18 egocentric. Only when entering stage at age 7-12, children became capable of
decentring and could appreciate viewpoints other than their own.
21
In this case, it‘s clearly enough that a child‘s ability to describe something is not only
influenced by his ability to understand the view point of other people but also is influenced by his knowledge about that thing.
C. Communicative Competence
1. The Definition of Communicative Competence
The term of communicative competence was introduced by Hymes. He explained that to take communication, it‘s not enough if we just
understand the linguistics of language. But, we must have the ability how to use language appropriately.
22
Explaining what communicative competence definition, Gleason and Ratner described, ―Communicative competence is the
ability to use language appropriately and strategically in social context. That is, it involves knowing what, where, how, and with whom one should
communicate.‖
23
21
Ibid.
22
Leung, C. Convivial Communication: recontextualizing communicative competence. International
Journal of
Applied Linguistics,2005.
Vol. 15,
No.2, 119-143
http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiCommunicative_competence , may,9,2009
23
Jean Berko Gleason and Nan Bernstein Ratner, The Development of Language, 7
th
ed, USA: Pearson, 2009, p. 218
19 In language acquisition process, the children not only get ability to
apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use these utterances appropriately.
“....a normal 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 to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner.”
24
Canale and Swain 1980 defined communicative competence in terms
of four components
25
:
1. Grammatical competence: words and rules
It was seen to encompass ―knowledge of lexical items and of rules of
morphology, syntax, sentence- grammar semantics, and phonology‖.
2. Sociolinguistic
competence: appropriateness
It was defined as involving knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and of discourse.
24
Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Wiley-Blackwell, 2001, p.60 http:books.google.co.idbkshp?client=firefox-
arls=org.mozilla:id:officialhl=idtab=wpq=communicative20competence20by20hym es
, may 9, 2009
25
http:www.carla.umn.eduassessmentVACresearchtheory.html 1 juli 2009
20 3.
Discourse competence: cohesion
and coherence
It was defined as the ability to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances.
4. Strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies
It was seen to refer to ―the verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns
in communication due to performance variables or due to insufficient competence‖ Canale Swain, 1980, p. 30.
There are some important communicative behaviors for children to acquire communicative competence, because it helps children succeed in
school, predicts later literacy skills and also it is associated with popularity among peers. And those communicative behaviors include routines, polite
terms, conversational skills, and language varieties such as dialects and registers.
26
2. The Development of Communicative Competence of Children
