability to speak alanguage' (1972:94) and refers to 'the speaker's competence, i.e. his ability tospeak a language' (1972:95), thus making the fateful connection betweencompetence and ability. And so the distinction between the 'strong* and "weak'forms of competence rums out to be spurious. It is unfortunate that thisincoherent and misleading interpretation has been perpetuated by otherwriters, most notably by Munby (1978:7-8).

We have here, then, an early example of the confusion that has bedevillednearly all discussion of competence. (Campbell and Wales, as mentioned before(1970:246), provide an even earlier example.) It is a confusion, on the onehand, between knowledge and ability to use knowledge, and on the other a moregeneral confusion between process and state. Greene takes Chomsky to besaying something about cognitive processes whereas he confines himself todealing with cognitive states. For him, competence is clearly a state and not aprocess, and has nothing to do with 'capacity' or 'ability'. In some of his laterwritings he dwells on this point at some length. In order to clear up the confusionas definitively as possible it is worth quoting extensively from what he has to say

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in Reflections on Language about the distinction between knowledge andcapacity or ability.

(...) I want to consider mind (in the narrower or broader sense) as an innate capacity toform cognitive structures, not first-order capacities to act. The cognitive structuresattained enter into our first-order capacities to act, but should not be identified withthem. Thus it does not seem to me quite accurate to take 'knowledge of English' to be acapacity or ability, though it enters into the capacity or ability exercised in language use.In principle, one might have that cognitive structure that we call 'knowledge of English',fully developed, with no capacity to use this structure; and certain capacities to carryout 'intellectual activities' may involve no cognitive structures but merely a network ofdispositions and habits, something quite different. Knowledge, understanding, or beliefis at a level more abstract than capacity. (Chomsky 1975:23)

Later in the same passage, Chomsky goes on to say:

The notions 'capacity' and family of dispositions' are more closely related to behaviorand 'language use'; they do not lead us to inquire into the nature of the 'ghost in themachine' dirough the study of cognitive structures and their organization, as normalscientific practice and intellectual curiosity would demand. The proper way to exorcisethe ghost in the machine is to determine the structure of mind and its products. There isnothing essentially mysterious about the concept of an abstract cognitive structure,created by an innate faculty of mind, represented in some still-unknown way in thebrain, and entering into the system of capacities and dispositions to act and interpretOn the contrary, a formulation along these lines, embodying the conceptualcompetence-performance distinction (cf. Chomsky 1965, chapter 1) seems a pre-requisite for a serious investigation of behavior, (op. tit. 1975:23-4)

Chomsky returns to this clearly crucial question again in Rules and Representa-tions:

To know a language, I am assuming, is to be in a certain mental state, which persists as arelatively steady component of transitory mental states. What kind of mental state? Iassume further that to be in such a mental state is to have a certain mental structure con-sisting of a system of rules and principles that generate and relate mental representationsof various types. Alternatively, one might attempt to characterize knowledge of lan-guage—perhaps knowledge more generally—as a capacity or ability to do something, as asystem of dispositions of some kind, in which case one might be led (misled, I think) toconclude that behavior provides a criterion for the possession of knowledge. In contrast,if such knowledge is characterized in terms of mental state and structure, behavior simplyprovides evidence for possession of knowledge, as might facts of entirely different order,electrical activity of the brain, for example. (Chomsky 1980:48)

Chomsky could hardly make his position plainer. He sets out to describeknowledge, which he conceives of as a state. On one occasion he refers to a'steady state' (1980: 234), and on another to an 'attained state' (1981). He is notparticularly concerned with how the state is attained. Indeed he specifically putsaside this process, making a point of 'abstracting the linguistic system as aseparate object of study' (1980:234). Elsewhere he states that the linguist'sgenerative grammar is a theory of the knowledge that a person has. . . . The

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linguist's generative grammar is an effort to capture that knowledge (and tomake it explicit)' (1981). He emphasizes 'that what we loosely call "knowledgeof language" involves in the first place knowledge of grammar—indeed thatlanguage is a derivative and perhaps not very interesting concept' (1980: 90). Sofar as Chomsk> is concerned, the linguist is concerned with knowledge,specifically knowledge of language which is to be equated with knowledge ofgrammar. And this knowledge is further equated with a mental state, associatedwith a particular mental or cognitive structure, which itself is to be distinguishedfrom any idea of 'capacity' or 'ability', which has more to do with process. Inother words, he is concerned with the product rather than the process.Chomsky's idea of competence, then, has nothing to say about language use, orabout ability to use the language knowledge represented as competence, orabout how the language user makes use of his knowledge, or even about howcompetence is acquired. (Francis (1980) has highlighted some of the difficultieswhich arise when the Chomskyan conception of competence is applied to thestudy of child language development. For one thing a child is simply not an 'idealspeaker-hearer'.) Those who interpret competence otherwise are simplyignoring the evidence, or redefining competence to suit their own purposes.There would be nothing wrong with that, of course, if writers made it clear thatthat is what they were doing, rather than reading into Chomsky's use of the termelements which he specifically excludes.

