LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND COMMUNICATIVE

COMPETENCE

The very notion of competence originates from a distinction of competence / performance made by Chomsky.

1. LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

was defined in 1965 by Noam Chomsky. This term was used to describe universal, perfect and subconscious speaker's knowledge of grammar rules which are limited. Linguistic competence is about how well people can form words or a sentence grammatically in the correct format.

2. LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE

is the second of the two elements in Chomsky's competence / performance distinction. Performance is practical realisation of grammar rules, the use of them in definite situations. It relates to language production.

Del Hymes believed that the above idea of competence presented by Chomsky was restricted. In relation to that, in 1966 Hymes coined the term communicative competence.

3. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

is a linguistic term which refers to a learner's L2 ability. It not only refers to a learner's ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form utterances, and know how to use these utterances appropriately.

In 1980 Canale and Swain extended the definition of communicative competence by adding four different components:

• grammatical competence - involves the accurate use of words and structures in the L2. It includes knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, semantics and phonology.

• sociolinguistic competence - knowledge of the relation of language use to its non-linguistic context ( appropriateness ). It is the ability to interpret or produce language appropriately.

• discourse competence - knowledge of rules governing:

• cohesion - grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or a sentence;

• coherence - what makes a text semantically meaningful.

• strategic competence - the ability to organize a message effectively and to
compensate, via verbal and non-verbal communication strategies, for any difficulties
and breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or to insufficient
competence (appropriate use of communication strategies).

A more recent survey of communicative competence was carried out by Bachman in 1990. The survey divides communicative competence into the broad headings of:

• organizational competence, which includes both grammatical and discourse ( or textual) competence.

• pragmatic competence, which involves both sociolinguistic and illocutionary competence

( the performance of which includes the production of conventional consequences e. g. obligations, commitment etc.).

Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice. This is in contrast to previous views in which grammatical competence was commonly given to top priority.

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