Principles of Language Learning and Teaching PDF

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING CHAPTER 8 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE  DEFINING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE The term communicative competence (CC) was coined by sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1972), who asserted that Chomsky’s (1965) notion of competence was too...

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING CHAPTER 8 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE  DEFINING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE The term communicative competence (CC) was coined by sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1972), who asserted that Chomsky’s (1965) notion of competence was too limited. Chomsky’s “rule-governed creativity” did not account sufficiently for the social and functional rules of language. So Hymes referred to CC as that aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts.  BICS and CALP In the process of examining components of CC, James Cummins (1979, 1980) proposed a distinction between basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS is the communicative capacity that all human beings use to function in daily interpersonal exchanges. CALP is a specialized dimension of communication used to negotiate typical educational tasks and activities, and often involves a conscious focus on language forms. It is what learners use in classroom exercises, reading assignments, written work, and tests. BICS is language used for friendly exchanges, often with peers, in informal settings, and involving more slang and conversational metaphor. Here are some examples: “Hey, dude, what’s up?” “Not much, and you?” “I’m good.” “Well, my boyfriend is like, you know, I mean, um, he’s all..., I dunno.” “What? OMG! RU serious? LOL. BTW, I’m LMAO now. CU.” “My grandma is sweet as honey, you know, but I was really in the doghouse.” “Okay, so the Giants bit the dust—don’t rub it in!” CALP typically involves language used, in both comprehension and production modes, for such purposes as the following: to manage classrooms (“Everyone be seated.” “Get into small groups and discuss this question.” “What page did you ask us to look at?”) to convey information through academic prose (“The following research methodology was used to examine the three hypotheses.”) to frame test questions (“According to the reading passage, do you feel John is (a) guilty or (b) innocent? Choose (a) or (b).”) to engage in classroom discourse (“I see your point, but I think...”)  Canale and Swain’s Framework In Canale and Swain’s definition, four different components made up the construct of CC. The first two subcategories reflected the use of the linguistic system itself; the last two defined the functional aspects of communication. 1. Grammatical competence : “Knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology”. 2. Discourse competence : The ability to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. discourse encompasses everything from simple spoken conversations to lengthy written Texts.  3. Sociolinguistic competence : The ability to follow sociocultural rules of language. This type of competence “requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: the roles of the participants, the information they share, and the function of the interaction.” 4. Strategic competence : The ability to use verbal and nonverbal communicative techniques to compensate for breakdowns in communication or insufficient competence. It includes the ability to make “repairs” and to sustain communication through paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, avoidance, and guessing.  Later Modifications of CC Models The conceptualization of CC through the years saw a number of different interpretations. Bachzman placed grammatical and discourse competence under organizational competence: the rules and systems that govern what we can do with the forms of language, whether they be sentence-level (grammatical) rules or rules that specify how we “string” sentences together (discourse). Canale and Swain’s sociolinguistic competence was divided into two separate pragmatic categories: functional aspects of language (illocutionary competence, pertaining to sending and receiving Intended meanings) and sociolinguistic aspects (which deal with such considerations as politeness, formality, metaphor, and culturally related aspects of language).  Bachman considered strategic competence to be an entirely separate element of communicative language ability, serving an “executive” function of making the final “decision,” among many possible options, on wording, phrasing, and other productive and receptive means for negotiating meaning.  In more recent years, William Littlewood (2011) provided yet another conceptualization of CC using five separate dimensions. Three competencies are borrowed from the previous concepts, linguistic, discourse, and sociolinguistic, with virtually no redefinition. However, Littlewood added pragmatic competence as a separate node: the ability to “use linguistic resources to convey and interpret meanings in real situations, including those where they encounter problems due to gaps in their knowledge”. In other words, he prefers the concept of “pragmatic” to “strategic.” And a fifth dimension, sociocultural, is added to include “cultural knowledge and assumptions that affect the exchange of meanings”.  LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS Functions are essentially the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g., stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting, etc. Functions cannot be accomplished, of course, without the forms of language: morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules, and other organizational competencies. Functions are sometimes directly related to forms. “How much does that cost?” is usually a form functioning as a question, and “He bought a car” functions as a statement. But linguistic forms are not always unambiguous in their function. Consider the following examples: “I can’t find my umbrella!” uttered in a high-pitched voice by a frustrated adult who is late for work on a rainy day is most likely a frantic demand for all in the household to join in a search. A child who says “I want some ice cream” is rarely stating a simple fact or observation but rather requesting ice cream in the child’s own intimate style. A waiter asks if you would like more coffee, to which you respond, “I’m okay.” The latter phrase functions as a response that says, “no thank you.”  Speech Acts Communication may be regarded as a series of linguistic “events” with meaning and intent. Communication is functional, purposive, and designed to bring about some effect—some change on the environment of hearers (and readers) and speakers (and writers). Communication is a series of communicative acts or speech acts. Hymes (1974) classified speech acts in terms of a number of components, including the following: sender : speaker, writer message channel: speech, writing, nonverbal gestures language form: sequencing or hierarchy of selected words and sentences topic: what the message is about receiver: hearer, reader context: place, time, situation  Austin (1962) stressed three different meanings, or “forces,” of speech acts, each of which constitutes a component of CC that L2 learners might find difficult to distinguish: 1. Locutionary meaning: The basic literal or propositional meaning of an utterance (or written text) that is conveyed by its words and structure. 2. Illocutionary force : The intended effect that an utterance or text has on the hearer or reader. This is what the sender assumes to be the message, but may vary from the message that the hearer receives. 3. Perlocutionary force : The actual effect the utterance has on the hearer. This is the received message and includes the consequences of the delivered message. In the above examples, “I can’t find my umbrella!” literally was a statement of fact, but its illocutionary force was the intention to get everyone in the house to search for the umbrella. The perlocutionary force—we certainly hope—served to locate the umbrella for the harried worker.  Halliday’s Seven Functions of Language 1. Instrumental: To manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen. Example: “Don’t touch the stove.” 2. Regulatory: To influence the behaviour of others including persuading, commanding or requesting. Examples: “Eat your broccoli or there’s no ice cream for dessert.” 3. Representational: To make statements, convey information and knowledge, or “represent” reality. Examples: “The sun is hot.” “The president gave a speech last night.” 4. Interactional: To ensure social maintenance, phatic communion (i.e. a simple, basic exchange between two acquaintances in a non-formal environment: Speaker one: "What's up?), to keep channels of communication open. Examples: “Oh, I see.” “That’s interesting.” “Hey, how’s it going?” “Nice weather today.” 5. Personal: to express feelings, emotions, personality, reactions. Examples: “I love you.” “I resent that remark.” “I feel your pain.” 6. Heuristic: To acquire knowledge, learn, seek (and provide) information, and to form questions designed to elicit information. “Why does water bubble when it gets hot?” “How many planets are in our universe?” 7. Imaginative: To create imaginary images, stories, conceptions, or ideas. Examples: fairy tales, jokes, novels, poetry … Typical courses in SLA cover such functions, each distinctly more specific than Halliday’s: Apologizing and thanking Asking for and offering help Complaining politely Confirming and correcting Expressing a wish; making suggestions Giving advice Giving commands Making small talk  Functional Approaches to Language Teaching The most popular practical classroom application of functional descriptions of language was found in the development of functional curricula, also known as notional-functional syllabuses. Notional-functional syllabuses attended to functions as organizing elements of an L2 curriculum. Grammar was relegated to a secondary focus. “Notions” referred both to abstract concepts such as existence, space, time, quantity, and quality and to what we also call “contexts” or “situations,” such as travel, health, education, shopping, and free time.  