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whole undivided thought message can be broken down into smaller units and expressed by putting together words that are now units of talk.
Vygotsky proposes what so called Zone Proximal Development ZPD to give a new meaning to ‘intelligence’. Rather than measuring intelligence by what
a child can do alone, he suggested that intelligence was better measured by what a child can do with skilled help. Different children at the same point in development
will make different uses of the same help from an adult. Vygotsky saw the child as first doing things in a social contexts, with other
people and language helping in various ways, and gradually shifting away from reliance on others to independent action and thinking. This shift from thinking
aloud and talking through what is being done, to thinking inside the head, is called internalization. In the internalizing process, the interpersonal, joint talk and joint
activity, later becomes intrapersonal, mental action by one individual.
2.6 Communicative Competence
The term ‘competence’ was first used as a technical term in linguistics by Noam Chomsky 1957. He used it to mean the unconscious knowledge that
speakers at any stage of language development or language mastery have of the grammatical features of the languages they speak. While ‘performance’ refers to
the realization of this knowledge in actual performance Foster: 1990, Johnson: 2004.
‘Communicative competence’ was coined by Dell Hymes 1967, 1972, a sociolinguist who was convinced that Chomsky’s notion of competence was too
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limited. Hymes stated that “there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless” Hymes in Johnson, 2004. When a child acquires his
or her native language, the child acquires “knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to
speak, when not, and as what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner”, which he calls this competence as sociolinguistic competence.
Since then, several attempts have been made to construct well-defined and comprehensive communicative competence. The first comprehensive model of
communicative competence, which was intended to serve both instructional and assessment proposes, is that of Canale Swain 1980, further elaborated by
Canale 1983. This model posited four components of communicative competence: 1 Grammatical competence – the knowledge of the language code
grammatical rules, vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, etc., 2 Sociolinguistic competence – the mastery of the sociocultural code of language use appropriate
application of vocabulary, register, politeness and style in a given situation, 3 Discourse competence – the ability to combine language structures into different
types of cohesive texts e.g. political speech, poetry, 4 Strategic competence – the knowledge of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies which enhance
the efficiency of communication and, where necessary, enable the learner to overcome difficulties when communication breakdowns occur.
Another model of communicative language abilities has been proposed by Bachman 1990 and Bachman Palmer as an elaboration of the Canale and
Swain model. The latest Bachman Palmer model divides language knowledge
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into two main categories, both broken down into subcategories: 1 Organizational knowledge, which consists of a grammatical knowledge – similar to Canale and
Swain’s grammatical competence – and b textual knowledge – similar to but more elaborate than Canale and Swain’s discourse competence, 2 Pragmatic
knowledge, which consists of a lexical knowledge – the knowledge of the meanings of words and the ability to use figurative language – b functional
knowledge – the knowledge of the “relationships between utterances and the intentions, or communicative purposes of language users” – and c
sociolinguistic knowledge – similar to Canale and Swain’s sociolinguistic competence. In situational language use language knowledge interacts with
metacognitive strategies, which are of three kinds, a assessment, b goal- setting, and c planning.
Celce-Murcia et al. 1995 proposed a model of communicative competence as a pyramid enclosing a circle and surrounded by another circle see
Figure 2.17 below. This model is a developed, compatible, and the latest model of communicative competence. It fits the principle that language is
communication not just a set of rules.
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Figure 2.14 Schematic Representation of Communicative Competence Source: Celce–Murcia et al. 1995
The schematic representation of communicative competence proposed by Celce- Murcia et al. as presented in the above figure can be interpreted that when someone
communicates she has to make use of the linguistic, actional, socio-cultural, strategic, and discourse competence to create a text. In addition, when someone
communicates orally or in written form, she involves in a discourse. Discourse is a communication event influenced by the topic being communicated, interpersonal
relationship between participants in the communication, and the mode of communication used in a cultural context. Meanings someone gets and creates in a
communication will always be bound within cultural and situational context. There are two minor, terminological differences between Celce-Murcia’s
model and Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence. First,
SOCIO- CULTURAL
COMPETENCE
DISCOURSE COMPETENCE
ACTIONAL COMPETENCE
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
STRATEGIC COMPETENCE
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‘linguistic competence’ is used instead of ‘grammatical competence’. It is done because Celce-Murcia includes lexis and phonology in addition to morphology
and syntax as the ‘linguistic competence’. Second, ‘sociocultural competence’ is used rather than ‘sociolinguistic competence’ to distinguish it from actional
competence since the sociolinguistic dimension of communicative competence has traditionally included contextualized language functions, and also to
highlight the fact that language resources are in the linguistic, actional, and discourse components while sociocultural knowledge is necessary for the
appropriate deployment of the resources in other components. Celce-Murcia’s model and Bachman and Palmer’s model of
communicative competence do not differ much. The linguistic, discourse and strategic competencies of Celce-Murcia’s have their more or less straightforward
equivalents. Bachman and Palmer’s ‘metacognitive strategies’ entail a broader scope than Celce-Murcia’s strategic component. The difference is in the
pragmatic-sociolinguistic dimension. The next difference is in theoretical conception of functional language use, in which Bachman and Palmer’s follows
Halliday’s, while Celce-Murcia’s pedagogical approach involves a more detailed description of speech acts and language functions. Besides, Celce-Murcia places
‘lexical knowledge’ within linguistic competence, following Halliday, while in Bachman and Palmer’s model lexical knowledge is shifted to the pragmatic
dimension, highlighting the interdependence of meaning and the sociocultural context. The complete discussion of Celce-Murcia’s model of competence see
Celce-Murcia et al. 1995:9-28.
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2.7 Previous Related Studies
