Communicative Competence: A Pedagogical Motivated Model with Content Specifications (summary)

The paper by Celce-Murcia, Drney, and Thurrell tries to provide a model of communicative competence trough which language teaching, language analysis and teacher training can be organized and available, being the its main purpose its application to classrooms (academic purpose). Before moving forwards, some clarifications about the term "competence" must be done. Taylor pointed out that Savignon considered competence as dynamic concept. In contrast, Taylor, like Chomsky, thought that competence was a static process, and not a process. Thus, Taylor made a distinction between "competence" and "proficiency" (it is dynamic and it is an ability by means of which competence can be used). Now we move on to a brief explanation of some existing models of communicative competence. The first one was developed by Canale and Swain (1980), and later completed by Canale (1983). That model consisted of: 1. Grammatical competence: the knowledge of grammatical rules, vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, etc. 2. Sociolinguistic competence: skills which allow people to properly use vocabulary, register, politeness and style in a context. 3. Discourse competence: the achievement of cohesive texts through the combination of language structures 4. Strategic competence: to be able to produce efficient communication acts, and also to overcome communication deficiency through verbal and non-verbal skills. Despite the fact that this model has been criticised, Schachter (1990) questioned the separation of discourse and sociolinguistic competence, it has also been important when trying to find the bounds of communicative language use. The next model of communicative competence is the one developed by Bachman (1900) and Bachman and Palmer. The Bachman and Palmer model divides language knowledge into two categories, which are subdivided into subcategories: Language Knowledge 1. Organizational knowledge (a) Grammatical knowledge: similar to Canale and Swain's grammatical competence. (b) Textual knowledge: similar to but more elaborated than Canale and Swain's discourse competence. 2. Pragmatic knowledge

(a) Lexical knowledge: the knowledge of the meanings of words and the ability to use figurative language. (b) Functional knowledge: the knowledge of the relationships between utterances and the intentions, or communicative purposes of language users (MS. p. 3/14). (c) Sociolinguistic knowledge: similar to Canale and Swain's sociolinguistic competence. The Bachman and Palmer model separated the language knowledge from the metacognitive strategies (cognitive skills involved in language use). McNamara observed this separation and stated that the Bachman and Palmer model was better than Canale and Swain's model since the former distinguished between knowledge and skills (according to Taylor (1988) competence and proficiency respectively). Metacognitive strategies (a) assesment (b) goal-setting (c) planning Another communicative model, this time the one proposed by the authors Celce-Murcia, Drnyei, and Thurrell, is now explained. This model distinguishes among discourse competence, sociocultural competence, linguistic competence, actional competence, and strategic competence. The core element is the discourse competence, which is surrounded by the sociocultural, linguistic, and actional competence. These four elements shape each other. The element which surrounds the four already mentioned is the strategic competence.

If a comparison between the Canale and Swain model and the proposed model is made, two differences will be found. The first one is that the proposed model use the term linguistic competence instead of grammatical competence since the former includes lexis and phonology in addition to morphology and syntax. The second one is that the term sociocultural competence is used to distinguished it from actional competence [] and also to highlight the fact that language resources are in the linguistics, actional, and discourse components while sociocultural knowledge is necessary for the appropriate deployment of the resources in other components. (Celce-Murica, 1995).

If a comparison between the Bachman and Palmer's model and the proposed model is made, many similarities will be found, but also some differences, for instance, in the proposed model the lexical knowledge belongs to the linguistic competence.

Now the authors explain in depth their model beginning for the core element, the discourse competence. Discourse competence concerns the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written text. (Celce-Murcia, Drnyei, and Thurrell, 1995). The authors of the paper arranged the elements of the discourse competence as follows:

The following element in the proposed model is the linguistic competence which is related to primary elements in communication such as sentence patterns and types, constituent structure, morphological inflections, lexical resources, and the phonological and orthographic systems through which communication (spoken or written) is produced. The authors considered the linguistic competence to be structured as follows:

The next element belonging to the model is the actional competence, which is the learners ability or willingness to participate in communication. Such participation is achieved through previously acquired knowledge of an inventory of verbal schemata. Despite the fact that speech acts have traditionally been subordinated to sociolinguistic competence, the authors of this paper preferred to separate the dimension associated with actional purpose from that associated with sociocultural factors. In order to arrange the components of the actional competence, first is necessary to know what language functions are, but the authors categorized language functions according to seven areas (interpersonal exchange, information, opinions, feelings, suasion, problems, and future scenarios). One thing the authors wanted to clarify before presenting their arrangement of actional competence components was the indirect speech, which deals with language functions. Little attention is paid to indirect speech acts in foreign teaching classrooms, and this should not be so since [...]the majority of speech acts are most frequently realized indirectly(Levinson, 1983, p.264).

Since language and culture are closely related, sociocultural competence refers to the learner's skills through which he/she can produce correct messages within the social and cultural communicative context. There are a series of factors according to which the sociocultural competence is arranged. These factors are: social contextual factors: it deals with the participants in communication. stylistic appropriateness factors cultural factors which include the sociocultural background knowledge of the target language community, the awareness of major dialect or regional differences, and the crosscultural awareness. non-verbal communicative factors: since non-verbal actions may be performed unconsciously, non-native learners may not realize that misunderstanding or miscommunication is going on.

According to the authors of the paper, learning a language as well as its culture is primary for learners to develop successful and comprehensive communication with the members of that culture. Thus, second language acquisition and second culture acquisition are bound and teachers should provide student with cultural information through cultural needs analysis.

The final component of the model is the strategic competence which is the knowledge of the different communication strategies and how to use them. The authors have based their definition of strategic competence on three typically highlighted functions of strategy use from three different perspectives: Psycholinguistic perspective, interactional perspective, and communication continuity/maintenance perspective. According to the authors of the paper, the strategic competence is formed by the following components: Avoidance or reduction strategies: according to it, a learner must adapt her/his message to his/her resources. Achievement or compensatory strategies: to achieve successful communication by manipulating available language. Stalling or time-gaining strategies Self-monitoring strategies: to self-correct or change something in our speech. Interactional strategies: the cooperative aspect of strategy use is given importance.