Principles For Cultivating Communicative Competence In Foreign Language Teaching

开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Principles For Cultivating Communicative Competence In Foreign Language Teaching范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！

Abstract: After presenting a brief introduction to the concept of communicative competence (CC for short) , the paper summarizes and discusses four principles of how to achieve the goal of CC in language teaching.

中图分类号:G42文献标识码:A文章编号:1003-2851(2010)01-0211-01

IIntroduction

In recent years, there has been a change of emphasis from presenting language as a set of

forms (grammatical, phonological, lexical), which have to be learned and practiced, to presenting language as a functional system that is used to fulfill a range of communicative purposes (Widdowson, 1978:116; Tarone and Yule, 1989:17). The change is mainly owing to the effort of ethnographers who study language in its context of use and insist that communicative competence (CC), instead of linguistic competence (LC for short) in Chomsky’s sense, be considered as a kind of criterion to evaluate the degree of proficiency that a learner achieves and therefore a proper aim for language teaching (Wardhaugh, 1986:245; Yalden, 1987:15).

However, so far, there is no consensus on either the definition or components of CC (Yalden, 1987:23). Therefore, previous attempted applications of the CC theory on language teaching are of certain limit, because they have mainly been based on one certain person’s CC theory, for instance Hymes’ or Canale’s (Gao, 1992; Tarone and Yule, 1989). Moreover, though in much detail, most of these previous applications are not so systematic. There need to be some general principles that can guide applications of the CC theory on language teaching, on the basis of a more comprehensive CC model.

IICommunicative Competence: Definition and Components

This chapter will provide a brief introduction to CC as a goal in language teaching and the components of it, thus forming the theoretical foundation for further discussion in next chapter.

2.1 What Is Communicative Competence

Communicative competence, as a concept, was first put forward by Hymes (1972:279), who believed that in learning a language, children must acquire “knowledge of a set of ways in which sentences are used”, in addition to the knowledge of how to construct sentences. Moreover, “from a finite experience of speech acts and their interdependence with sociocultural features, they develop a general theory of speaking appropriate in their community, which they employ, like other forms of tacit cultural knowledge (competence), in conducting and interpreting social life.” According to him, Chomsky’s theory defined the nature of linguistic knowledge too narrowly to mean a knowledge of grammatical form, and therefore, his CC theory involves four sectors: whether something is

―― formally possible (grammaticality in Chomsky’s sense)

―― feasible

――appropriate in relation to context

――actually performed

Canale (1983:5) points out that CC is the underlying system of knowledge and skill required for communication.

Savignon (1983:303) gives what is to the author’s mind the most acceptable and useful definition:

Functional language proficiency; the expression, interpretation and negotiation of meaning involving interaction between two or more persons belonging to the same (or different) speech community (communities), or between one person and a written or oral text.

This definition implies that a learning environment should be the one that will provide opportunities for the “negotiation of meaning” rather than for an examination of language structures and their practice. The term of CC in this paper refers to CC in this sense.

2.2 Components of Communicative Competence

There have been several attempts to list the components of CC. In Diane Larsen-Freeman’s theory (1982:109), CC is made up of “ linguistic rules, functions or speech acts, propositional content, interactional patterns, and strategic competence.”

Lyle Bachman and Andrian Palmer (1982) define three parts of CC as linguistic competence (morphology, syntax), pragmatic competence (vocabulary, cohesion, and organization), and sociolinguistic competence (register, nativeness, and nonliteral language).

On the basis of previous Canale and Swain scheme (1980), Canale (1983:9-10) divided CC into grammatical competence (mastery of language code), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness of utterances with respect both to meaning and form), discourse competence (mastery of cohesion and coherence in a discourse), and strategic competence (the ability to successfully get one’s meaning across).

The above attempts vary from one to another and clearly there is no consensus on the components of CC. Moreover, there is confusion―or at least overlap―among the categories of factors being considered for inclusion, thus making it difficult to discuss the implication of the concept for language teaching.

In order to solve this problem, the present author gives some modifications to Canale scheme (1983) by assimilating ideas of different people, and provides a model as the following :

Communicative Competence

-Linguistic Competence: mastery of linguistic rules.

――phonology

―― syntax

―― morphology

―― lexis

-Pragmatic Competence

① Sociolinguistic Competence: the ability to produce sentences or utterances

which are appropriate to certain socialand

cultural context.

―― mastery of speech act conventions. E.g. refusal, compliment

―― norms of stylistic appropriateness. E.g. register, turn-taking

――uses of language to establish and maintain social relations

② Discourse Competence: the ability to achieve unity of a spoken or written

text.

