Communicative competence refers to an individual's knowledge and ability to use language appropriately in social contexts. It was proposed by Hymes as an expansion of Chomsky's notions of linguistic competence and performance. Hymes argued that communicative competence includes not just knowledge of grammar but also sociocultural knowledge necessary for effective communication. It encompasses grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competencies. Later theorists like Canale and Swain, and Bachman further developed and categorized the dimensions of communicative competence.

1. COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
Alejandro Ferry
BSED-Eng iii
Teaching of speaking

2. ORIGINS
The idea was originally derived from Chomsky’s
distinction between competence and performace. He
defined these terms as:
• Competence: shared knowledge of ideal speaker-
listener set in a completely homogenous speech
community.

3. •Performance: Process of applying underlying
knowledge to actual language use.
“Should be given under ideal circunstances
( the ideal speaker-listener know and use
language perfectly without making any
mistakes)”

4. According to Hymes, Chomsky’view is
too narrow to describe language behavior as
a whole because:
•Sociocultural factors or differential competence
in a heterogeneous speech community?
•Social life affects outward performance and
inner competence itself.
•Social factors interfere with or restrict grammar
use because the rules of use are dominant over
the rules of gramar.

5. • Hymes concludes that a linguistic theory must be
able to deal with a heterogeneous speech
community, differential competence and the role
of sociocultural features. (Do not be confused because
Hymes and Chomsky had their own definitions.)
•Performance: Hymes defines it as the actual
use of language in a concrete situation, not an
idealized speaker-listener situation in a
completely homogeneous speech community

6. •Hymes also said that there are two kinds of
competence: linguistic competence, and the
communicative competence.
•Linguistic competence deals with producing
and understanding grammatically correct
sentences
•Communicative competence deals with
producing and understanding sentences that
are appropriate and acceptable to a
particular situation.

7. •Hymes coins a term
“communicative competence”
and defines it as “a knowledge of the
rules for understanding and producing
both the referential and social meaning
of language.”

8. Widdowson said that knowing a language is
more than how to understand, speak,
read,and write sentences, but how
sentences are used to communicate.
•communicative abilities have to be
developed at the same time as the linguistic
skills; otherwise the mere acquisition of the
linguistic skills may inhibit the development
of communicative abilities.

9. Use and Usage
•“Usage” makes evident the extent to which the
language user demonstrates his knowledge of
linguistic rules
•“Use” makes evident the extent to which the
language user demonstrates his ability to use his
knowledge of linguistic rules for effective
communication.(Widdowson, 1978)

10. Teachers should provide linguistic and
communicative contexts.
• Linguistic context focuses on usage to enable the
students to select which form of sentence is
contextually appropriate
• Communicative context focuses on use to enable
the students to recognize the type of
communicative function their sentences fulfill

12. •(Canale & Swain, 1980) They strongly believe
that the study of grammatical competence is as
essential to the study of communicative
competence as is the study of sociolinguistic
competence.
• They propose their own theory of communicative
competence that minimally includes three main
competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic and
strategic competence.

13. •Grammatical competence includes knowledge of
lexical items and of rules of
morphology,syntax,sentence―grammar, semantics,
and phonology.
•Sociolinguistic competence is made up of two
sets of rules: sociolinguistic rules of use and rules of
discourse. They believe that knowledge of these
rules will be crucial in interpreting utterances for
social meaning.

14. •Strategic competence is made up of
verbal and non-verbal communication
strategies that may be called into action to
compensate for breakdowns in communication
due to performance variables or to insufficient
grammatical competence

15. BACHMAN’S VIEW
The organizational competence is divided into:
*Grammatical competence
*Textual competence. and
*Pragmatic competence
Bachman’s Grammatical competence is
consonant with Canale and Swain’s
grammatical competence.

16. The Textual competence, pertains to the
knowledge of conventions for cohesion,
coherence and rehetorical organization. It also
includes conventions for language use in
conversations, involving starting, maintaining,
and closing conversations.
Bachman’s Textual competence have both the
part of Canale and Swain’s discourse
competence and the part of their strategic
competence.

17. BACHMAN’S VIEW
•Bachman’s Pragmatic competence,
mainly focuses on the relationship
between what one says in his or her
communicative acts and what functions
he or she intends to perform through his
or her utterances.

18. COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
GRAMMATICAL
COMPETENCE
SOCIOLINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE
DISCORSAL
COMPETENCE
STRATEGIC
COMPETENCE

19. FROM THE DIAGRAM:
•Communicative competence is made up
of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic,
discourse, and strategic.
•Linguistic competence is knowing how to
use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a
language. Linguistic competence asks: What words
do I use? How do I put them into phrases and
sentences?

20. •Sociolinguistic competence is knowing how to
use and respond to language appropriately,
given the setting, the topic, and the relation-
ships among the people communicating.
•Sociolinguistic competence asks:
Which words and phrases fit this setting and this
topic? How can I express a specific attitude
(courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when
I need to? How do I know what attitude another
person is expressing?

21. •Discourse competence is knowing how to
interpret the larger context and how to
construct longer stretches of language so
that the parts make up a coherent whole.
• Discourse competence asks:
How are words, phrases and sentences put
together to create conversations,
speeches, email messages, newspaper
articles?

22. •Strategic competence is knowing how to recognize
and repair communication breakdowns, how to
work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the
language, and how to learn more about the
language and in the context.
•Strategic competence asks:
How do I know when I’ve misunderstood or when
someone has misunderstood me? What do I say
then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know the
name of something or the right verb form to use?