COMMUNICATIVE

COMPETENCE
SOME COMPETENCES THAT
SUPPORT COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE

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 Suggested Components of
Discourse Competence
 COHESION
 DEIXIS
 COHERENCE
 GENRE/GENERIC STRUCTURE (formal schemata)
 CONVERSATIONAL STRUCTURE
(inherent to the turn-taking system in
conversation but may extend to a variety of oral
genres)

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 COHESION
 Reference (anaphora, cataphora)
• We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills ” Winston S. Churchill
 Substitution/ellipsis
 Conjunction

 Lexical chains (related to content

schemata), parallel structure

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 DEIXIS
•Personal (pronouns)
•Spatial (here, there; this,
that)
•Temporal (now, then;
before, after)
•Textual (the following chart;
the example above)
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 COHERENCE
• Organized expression and interpretation of
content and purpose (content schemata)
• Thematization and staging (theme-rheme
development)
• Management of old and new information
• Prepositional structures and their
organizational sequences
 temporal, spatial, cause-effect, condition-result,
etc.
• Temporal continuity/shift (sequence of
tenses)

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 GENRE/GENERIC STRUCTURE
(formal schemata)
•narrative, interview, service
encounter, research report,
sermon, etc.

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 CONVERSATIONAL STRUCTURE
(inherent to the turn-taking system in
conversation but may extend to a variety of
oral genres)
• How to perform openings & reopenings
• Topic establishment & change
• How to hold & relinquish the floor
• How to interrupt
• How to collaborate & backchannel
• How to do preclosings and closings
• Adjacency pairs (related to actional
competence)
 first and second pair parts (knowing
03,16,2009 preferred and dispreferred responses)
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 Suggested Components of
Linguistic Competence
 SYNTAX
 MORPHOLOGY
 LEXICON (receptive and productive)
 PHONOLOGY (for pronunciation)
 ORTHOGRAPHY (for spelling)

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 SYNTAX
 Constituent/phrase structure
 Word order (canonical and marked)
 Sentence types
• statements, negatives, questions, imperatives, exclamations
 Special constructions
• existentials (there +BE...)
• clefts (It's X that/who..,; What + sub. + verb + BE)
• question tags, etc.
 Modifiers/intensifiers
• quantifiers, comparing and equating
 Coordination (and, or, etc.) and correlation (both X and Y;
either XorY)
 Subordination (e.g., adverbial clauses, conditionals)
 Embedding
• noun clauses, relative clauses (e.g., restrictive and non-
restrictive)
• reported speech

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 MORPHOLOGY
 Parts of speech
 Inflections (e.g., agreement and
concord)
 Derivational processes (productive
ones)
• compounding, affixation,
conversion/incorporation

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 LEXICON (receptive and
productive)
 Words
• content words (Ns, Vs, ADJs)
• function words (pronouns, prepositions, verbal auxiliaries,
etc.)
 Routines
• word-like fixed phrases (e.g., of course, all of a sudden)
• formulaic and semi-formulaic chunks (e.g., how do you do?)
 Collocations
• Words that are used and stored together in the brain. Eg
disturb the peace; high expectations; final proof; unleash a
storm, etc.
• V-Obj (e.g., spend money), Adv-Adj (e.g., mutually
intelligible), Adj-N
• (e.g., tall building)
 Idioms (e.g., kick the bucket=die)

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 PHONOLOGY (for pronunciation)
 Segmentals
• vowels, consonants, syllable types,
sandhi variation (changes and
reductions between adjacent sounds in
the stream of speech)
 Suprasegmentals
• prominence, stress, intonation, rhythm

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 ORTHOGRAPHY (for spelling)
 Letters (if writing system is
alphabetic)
 Phoneme-grapheme
correspondences
 Rules of spelling
 Conventions for mechanics and
punctuation

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Suggested Components of Actional
Competence
 KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
• INTERPERSONAL EXCHANGE
• INFORMATION
• OPINIONS
• FEELINGS
• SUASION
• PROBLEMS
• FUTURE SCENARIOS
 KNOWLEDGE OF SPEECH ACT SETS

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 INTERPERSONALEXCHANGE
 Greeting and leavetaking
 Making introductions, identifying oneself
 Extending, accepting and declining
invitations and offers
 Making and breaking engagements
 Expressing and acknowledging gratitude
 Complimenting and congratulating
 Reacting to the interlocutor's speech
• showing attention, interest, surprise,
sympathy, happiness, disbelief,
disappointment

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 INFORMATION
 Asking for and giving information
 Reporting (describing and narrating)
 Remembering
 Explaining and discussing

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 OPINIONS
 Expressing and rinding out about
opinions and attitudes
 Agreeing and disagreeing
 Approving and disapproving
 Showing satisfaction and
dissatisfaction

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 FEELINGS
 Expressing and finding out about
feelings
• love, happiness, sadness, pleasure,
anxiety, anger, embarrassment, pain,
relief, fear,
• annoyance, surprise, etc.