Let us now try to draw together all the threads that go to make up Chomsky'sview of competence and draw out the implications. For him, it is a static conceptrelating tb individuals. The individuals he has in mind are monolingual nativespeakers. Later attempts to apply the concept to non-native speakers or secondlanguage learners are thus fraught with problems. If competence is somethingwhich characterizes individuals, it follows that it has an absolute quality, andthat no comparison is involved or is even possible. In other words, competenceis a property of the individual, similar to the colour of his or her eyes or hair. It issomething that is given. Just as we would not say that brown eyes are 'better'than blue eyes, it makes no sense to say that one person's competence is 'better'than another's. Like blue eyes or brown hair, competence is biologically based.('Ultimately the study of language is a part of human biology.' (Chomsky1980:226)) Of course, some individuals are better at making use of theirlinguistic competence than others, just as some are better at using their eyes.They may even leant to make better use of them. This does not mean that theyhave fundamentally different visual systems. Chomsky puts it like this:

Once the steady state is attained, knowledge of language and skill in language may stillbe refined, as in the case of learning to see. Wilhelm von Humboldt argued that theresources of a language can be enriched by a greater thinker or writer, without anychange in the grammar. An individual can expand his facility or the subtlety of hiscomprehension of the devices of language through his own creative activities orimmersion in the cultural wealth of his society. But as in the case of the visual system, itseems quite appropriate to set this matter aside in abstracting the linguistic system as aseparate object of study, (op. ciL 1980:234)

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154 THE MEANING AND USE OF THE TERM'COMPETENCE'

Chomsky is using the term 'competence' as a technical linguistic term. Forhim, linguistics is about grammar, and competence, being a technical linguisticterm also concerns grammar, or more precisely knowledge of grammar.Chomsky has defined this technical term clearly and precisely, for his ownpurposes, which are equally clear. We are all entitled to define our technicalterms in our own way to suit our own purposes. If others are to criticize us, thenit must be clear on what grounds the criticism is based, and the criticism must bebased on a firm understanding of how the technical terms are to be understood.This is where much of the criticism of Chomsky's concept of competence breaksdown, through misinterpretation of what he intends to convey by his use of theterm.

We come now to Dell Hymes, whose contribution to the debate has been soinfluential. Hymes first developed his ideas on communicative competence in aconference paper published as 'Competence and performance in linguistictheory' (1971), and further elaborated them in the more substantial articleentitled 'On communicative competence' (1972). Hymes was concerned thatChomsky's notions of competence and performance left no room to accountsystematically for the fact that one of the things we know about language is howto use it appropriately. For him, Chomsky's conception of competence inparticular was far too narrow, leaving performance as a kind of residual'dustbin' into which all those linguistic phenomena that did not primarilyconcern Chomsky were swept. He objects in particular to the 'absence of a placefor sociocultural factors and the Unking of performance to imperfection'(1972:272).

Hymes's contribution to the development of the idea of competence andperformance is a curious mixture of both positive and negative features. He is,for instance, quite right to criticize Chomsky's original notion of performance,pointing out that the notions of theory of performance and theory of languageuse are equated under the catch-all term of 'performance'. He deplores 'thedistorting effect of using the one term "performance" for two distinct things, ofthe correlative withholding of "competence" from the second of them'(1971:11). In other words, Hymes is saying that some aspects of what Chomskylumps together under performance are systematic, can hence be described inthe form of rules, and can thus be seen as a form of competence. Chomskyhimself later acknowledged this when, in addition to 'grammatical competence'he recognized 'pragmatic competence', which he conceives of as underlying theability to make use of the knowledge characterized as grammatical competence(Chomsky 1980:59). He later elaborates as follows:

For purposes of enquiry and exposition, we may proceed to distinguish 'grammaticalcompetence' from 'pragmatic competence,' restricting the first to the knowledge ofform and meaning and the second to knowledge of conditions and manner ofappropriate use, in conformity with various purposes. Thus we may think of languageas an instrument that can be put to use. The grammar of the language characterizes theinstrument, determining intrinsic physical and semantic properties of every sentence.The grammar thus expresses grammatical competence. A system of rules and

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principles constituting pragmatic competence determines how the tool can effectivelybe put to use. (Chomsky 1980:224)

Clearly this corresponds very largely to what Hymes had in mind when talkingabout 'competence for use' (1971:19; 1972:279) as a component of his overallconcept of communicative competence. Indeed, he says:

There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless. Just asrules of syntax can control aspects of phonology, and just as rules of semantics perhapscontrol aspects of syntax, so rules of speech acts enter as a controlling factor forlinguistic form as a whole. (Hymes 1972: 278)

Here, he seems to be saying much the same as Chomsky above. This, then, is thepositive side of Hymes's contribution. He has succeeded in tightening up theconcept of performance, isolating from it that aspect which can be 'charac-terized by a certain system of rules represented in the mind' (Chomsky1980:59), thus showing that there are certain aspects of language use that canbe explained in terms of underlying knowledge which we can represent as asystem of rules.

