Communicative competence

Question 1

FIVE Subcompetences:

Question 2

1. Linguistic competence

Answer 2

• the knowledge of the language – the form and the meaning (spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, word formation, grammatical structure, sentence structure, linguistic semantics) “the knowledge and skill required to understand and express the literal meaning of utterances“

Question 3

Pragmatic (sociolinguistic) competence

Answer 3

• the ability to perform a particular function or express an intention clearly. The message must be appropriate to the social context in which it is produced. LLs need to know the appropriate social conventions.

Question 4

Discourse competence

Answer 4

• the ability to understand coherent written texts or conversation and to produce them
• the ability to use cohesive devices and typical discourse markers which signal the direction of discourse
• Cohesive devices:
• lexical cohesion (word repetition, synonyms, hyponyms, opposites)
• substitution (replacing by substitutes: do/does/did/done/…)
• ellipsis (omitting some words instead of repeating them)
• reference (personal pronouns, demonstratives …)
• use of connectives (addition, opposition, cause, time connectives)

Question 5

Strategic competence

Answer 5

• the ability of LLs to cope in authentic communicative situations
• the ability of the speaker to use both “verbal and non-verbal communication strategies which enable speakers to handle breakdowns in communication and their lexico-grammatical inadequacies“

Strategic competence - strategies
 “foreignizing” - pronouncing a word as if it belonged to English (also false friends, e.g. promotion)
 generalization and approximation - if you don’t know a word - use general words (thing or stuff); you can use superordinates (flower instead of daffodil); you can use synonyms and antonyms (not deep= shallow).
 paraphrase - consists of definitions and descriptions, examples and circumlocutions (NNS: Well it ~ er uhm … how would you say, it‘s a piece of furniture which is just near your bed, … er where … er a bedlamp is staying on it and where I can put my books for example, my jewellery and all my things …)

Question 6

Intercultural competence

Answer 6

is a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills and characteristics that supports an effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts (Bennett, J., 2011)

 the recognition of the cultural dimension as a key component
 “the ability of a person to behave adequately in a flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes and expectations of representatives of foreign cultures” (Meyer, 1991)
 this definition, in fact, adds to the notion of communicative competence and enlarges it to incorporate intercultural competence
 as stated by Byram (1997) the success of interaction implies not only an effective interchange of information, as was the goal of CLT, but also the “the ability to decentre and take up the other’s perspective on their own culture, anticipating and where possible, resolving dysfunctions in communication and behavior