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 SUASION
 Suggesting, requesting and
instructing
 Giving orders, advising and warning
 Persuading, encouraging and
discouraging
 Asking for, granting and withholding
permission

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 PROBLEMS
 Complaining and criticizing
 Blaming and accusing
 Admitting and denying
 Regretting
 Apologizing and forgiving

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 FUTURE SCENARIOS
 Expressing and finding out about
wishes, hopes, and desires
 Expressing and eliciting plans, goals,
and intentions
 Promising
 Predicting and speculating
 Discussing possibilities and
capabilities of doing something
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 Suggested Components of
Sociocultural Competence
 SOCIAL CONTEXTUAL FACTORS

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SOCIAL CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
 Participant variables
• age, gender, office and status, social
distance, relations (power and affective)
 Situational variables
• time, place, social situation

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 STYLISTIC APPROPRIATENESS
FACTORS
 Politeness conventions and strategies
 Stylistic variation
• degrees of formality
• field-specific registers

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 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 value,
beliefs, and norms; taboo topics; historical
background; cultural aspect including literature
and arts
 Awareness of major dialect or regional
differences
 Cross-cultural awareness
• differences; similarities; strategies for cross-
cultural communication
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 NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIVE
FACTORS
 Kinesic factors (body language)
• discourse controlling behaviors (non-verbal
turn-taking signals)
• backchannel behaviors
• affective markers (facial expressions),
gestures, eye contact
 Proxemic factors (use of space)
 Haptic factors (touching)
 Paralinguistic factors
• acoustical sounds, nonvocal noises
 Silence

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 Suggested Components of
Strategic Competence
 AVOIDANCE or REDUCTION
STRATEGIES
 ACHIEVEMENT or COMPENSATORY
STRATEGIES
 STALLING or TIME-GAINING
STRATEGIES
 SELF-MONITORING STRATEGIES
 INTERACTIONAL STRATEGIES
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 AVOIDANCE or REDUCTION
STRATEGIES
 Message replacement
 Topic avoidance
 Message abandonment

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 ACHIEVEMENT or
COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES
 Circumlocution (e.g., the thing you open bottles with for
corkscrew)
 Approximation (e.g., fish for carp)
 All-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)
 Word-coinage (e.g., vegetarianist)
 Literal translation from LI
 Foreignizing (e.g., LI word with L2 pronunciation)
 Code switching to LI or L3
 Retrieval (e.g., bro... bron... bronze)

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 STALLING or TIME-GAINING
STRATEGIES
 Fillers, hesitation devices and
gambits (e.g., well, actually..., where
was I...?)
 Self and other-repetition

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 SELF-MONITORING
STRATEGIES
 Self-initiated repair (e.g., / mean...)
 Self-rephrasing (over-elaboration)
(e.g., This is for students... pupils...
When you're at school...)

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 INTERACTIONAL STRATEGIES
 Appeals for help  Responses
• direct (e.g., What do you call...?) • repetition, rephrasing,
• indirect (e.g., / don't know the word in expansion, reduction,
English... or puzzled expression) confirmation, rejection, repair
 Meaning negotiation strategies Indicators  Comprehension checks
of non/misunderstanding • whether the interlocutor can
• requests follow you (e.g., Am I making
 repetition requests (e.g., Pardon? sense?)
or Could you say that again • whether what you said was
please?) correct or grammatical (e.g.,
 clarification requests (e.g.. What
Can I/you say that?)
do you mean by...?)
 confirmation requests (e.g., Did
• whether the interlocutor is
listening (e.g., on the phone:
you say...?) Are you still there?)
• expressions of non-understanding
 verbal (e.g., Sorry, I'm not sure I
• whether the interlocutor can
hear you
understand...)
 non-verbal (raised eyebrows,
blank look)
 Interpretive summary (e.g., You
mean...? So what you're saying
is...?)

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