43 ‘the making and understanding of meaning’ and not to ‘analysing and interpreting
texts’ Halliday, 2004: 5. With such new paradigm, Brown 2001: 2003 suggests that it is more
appropriate to think in terms of the proficiency level of a user of a language which considers more on the person’s communicative proficiency across the four skills
listening, speaking, reading and writing. Cited all the above statements, it can be summed up that English language
with its role and function as a lingua franca is actually used to communicate our idea, and interact with others in appropriate context or situation so that what we
need to look at is what is said the text, both written or spoken language rather than at the ‘possible linguistic production of an ideal formal rule of the language’.
b. Concept and Models of English Communicative Competence
When we talk about competence, our mind sometimes is confused with performance. Even, scientists and philosophers have worked for decades on
defining the basic distinction between these two terms. Brown 2001: 35 explains that competence refers to one’s underlying
knowledge of a system, event or fact. It is a non-observable ability to do something or to perform something. Performance is an obviously observable and
concrete manifestation or realization of competence. It is the actual doing something, such as walking, singing, dancing or speaking.
In reference to language, Noam Chomsky 1957 proposed and defined the concepts of competence and performance. According to him, competence was
one’s underlying knowledge of the system of a language, such as its rules of grammar, vocabulary, etc, while performance was actual production speaking
44 and writing or the comprehension listening and reading or the ability to produce
and comprehend sentences in a language. Yet, soon after Chomsky ‘s, advocates for communicative view in applied
linguistics showed their disapproval at the idea .
According to them Chomsky’s was a theoretical ground of the methodology for learning, teaching and testing
language. They prefered to believe in Hymes’ communicative competence 1972 which according to them was a broader and more realistic notion of competence
Bagaric, 2007: 95. Here, the term of ‘communicative competence’ was firstly introduced. Dell Hymes Celce-Murcia, 2008: 42 in 1972 initially delivered the
term “communicative competence’ in response to the theories of the formal linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky focused on linguistic competence and
considered social factors as outside the domain of linguistic. He described linguistic competence as unconscious knowledge of languages which was similar
in some ways to Ferdinand d Saussure’s concept of langue the arrangement of sounds and words which speakers of a language had a shared knowledge and
linguistic performance as products of utterances which was similar to Saussure’s parole called the actual use of language by people in speech or writing
.
Hymes argued that to account for language acquisition and language use, beside linguistic
competence one also had to know the notions of sociolinguistic competence that was the rules for using language appropriately in context.
In line with Hymes, Canale and Swain 1980 added strategic competence to the model of communicative competence. It was composed of knowledge of
verbal and non-verbal communication strategies. They pointed out that this competence could also be used to enhance the effectiveness of communication
45 since it included non cognitive aspects such as self confidence, readiness to take
risks, etc Bagaric, 2007: 95. A few years later, Canale 1983 added discourse competence to the model.
It was related to the ability to produce and interpret language beyond the sentence level. It referred to the selecting, sequencing and arranging words, structures, and
utterances to get a unified spoken message. Discourse competence describes four sub areas: Cohesion, deixis, coherence and generic structure. Murcia, 2008: 42-
48. In the mid nineties, Celce-Murcia et al 1995 delivered actional competence as also be a part of communicative competence. It was about the ability to
comprehend and produce all significant speech acts and speech act set in the target language dealing with interactions such as information exchanges, interpersonal
exchanges, expression of opinions and feelings, problems such as complaining, blaming, regretting, apologizing, etc, future scenarios such as hopes, goals,
promises, predictions, etc Murcia, 2008: 48. A year later, in 1996, Bachman and Palmer proposed a new model of
communicative competence or, more precisely, the model of communicative language ability. According to them, the communicative language ability was
comprised of two broad areas: language knowledge and strategic competence. Language knowledge consists of two main components which complement each
other in achieving communicatively effective language use, they were organizational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. Organizational knowledge
contained of abilities dealing with a control over formal language structures, while pragmatic knowledge refered to abilities for creating and interpreting discourse.
Bachman and Palmer also put strategic knowledge on their proposed model. They
46 defined it as a set of metacognitive components which enabled language user
involvement in goal setting, assessment and planning. The illustration on the above development of concept and model of
communicative English competence can be formulated into a diagram bellow:
47 Bachman and Palmer 1996
Linguistic Competence
Chomsky 1957
Hymes 1972
Linguistic Competence
Socio Linguistic
Competence
Canale Swain 1980
Grammatical Competence
Strategic Competence
Socio Linguistic
Competence
Canale 1983
Grammatical Competence
Strategic Competence
Socio Linguistic
Competence
Discourse Competence
Celce-Murcia 1995
Linguistic Competence
Strategic Competence
Socio Linguistic
Competence
Discourse Competence
Actional Competence
Language Knowledge Organizational
knowledge
Textual knowledge
Strategic competence
Grammatical knowledge
Pragmatic knowledge
Functional knowledge
Sociocultural knowledge
Figure 2.13. Evolution of Model of Communicative English Competence Bagarić, 2007, 102.
48 From the above figure, it can be observed that the formulaic design of
communicative competence has been variously developed with the latest version is Bachman and Palmer in 1996 which of components are actually similar with
those of Celce-Murcia. While Celce-Murcia distributes the components under one big roof of communicative language competence, Bachman and Palmer distribute
them into two sub roofs under the roof of communicative language competence, they are: language knowledge and strategic knowledge. The components which
are under the sub roof of language knowledge are: organizational and pragmatic knowledge. organizational knowledge contains of textual knowledge which is
equal to Celce-Murcia’s discourse competence and
grammatical knowledge
which is similar to Celce-Murcia’s linguistic competence. Pragmatic knowledge is
divided into Functional Knowledge which is equal to Celce-Murcia’s actional competence and socio-cultural knowledge which is equal to Celce-Murcia’s sosio
linguistic competence. The difference is only on the distribution of the classification. While Celce distributes those factors equally, Bachman and Palmer
distribute them into different groups. To sum up the concept and model of communicative competence, the
researcher prefers to pick the Bachman and Palmer’s model as the underlying theory with the concluded definition: communicative English competence is
competence of English learners on interpreting meanings discourse and communicating it in the real world accompanied by language knowledge and
strategic knowledge. Language knowledge requires for organizational
knowledge consisting of textual and grammatical knowledge and pragmatic
49 knowledge consisting of functional and socio-cultural knowledge, while
strategic knowledge deals with goal setting, assessment and planning.
c. Concept and Model of Communicative Written English Competence.