But when Hymes comes specifically to discuss the notion of competence, acertain degree of confusion creeps in. He starts off well enough, with a cleardefinition of linguistic competence that seems to indicate a firm understandingof the term as used by Chomsky:

Linguistic competence deals with the knowledge that enables the speaker to produceand understand an infinite set of sentences; this is the meaning of 'creative' whenapplied to language. (Hymes 1971:5)

But, at the same time, having displayed this apparently accurate understandingof Chomsky's position he goes on two pages later to say this:

Since the theory [Chomsky's theory] intends to deal with the 'creative' use of language,that is with the ability of a speaker to devise novel sentences appropriate to newsituations, it would seem to be retrenchment, if not more, to account for only a sharedability to understand novel sentences produced by others, (op. cit. 1971: 7)

Here Hymes is clearly introducing an element of 'ability' not present inChomsky's formulation of the idea. Having made this shift, he has soon fullyincorporated ability into his idea of competence, as is seen for example when hetalks about 'competence in production' (1972:275), and 'the specification ofability for use as part of competence' (1972:283).

Further confusion is added when Hymes uses the term 'differential com-petence' (1971:7; 1972: 274), referring to differences among individuals, andintroducing a comparative and relative dimension, thus losing sight of the factthat for Chomsky, as pointed out earlier, competence is an absolute notion, theproperty of the individual, not allowing of any meaningful comparison. Thiswhole discussion about differential competence introduces a social element,which simply confuses the issue. All Hymes is really saying is that different

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people have different competences and that there is a social dimension tolanguage use—which nobody would deny. But the damage has been done, andthe social dimension is now there in Hymes's conception of competence. Thiscan be even more clearly seen when he goes on to equate Chomsky'scompetence with Saussure's langue. Hymes says that 'Chomsky associates hisviews of competence and performance with the Saussurean concepts of langueand parole' (1972:273). But this is a total misunderstanding. While it is possibleto equate at least Chomsky's original conception of performance with parole,competence and langue are completely different, as langue is a social conceptand has nothing to do with the individual ('£//e est la partie sociale du langage,exterieure d I'individu.' (Saussure 1967:31))

On the one hand, then, Hymes has helped to clarify the domain of perfor-mance and to isolate the systematic nature of some of the conditions governinglanguage use. On the other hand, however, he has extended the notion ofcompetence in subtle and not always recognized ways, so that it conveyssomething very different from what was originally intended by Chomsky.Hymes also manages to give the impression that all aspects of language use fallwithin the domain of his communicative competence, thus implying that theycan be accounted for systematically in terms of rules, whereas Chomsky iscategoric on this point. Although he recognizes 'pragmatic competence' he alsomaintains that '"the creative aspect of language use" remains as much a mysteryto us as it was to the Cartesians' (Chomsky 1975:138), where by mystery hemeans something ultimately beyond human capacity to understand. Therefore,while Hymes appears to be merely extending the idea of competence, he is infact subtly changing it.

What Hymes has done, then, is to 'extend the notion of competence as tacitknowledge from grammar to speaking as a whole' (Hymes 1971:16). Thisinvolves, as we have seen, incorporating the notion of'ability' and introducing asocial dimension. His extension of the meaning of the term therefore involveschange and at the same time gives it a much more general character. This is verydeliberate on Hymes's part as we can see when he says, 'I should therefore takecompetence as the most general term for the speaking and hearing capabilitiesof a person' (1971:16). Compare this with Chomsky's very precise and narrowuse of the term. Thus for Hymes the general term competence covers a numberof different elements, ranging from grammatical competence on the one hand tosociolinguistic competence on the other. (It is to be noted that Hymes's'sociolinguistic competence' is much wider than Chomsky's 'pragmatic com-petence'.) The term applies then to something that Chomsky would see asbiologically based (grammatical competence) and at the same time to somethingmuch more socially based (sociolinguistic competence). The former is purelyindividual, the latter is mainly social. The former concerns form; the latterconcerns function. The former characterizes a state; the latter involvesprocesses.

This indeed could be seen as the main complaint against Hymes, that byincluding so many disparate elements under his global conception of com-

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petence, he has robbed it of any very precise meaning. Hymes objected toChomsky's 'dustbin' view of performance, but one could almost say that it isHymes who has a dustbin view of competence. It is interesting to note that othersociolinguists have gone further than Hymes in this respect. Le Page, forexample, maintains that

when we come to the central question of 'competence', we have to ask: 'What is it anindividual needs to know, in order to operate as a member of this society?' A societyonly exists in the competence of its members to make it work as it does; a language onlyexists in the competence of those who use and regard themselves as users of thatlanguage; and the latter competence is the essential mediating system for the former.(Le Page 1978:41)

Here competence seems to have become an explicitly social construct.One of the most extensive subsequent discussions of competence is provided

by Munby (1978). He covers much of the same ground as Campbell and Wales,and Greene, unfortunately perpetuating the mythical distinction between Veak'and 'strong' forms of competence (Munby 1978:7-8). He takes up Hymes'svalid point, already noted, that aspects of what Chomsky originally calledperformance are systematic and can thus be characterized as a kind ofcompetence (Chomsky's later idea of 'pragmatic competence'). Munby alsopoints out that Widdowson's work (1971,1975) is based on the same idea thataspects of a person's use of language are systematic and 'rule-governed'. HenceWiddowson has 'an essentially Hymesian view of communicative competence,although deriving more from rhetoric and discourse analysis' (Munby1978:17). Munby also, however, reiterates some of the misconceptions to befound in Hymes, notably the incorporation of 'ability for use' into some widenedconception of competence (Munby 1978:15-16). He goes on nevertheless tomake the most valuable point that different writers have different orientationsand different preoccupations. He points out for instance that Campbell andWales are cognitive psychologists, concerned primarily with language acquisi-tion, and thus tend to see both psycholinguistic and sociolinguisric features oflanguage from this point of view, whereas Hymes, as an anthropologist andsociolinguist focuses on how language use involves judgements and abilities,which concern sociocultural features (Munby 1978:20). In other words,different conceptions of competence and of the distinction between com-petence and performance reflect different aims and interests and it is impossibleto make comparisons without taking this into account. It may be, however, thatone then has to question how far the use of these terms for these differentpurposes is justified.

