2.2 Communicative Competence
2.2.1 Definition of Communicative Competence
Communication strategy is one of the components of communicative competence. It is important for every speaker to own the competence in order to smooth the
conversation and both speaker and interlocutor understand each other. I will give some definitions of communicative competence.
The term of communicative competence was coined by Dell Hymes in 1972. As quoted by Widdowson 1978, communicative competences are rules of
language use without which rules of grammar are useless. Johnson and Johnson 1998: 64 states that communicative competence is essentially as competence in
language use or as language abilities of speaker and listener. He also defines communicative competence is the knowledge which enables someone to use his
knowledge for communication. Apart from the definition above, Canale and Swain 1980: 34 affirm that communicative competence was understood as the
underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication e.g., knowledge of vocabulary and skill in using the sociolinguistic convention for a
given language. It is understood that the communicative competence refers to knowledge and skills in using this knowledge when interacting in actual
communication. Knowledge refers to what a person knows and skills refer to the extent one is capable to implement his or her knowledge in real communication or
not. Furthermore, the knowledge here is the language knowledge, how to arrange a good sentence, that can be understood and decoded easily by the interlocutors in
the actual communication. In addition Celce-Murcia et al‘s defines
communicative competence in conveying and understanding communicative intent by performing and interpreting speech acts and speech act sets 1995: 9.
From the definitions above, I conclude that communicative competence is knowledge which both speaker and interlocutor have to master in order to make
conversation runs smooth, not break down. In my opinion it is important to be mastered although grammar is slightly ignored.
2.2.2 Components of Communicative Competence
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