――interactional patterns

―― propositional content

――cohesion

―― coherence

③ Strategic Competence: the ability to successfully get meaning across

――overall skills in transmitting information

――use of communication strategies

IIIHow to Achieve the Goal of Communicative Competence in Language Teaching: Four Principles

3.1 Principle 1: Principle of Grammar

In traditional approaches to language teaching, so much attention has been paid to students’ mastery of grammatical things that many students are found to be deficient to actually use the language (Widdowson, 1978:117). Recent years, on the other hand, language teaching begins to aim at fostering learners’ language use skills, but at the same time, there is a trend to totally ignore the importance of the teaching of grammar (Wan, 1991:31).

It should be noticed that here the teaching of grammar means not only teaching grammatical knowledge, that is, the form, but also teaching functions of grammatical knowledge, just as professor H.J.Krumm (1980) pointed out: form, function and meaning together make up the full content of grammar (qtd. in Gu, 1986:453). Learners should grasp the knowledge (form) and at the same time be able to use it properly in different social and cultural context (function and meaning), which can help them better grasp the grammatical knowledge.

3.2 Principle 2: Principle of Culture

This principle is closely related with the principle of grammar.

As can be seen from the modified Canale model, mastery of sociolinguistic skills, that is, skills of producing utterances appropriate to certain social and cultural context, is also very important in achieving the goal of CC in language teaching, which makes the teaching of cultural knowledge of great necessity.

Whatever the specific relationship is between language and culture, many linguists agree that teaching culture be combined with and infiltrated into that of grammar (Hu, 1982:76; Wang, 1991:532). The reason may be that awareness of different conventions and norms etc. of different cultures can help learners better understand when to say and how to say. No matter how well one grasps the grammatical rules, he can still produce grammatically correct but contextually inappropriate utterances, if he is not equipped with enough cultural knowledge. Following is a simple example:

In Chinese English class, when the bell rings, all the students will stand up and say: “ Good morning, teacher.” This is a very common pragmatic mistake. In Chinese, lao shi (Chinese equivalent of teacher) is a word of appellation, while in English the word teacher is not. Therefore, students should say “Good morning, Mr. so-and-so” or “Good morning” instead of “ Good morning, teacher”.

In a word, in language learning, to gain mastery of sociolinguistic skills is of great importance for learners. Therefore, in language teaching, linguistic knowledge should be taught as combined with culture, in order to develop learners’ communicative competence.

3.3 Principle 3: Principle of Strategy

In language learning and teaching, learners should also know how to get their meaning successfully across when they encounter difficulties in communicating because of poor pronunciation and small vocabulary etc. Certain communication strategies and skills such as circumlocution, approximation, and literal translation (the definition and characteristics of them will not be discussed in the present paper) are needed at this time (Tarone and Yule, 1989:111). Therefore, it is very important to promote the development of learners’ strategic competence and especially their use of communication strategies, but how?

Many researchers argue that strategic skills can not be directly taught (Tarone and Yule, 1989:114). The reason is clear and simple: strategic skills are different from grammatical ones in that there are no definite rules to be observed. However, “ can not be directly taught” does not mean “can not be taught”, and the only problem is that a different way suitable to the indefinite nature of strategic skills should be adopted. It is suggested that to teach learners strategic skills, the language teacher provide 1) opportunities for practice in strategy use and 2) actual instruction in the use of such strategies.

3.4 Principle 4: Principle of Communication

With the belief that the whole process language teaching and learning should be a process of communication, here comes the principle of communication, around which the above three principles develop.

In the discussion of the above three principles, it is suggested that linguistic knowledge be studied as combined with cultural knowledge, but through what? Strategic competence should be fostered, but by what? The answer is same: communication, first the assuming communicative activities in language classroom, and then the actual communication in daily life. Krumm (1980) claimed that a successful language classroom should create as many as possible chances for learners to actually use the grammatical knowledge that they have learned by communicating with each other (qtd. in Gu, 1986:451). Communication combines the form of language with its functions and certain context, and thus can help learners better grasp the language. Moreover, the end purpose of language teaching is that learners can communicate freely via this language.

Bibliography

[1]Allen, J.P.B. and H.G.Widdowson (1974). “Teaching the Communicative Use of English”. In Brumfit, C.J. (Ed.) (2000), The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Shanghai: foreign language Education Publishing House. 122-142

[2]Allwright, Richard (1984). “Language Learning through Communication”. In Brumfit, C.J. (Ed.) (2000), The Communicative Approach to Language teaching. Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Publishing House. 167-175

[3]Bachman, L. and A.Palmer (1982). “The Construct Validation of Some Components of Communicative Proficiency”. TESOL Quarterly, Vol.16, No.4, 449-464

[4]Canale, M. (1983). “From Communicative Competence to Communicative Language Pedagogy”. In Richards and Schmidt (Ed.) (1983), Language and Communication. London: Longman. 2-27