Munby is of course concerned with developing the communicative com-petence of the second language user, and we will examine later whether it is infact appropriate to extend the idea of competence to this domain. For themoment, let us note that his view of competence, like that of Hymes, specificallyincludes some notion of'ability' (1978:26), although of course we need to takeinto account his 'communicative' orientation.

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One of the most helpful discussions of competence is to be found in Canaleand Swain's (1980) article. They point out that

there is some diversity of opinion in the literature as to (i) whether or not the notion'communicative competence' includes that of 'grammatical competence' as one of itscomponents and (ii) whether or not communicative competence should be distin-guished from (communicative) performance. (Canale and Swain 1980:5)

As they say, 'it is common to find the term "communicative competence" used torefer exclusively to knowledge or capability relating to the rules of language useand the term "grammatical (or linguistic) competence" used to refer to the rulesof grammar' (1980: 5). However, they maintain that just as there are rules ofgrammar that would be useless without rules of language use (Hymes 1972), sothere are also rules of language use that would be useless without rules ofgrammar. Hence they see communicative competence as consisting of gram-matical competence plus sociolinguistic competence. Thus, for them, there aretwo clearly defined and distinct sub-components of communicative compe-tence. They use the term "communicative competence" to refer to the relation-ship and interaction between grammatical competence, or knowledge of therules of grammar, and sociolinguistic competence, or knowledge of the rules oflanguage use' (1980:6). This is a welcome clarification, and one is grateful tohave a position so clearly stated. It can be seen that this corresponds very closelyto Chomsky's position, as his 'pragmatic competence' can easily be related toCanale and Swain's 'sociolinguistic competence'.

Another very welcome clarification (which at the same time brings them intoline with Chomsky) is Canale and Swain's decision to exclude explicitly fromtheir notion of communicative competence any idea of 'ability for use', unlikeHymes, who makes this an important feature.

(...) we hesitate to incorporate the notion of ability for use into our definition ofcommunicative competence for two main reasons: (i) to our knowledge this notion hasnot been pursued rigorously in any research on communicative competence (orconsidered directly relevant in such research) and (ii) we doubt that there is any theoryof human action that can adequately explicate 'ability for use'. (Canale and Swain1980: 7)

This view clearly reflects that of Chomsky quoted earlier (Chomsky 1975:138),and the fact of stating it so explicitly makes an important contribution toclarifying the debate. (Unfortunately, but typically in this field, Canale, in a laterarticle meant to be a refinement of this one, backslides when he explicitlyassociates grammatical competence with 'skill' (Canale 1983:7). The rest ofCanale and Swain's article is concerned with the development of communica-tive competence (including grammatical competence) in second languagelearners. As one component of their overall conception of communicativecompetence they develop the interesting notion of 'strategic competence' todeal with the knowledge and ability learners need to develop in order to takepart in communicative interaction. This is clearly important, but on the one

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hand they fail to distinguish between knowledge and ability, or rather theyincorporate both, and on the other hand they do not distinguish between thosestrategies which all speakers have, both native and non-native, and those whichare peculiar to non-native speakers. Once again we see the difficulties that arisewhen the notion of competence is extended beyond the domain to which it wasoriginally applied.

It is worth considering briefly at this point the views of Halliday, who isnotorious for rejecting the whole notion of competence and performance andthe distinction between them. Halliday would prefer to distinguish betweenwhat a speaker does and what he could do; in other words he is interested in theidea of'potential'—either 'meaning potential' (i.e. what the speaker can mean) or'behaviour potential' (i.e. what the speaker can do). This is because he takeswhat he calls 'an inter-organism perspective' on language, which he conceives ofas 'part of the social system'. He rejects a psychological level of interpretation as'unnecessary', no doubt because it emphasizes too much the individual point ofview (Halliday 1978:38-9). He puts it this way:

So in an inter-organism perspective there is no place for the dichotomy of competenceand performance, opposing what the speaker knows to what he does. There is no needto bring in the question of what the speaker knows; the background to what he does iswhat he could do—a potential, which is objective, not a competence, which issubjective. (Halliday 1978:38)

Somewhat dubiously, Halliday seems here to be equating individual withsubjective, implying that it is not possible to deal objectively with an individualpsychological perspective. Given his own particular social perspective,Halliday's rejection of the competence/performance distinction may bejustified, but we must not take this to mean that all other approaches andperspectives are invalid. From the point of view of the preoccupations of thispaper, HaUiday's distinction between an 'objective' potential and a 'subjective'competence is useful, however, as it enables him, in discussing Hymes'scommunicative competence, to make the nice point that 'Hymes is taking theintra-organism ticket to what is actually an inter-organism destination; he isdoing "psycho-sociolinguistics", if you like' (Halliday 1978: 38). In other wordsHymes, as pointed out earlier, is introducing a social dimension into what isessentially an individual concept.

