The document discusses communicative competence and its components. It defines discourse competence as the ability to connect utterances together cohesively and coherently to form meaningful texts. It notes that cohesion refers to how linguistic elements are connected, while coherence refers to how ideas are connected in a meaningful way. The document also discusses ways to lengthen sentences such as through the use of conjunctions, complements, and combining short sentences. It provides examples to illustrate each technique. Finally, it outlines six standards for assessing communicative ability based on the work of Canary and Cody: adaptability, conversational involvement, conversational management, empathy, effectiveness, and appropriateness.