It is not surprising that a number of confusingly different interpretations ofthe term competence have arisen when one considers how it is used in otherdisciplines, some of which have close connections with linguistics. But perhapsforemost among the causes of the confusion is the ordinary 'common sense' useof the word competence, as reflected in current dictionary definitions. A typicalexample is to be found in the Collins English Dictionary (1979), which gives asits main definition the condition of being capable: ability'. Everybody thus has anatural tendency to associate 'ability' with 'competence'.

The situation becomes even more complicated if we look at the psychologicaland educational literature. In psychology the use of the term seems to go back to

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White (1959) who uses it to refer to 'an organism's capacity to interacteffectively with its environment' (1959:297). In a review of the psychologicalliterature on competence Turner (1980) cites White and goes on to distinguish'cognitive competence' and 'social competence'. The first concerns, amongother things, 'those basic skills which are a precondition for subsequent skills'(Turner 1980: 39), while the second involves 'certain interpersonal problem-solving skills' (1980:43). Competence, in general, is seen as relating to 'anunderlying organization of skills' (1980:40).

In this tradition, then, competence is clearly associated with 'skills' and'capacity1, and there is little suggestion of 'mental state' or even of 'knowledge',although this could be a part of what is meant by competence in this context(Turner 1980:38). The influence of this tradition is clearly seen in mucheducational writing. Wiemann and Backlund (1980), for example, deal with'communicative competence' from an educational point of view. The idea of'skill' and 'ability' is strongly present throughout their discussion, and indeed atone point they speak of competence as 'a combination of knowledge and skill'(1980:192). In a review of different definitions of competence they note,interestingly, that there seem to be two perspectives: cognitive and behavioral(1980:186). The cognitive perspective conceives of competence as being 'amental phenomenon distinct and separate from behavior' (1980:187). Thiscorresponds more or less to our view of competence as exemplified byChomsky, and indeed Wiemann and Backlund cite Chomsky as 'the mostinfluential contributor to the cognitive concept of competence' (1980:187). Asfor the behavioral perspective, this 'includes specific reference to actualcommunicative behavior. This view of competence has its roots as much incommon usage as in developed theory. Many scholars tie competence speci-fically to effective behavior' (1980:187). There are echoes here of White's.definition. Wiemann and Backlund cite Hymes as a good example of one whotakes a mainly behavioral perspective and in fact they themselves take agenerally Hymesian view of communicative competence. For them, 'skills arethe connections between knowledge and behavior' (1980:190), and theypropose that 'proficiency in skills (...) is what is required for the manifestationof communicative competence' (1980:190). This behavioral perspective oncommunicative competence obviously has much in common with what wereferred to earlier as a socially based view of competence, and they specificallyrefer to 'communicative competence as a socially judged phenomenon'(1980:191). In contrast, their cognitive perspective corresponds closely towhat we distinguished earlier as a biologically based view.

Bruner is writing in this tradition when he speaks of 'competence as theobjective of education' (Bruner 1973a: 113). When he says that'(...) whatseems to be at work in a good problem-solving "performance" is someunderlying competence in using the operations of physics or whatever"(1973a: 111) he seems to have in mind some idea of skill in using knowledge.For him Vhat is learned is competence, not particular performance'(1973a: 111) and he goes on to equate learning competence with 'learning to be

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skillful with a body of knowledge'. Although competence is seen as somethingunderlying performance, this is a far cry from Chomsky's conception in that itinvolves proficiency in using knowledge. Strangely enough, at other timesBruner seems to be using the term in a sense similar to that of Chomsky, as whenhe explicitly associates 'knowing a rule' with 'having a competence' (Bruner1973b: 461-2).

Thus, in this literature, the term competence is very closely associated withthe idea of 'skills' (particularly in using knowledge) and has a strong behavioralorientation, together with an obvious social dimension—so much so that, to addfurther to the confusion, in the domain of teacher education notably, it issometimes used interchangeably with performance! Perlberg, Kremer, andLewis (1979), for instance, treat Competence Based Teacher Education(CBTE) as equivalent to Performance Based Teacher Education (PBTE).

Given all these various strands and traditions of thinking it is not surprisingthat competence has come to be firmly associated with proficiency, particularlyin the domain of Applied Linguistics and its principal concern, languageteaching and learning, which draw on all the disciplines discussed above-Linguistics, Psychology, and Education. What, then, can competence mean foran applied linguist, subject as he is to these different influences? Here alsoconfusion reigns, some applied linguists squarely identifying the notion withproficiency, or generally taking a Hymesian line with a behavioral perspective,arriving at a socially based conception incorporating some idea of 'skill in usingknowledge', while others seem to take, at least at times, a more Chomskyanposition.

Corder, in his book Introducing Applied Linguistics, where Applied Linguis-tics is discussed in relation to language teaching, has the usual discussion of thecompetence/performance distinction, together with the by now statutoryreferences to Chomsky (Corder 1973:90-3). He also deals with communica-tive competence, which he later describes as 'the general skill which has beencalled communicative competence' (1973:126). Corder's discussion ofChomsky's original use of the term competence is unexceptionable, butimmediately it is widened to include communicative competence we notice theelement of skill creeping in. We must remember, too, that all this is in the contextof second language learning and teaching, and although if we accept, as Corderdoes, the notion of communicative competence as a 'skill' (this is appropriateenough), it is not at all clear how the original, narrower conception ofcompetence can apply here. After all, Corder himself points out that the aim ofthe applied linguist/language teacher is to produce someone who can perform(1973:197). Presumably, then, the language teacher needs to provide thelearner with the competence he needs in order to perform. In other words, thenotion of competence may be useful in specifying what it is that the learnerneeds to know, but it is difficult to see that it can contribute anything to theprocess of acquiring that knowledge, being an essentially descriptive term,applicable to a state or a structure. This is the danger of the over-extension of theterm a la Hymes. People tend to see in it something of relevance to all the

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problems of language teaching. Also, as we can see very clearly here, introduc-ing the idea of 'skill' in this connection tends to blur the competence/performance distinction, as skill is associated with performance, notknowledge.

In fact Corder himself tried to use the term strictly. In an article originallywritten in 1967, he introduced the term 'transitional competence' (Corder1981:10) in an attempt to use the Chomskyan framework to throw light onwhat was systematic about a learner's language. Corder clearly intends to usethe term in a descriptive way, to describe the knowledge of the language learnerat any particular stage, and is fairly faithful to the Chomskyan sense. However,the use of the term in the second language situation still gives rise to difficulties.For example, Corder is led to speak of 'errors of competence' (1981:10),showing a relative and comparative dimension which is not present inChomsky's absolute sense of the term (see above). As he later explains inanother article:

My own term transitional competence borrows the notion of 'competence' fromChomsky and emphasizes that the learner possesses a certain body of knowledge whichwe hope is constantly developing. (Corder 1981:67)

Here we have the problem in a nutshell. How can we apply the essentially staticidea of competence to a 'body of knowledge which we hope is constantlydeveloping'? The product and the process are mixed up again, perhapsinevitably so. This question has arisen whenever a competence-based approachto the study of 'interlanguage' (as the language of the learner considered as asystem in its own right came to be called), has been tried. For interlanguage is anessentially dynamic phenomenon, inherently unstable and variable, full ofbacksliding and regressions, as Corder himself points out (1981:87-94). Somehave concluded from this that competence is not therefore a valid concept,while others, such as Hymes, have simply widened the concept to include in itthat which they want to include. Either way, understanding is not reallyadvanced.

Some of the same problems may be seen in other discussions of the concept inthe context of language learning. A notable example is Stern's wide-ranging andimportant survey of the field (Stern 1983). In general, Stern seems to equatecompetence with 'proficiency'. He says that 'Among different learners atdifferent stages of learning second language competence or proficiency rangesfrom zero to native-like proficiency' (1983: 341), explicitly identifying com-petence with proficiency. Even more revealingly, later (1983:344) Stern,discussing the fact that native speakers use the first language 'creatively', saysthat 'competence is active and dynamic, not mechanical or static'. He is thusclearly linking competence with language use, and confusing state and process.And when Stern states that 'different first language users are likely to havecompetence to a different degree' (1983:345) this recalls Hymes's 'differentialcompetence' and takes us away once more from Chomsky's original absoluteconception. It is clear that, once the idea of relativity creeps in, the distinction

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between competence and performance is difficult to maintain. Finally, let usquote Stern's summing up of his position.

In review, knowing a language, competence, or proficiency in the first or secondlanguage can be summarized as:1 the intuitive mastery of the forms of the language,2 the intuitive mastery of the linguistic, cognitive, affective, and sociocultural

meanings, expressed by the language forms,3 the capacity to use the language with maximum attention to communication and

minimum attention to form, and4 the creativity of language use. (Stern 1983:346)

While Chomsky would recognize his conception of competence in (1), andHymes would recognize his conception of communicative competence in (2)and certain parts of (3), (4) has no place in any conception of competence whichobserves the competence/performance distinction. (Remember that Chomskyregards 'the creativity of language use' as a 'mystery" probably beyond humanunderstanding. (Chomsky 1975:138; 1980: 222))• For Stern, then, competence seems to be a very broad concept indeed,covering knowledge (both linguistic and sociolinguistic) on the one hand, andskill in putting that knowledge to use on the other. In addition, some sort ofoverall meaning like 'ability to perform in the language' seems to be present.Although Stern explicitly identifies the two terms competence and proficiency,as we have seen, he really seems to be introducing a new concept altogether.This may simply be adding to the confusion, but it could be that the termproficiency, in association with competence, could offer us a way out. We willtake up this point later.

The inevitable and fundamental changes in the nature of competence once itis associated with any kind of communication come out very clearly inSavignon's (1983) discussion of the subject. She makes such statements as thefollowing:

Communicative competence is a dynamic rather than a static concept. It depends onthe negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some degree thesame symbolic system. In this sense, then, communicative competence can be said to bean interpersonal rather than an intrapersonal trait. (Savignon 1983:8)

Savignon is here spelling out very clearly what follows from Hymes's introduc-tion of a social dimension (see above). More consequences follow:

Communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the cooperationof all the participants involved. It makes sense, then, to speak of degrees of communica-tive competence, (op. cit. 1983:9)

Once again, we are dealing with something very different from Chomsky'soriginal concept. The problem is that Hymes, and those that follow him such asSavignon, are apparently claiming to be merely extending the original conceptwhereas they are obviously doing more than that. The danger is that even when

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such writers apply the notion of competence to its original domain, i.e. that ofthe native speaker, they introduce their fundamentally different view, as may beseen in the following extract from Savignon:

The competence of native speakers, well developed though it may be, is relative.Mother-tongue proficiency varies widely from child to child and from adult to adultVocabulary range, articulation, critical thinking, persuasiveness, and penmanship arebut a few of the many, many facets of competence wherein native speakers differ, (op.cit. 1983: 53)

Here again we see the identification of competence with proficiency and theinclusion of elements specifically excluded by Chomsky (see Chomsky1980:234). What is important is that there does not seem to be any awareness inany of these instances that a changed concept of competence is being used.Under these circumstances it is very difficult to know in any given instance whatexactly is meant by the term 'competence'.

As far as the term 'communicative competence' is concerned, it generallyseems to mean, in the context of language teaching and learning, 'ability toperform' or 'ability to communicate' in the second language. More generally,associating competence with communication inevitably seems to bring in someaspects of performance. It is difficult to escape the conclusion, therefore, thatwhen we talk about communicative competence in the context of languageteaching or learning we are really talking about communicative performance.Especially when we talk about aims and about specifying them for teaching andlearning purposes, we are interested mainly in performance, no matter whatterms we use. Hence in all these discussions, as we have noted, the distinctionbetween competence and performance tends to become blurred and the exactmeaning of the terms used is difficult to determine.

One of the few writers to face up to these difficulties is Widdowson, who hadearlier contributed a valuable and helpful distinction between usage on the onehand and use on the other (Widdowson 1978:1-3). These are similar tocompetence and performance but are defined more from the teacher's orlearner's point of view. In other words, in dealing with the pedagogicalperspective Widdowson manages to avoid confusion by introducing twoseparate terms to be used specifically in this context. Many teachers have causeto be grateful for this clarification. Recently he has attempted further clarifica-tion by trying to distinguish between competence and capacity (Widdowson1983:7-8,23-8). This distinction clearly recognizes one of the main difficulties(the confusion of competence with proficiency) and attempts to deal with it.Widdowson is very clear about the proper nature of competence and itsnecessary limitations, and on the whole supports Chomsky's views on thematter. In introducing the term 'capacity* he wants to bring in a user's perspec-tive, as he regards the concept of communicative competence (as originallydeveloped by Hymes) as too 'analytic'. While Hymes undoubtedly intended hisconcept to be analytic in character we have seen that, by introducing social andother dimensions, he in fact changes the nature of the concept so that in fact it

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does have a user orientation, despite what Widdowson says. Hence there issome similarity between Hymes's communicative competence and Widdow-son's capacity. As we saw earlier, Munby had already noted the similarity inthinking between Hymes and Widdowson. The point is, however, thatWiddowson has explicitly recognized and faced up to the problems that arisewhen the term competence is associated with learning and use.

His term 'capacity1 inevitably invites comparison with Chomsky's use of theterm. We have already referred to the tatter's various discussions, from which itis clear that for him capacity has to do with ability to make use of knowledge(linguistic knowledge in this case). Chomsky is, though, on the whole moreconcerned with cognitive capacity in general, whereas Widdowson has in mind amore precise application of the term to what he calls 'the ability to createmeanings by exploiting the potential inherent in the language for continualmodification in response to change' (Widdowson 1983:8). This, I take it, ismerely spelling out what Chomsky variously refers to as the creative aspect oflanguage use' (Chomsky 1975:138) and 'the creative use of language'(Chomsky 1980:222). We can conclude, then, that Widdowson's distinction isnot altogether a new one. Nor is the concept to which he gives the name'capacity' new. Nevertheless, the discussion is valuable and helpful in that itfocuses attention on crucial issues, although it does leave rather unclear theplace and status of performance .The importance lies in the fact that, almost forthe first time, the limitations of the concept of competence outside its originalsphere are clearly recognized.

How then, can we try to bring some order and consistency to the use of theterm 'competence' and the various associated terms? We have seen that most ofthe difficulties arise when competence is extended to include process as well asproduct, function as well as form—in other words when no distinction is clearlydrawn between states and dynamic processes. This seems to happen automati-cally when we move outside the original domain of the 'ideal speaker-hearer',particularly when we move into what might be called the 'applied' domain oflanguage, which inevitably has to take a broader view and also calls on otherdisciplines such as psychology and education. In an important discussion of thenature of applied linguistics Brumfit (1985:42) warns against the confusion ofprocedures which are in essence investigatory and descriptive with those thatare developmental and pedagogical'. It seems to me that this is precisely whathas happened with the concept of competence. It is an investigatory anddescriptive device, valid in a certain domain, but causing many difficultiesoutside it. Many writers have pointed out, for example, that Chomskyancompetence cannot cope properly with variation and change (e.g. Milroy 1985).It is a restricted, narrow, static concept This is not necessarily a criticism—itsimply reflects the nature of Chomsky's preoccupations, which he has madevery clear.

But once we try to concern ourselves with matters of language development(in either a first or second language) and language use, it becomes necessary totake into account processes and functions, which in this perspective are not

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easily separable from states and forms. Brumfit, talking about this widerperspective, has put it well:

What is beginning to emerge, in other words, is an account of language which is notstatic, idealized, and therefore not directly and simply applicable to the needs ofworkers of any kind with real problems. Rather it is an account which is dynamic, fluid,and increasingly motivated by reference to interaction, to active learning and usingstrategies associated with learners' responses to social demands. This is an account, inshort, of users' application of language to the problems of the world and being in it.(Brumfit 1985:45)

Although it is obvious that the classical Chomskyan notion of competencehas only a small part to play in all this, it is equally obvious, from the fact that theterm competence is used so widely and so diversely in so many differentdomains, that there is a need for some similar concept or for some suchdistinction as the one between competence and performance. One clearly needsat times to distinguish between what a speaker knows and what he does,between his knowledge and his proficiency in using that knowledge, betweenwhat is individual and what is social. Unfortunately, because of the way in whichthe term competence has been used, and notably has been given in many cases asocial dimension, it has taken on a relative sense and has become equated withproficiency. It is therefore no longer possible to tell what precisely is meant by itand hence to make the distinctions that are needed. We have seen someexamples of the confusion that this state of affairs leads to. A further examplethat springs to mind is the great misunderstanding that arose over Bernstein'sdistinction between elaborated and restricted codes. It is legitimate to speculatethat much of this could have been avoided if the distinction between knowledgeand use had been clearly kept in mind.

If we admit that competence in its restricted sense is still a useful concept (i.e.referring to some kind of 'knowledge' or, better, 'state of knowledge'), then wecan draw a distinction between competence and proficiency, the latter termdesignating something like 'the ability to make use of competence'. Performanceis then what is done when proficiency is put to use. Competence can be regardedas a static concept, having to do with structure, state, or form, whereasproficiency is essentially a dynamic concept, having to do with process andfunction. We can thus avoid the difficulties that arise from confusing thesethings. We can also avoid the confusion between relative and absolute notions,competence being squarely absolute in character, while proficiency admits ofdegrees and of comparison, and is thus a relative notion. Using the terms in thisway would enable us to make the crucial distinctions where necessary and, at thesame time, to adopt the more fluid and dynamic view of language that isnecessary in order to make sense of language as it is used in the world.

Much could be clarified by doing away with the overall term 'communicativecompetence' which has been so abused that it has lost all precise meaning. Thevague meaning that it does seem to have ('ability to perform") has no recogniz-able connection at all with competence as originally defined. We might do better

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to replace it instead with 'communicative proficiency', which would have anumber of components, such as 'grammatical competence', together with theassociated 'grammatical proficiency', and 'pragmatic competence' together with'pragmatic proficiency'. We could perhaps also include 'strategic competence'and 'strategic proficiency' if it were possible to define closely enough what ismeant by 'strategy' and what constitutes knowledge of a strategy.

It is hoped that this paper has shown the extent of the confusion that hasarisen through the rather indiscriminate use of the term 'competence' and thenecessity of making clear exactly what is understood by it in all contexts. It ishoped also that the suggested distinction between competence and proficiencywill serve at least as a starting point for a general clarification of the subject, sothat, by giving it back its original meaning, we can make the most of Chomsky'soriginal conception without distorting it in any way. Only then can we use it as aclear basis for developing related concepts. In this way we may be able to adopta wider perspective on language which will not be in conflict with any ofChomsky's fundamental insights. Hopefully we can then avoid the conflicts andmisunderstandings that have occurred largely as a result of a fragmentation ofinterests.

{Revised version received September 1986)

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New Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Canale, M. 1983. 'From communicative competence to communicative language

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Canale, M. and M. Swain. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches tosecond language teaching and testing.' Applied Linguistics 1:1-47.

Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Chomsky, N. 1970. "Remarks on nominalization' in R. A. Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum

(eds.): Readings in English Transformational Syntax. Waltham, Mass.: Ginn.Chomsky, N. 1975. Reflections on Language. London: Temple Smith.Chomsky, N. 1980. Rules and Representations. Oxford: BlackwelLChomsky, N. 1981. 'Interview with John Maddox.' Scientifically Speaking. BBC Radio 3.Corder, S. P. 1973. Introducing Applied Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Corder, S. P. 1981. Error Analysis and Interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Fodor, J. and M. Garrett. 1966. 'Some reflections on competence and performance' in

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Milroy, L. 1985. 'What a performance! Some problems with the competence-performance distinction.' Australian Journal of Linguistics 5:1-17.

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Perlberg, A., L. Kremer and R. Lewis. 1979. Towards new teacher education models.'British Journal of Teacher Education 5: 263-81.

Saussure, F. de 1967. Cours de linguistique generate. Paris: Payot.Savignon, S. J. 1983. Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice.

Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.Stern, H. H. 1983. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Turner, J. 1980. The development of competence.' Educational Review 2:37-46.White, R. W. 195 9. 'Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence.' Psychological

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in Science and Technology in a Second Language. London: Centre for Information onLanguage Teaching and Research.

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Widdowson, H. G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

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Wiemann, J. M. and P. Backlund. 1980. 'Current theory and research in communicativecompetence.' Review of Educational Research 50:185-99.

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