INTERACTIONAL COMPETENCE Interactional competence is, according to Young, more than simply pragmatic competence. The ability to interact implies what Kramsch (1986) called intersubjectivity , or in simpler terms, empathy—putting oneself in the shoes of those with whom you are interacting. What is it that enables us to engage in social interaction? The following abilities are adapted from Young (2011): 1. Participation framework : Identifying the participants in interaction, including gender, social class, status, familiarity, etc. 2. Register : It is defined as how a speaker uses language differently in different circumstances. Think about words you choose, your tone of voice, even your body language. You probably behave differently chatting with a friend than at a formal dinner party or a job interview. These variations in formality, also called stylistic variation, are known as registers in linguistics. They are determined by such factors as social occasion, context, purpose, and audience. 3. Selection of forms in modes of meaning: Choosing among linguistic options to create a desired meaning and effect. 4. Speech acts : Using appropriate forms to accomplish such purposes as requesting, answering, greeting, agreeing, disagreeing, etc. 5.Turn-taking : Following conventions of maintaining the floor, giving up the floor, selecting the next speaker, interrupting, etc. 6. Repair : Responding to misunderstandings, clarifying, requesting restatements, dealing with interactional “trouble.” 7. Boundaries: Distinguishing one topic from another, topic initiation and change, closing a topic, ending a conversation.  DISCOURSE ANALYSIS In technical terms, discourse is any string of words that extends beyond the sentence. A single sentence can seldom be fully analyzed without considering its context, and since virtually no interactive communication is a single sentence, we string sentences together in interrelated, cohesive stretches of discourse. Both the production and comprehension of language are a factor of our ability to perceive and process stretches of discourse not just from a single sentence but from referents in both preceding and following sentences.  Consider the following three different exchanges: 1. Doug: Got the time? Mary: Ten-fifteen. 2. Husband: Bad day? Wife: Don’t get me started. 3. Parent: Dinner! Child: Just a minute! In so many of our everyday exchanges, a single sentence (or even a phrase) sometimes contains presuppositions that are not overtly apparent in the surface structure, but that are clear from the context. All three of the above conversations contained such presuppositions. Without the pragmatic contexts of discourse, our communications would be extraordinarily ambiguous. A stand-alone sentence such as “I didn’t like that casserole” could, depending on context, be agreement, disagreement, argument, complaint, apology, insult, or simply a comment.  Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that investigates the methods members use to achieve mutual. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. Here are some of the fundamental components of conversational competence. 1. Attention getting. Early in life, children learn their first rule of conversation: get the attention of the hearer. Initially, children resort to crying, yelling, banging a toy on the floor—anything to turn a parent’s attention to themselves. As the years go by, both verbal and nonverbal attention getting conventions are fully understood. Simple greetings, certain small-talk conventions, or questions may suffice to attract the desired attention. Techniques include verbal gambits (i.e. a remark which you make to someone in order to start or continue a conversation with them, like “Excuse me,” “Say,” “By the way,” “Got a minute?”) and nonverbal signals such as eye contact, gestures, and proxemics. Without knowledge and use of such conventions, L2 learners may be reluctant to participate in a conversation because of their own inhibitions. 2. Topic nomination (initiating conversation). Once speakers have got the hearer’s attention, their task becomes one of initiating an exchange. If the topic is as simple as, say, the weather, then a speaker may employ such gambits as, “Sure is hot today, isn’t it?” Or sports: “How ‘bout those Giants?” Or more seriously, “Did you see that program on global warming?” 3. Topic development (and “holding the floor”). After a topic is nominated, participants in a conversation then use strategies for continuing the conversation. Techniques include using hesitation signals (“uh,” “um,” “and, well, like, I mean...”) when otherwise pauses might suffice. 4. Turn-taking. The counterpart of the conversational ability to hold the floor is to yield it to another speaker. 5. Topic clarification. A list of components of interactional competence includes the ability to ask questions for clarification, which may arise from inaudibility (“What did you just say?”), lack of understanding (“What does ‘eco- justice’ mean?”), or disagreement (“I see your point, but have you considered...”). 6. Repair. In the case of conversations between second language learners and native speakers, topic clarification often involves seeking or giving repair of linguistic forms that contain errors. 7. Shifting , avoiding, and interrupting. These are among numerous conversational abilities that may be affected through both verbal and nonverbal signals. Changing a topic (“Well, speaking of music...”), dancing around certain topics (i.e. to avoid talking about some topics), and interrupting politely are especially difficult for an L2 learner to acquire, the rules for which vary widely across cultures and languages. 8. Topic termination. The art of closing a conversation with a glance at a watch, a polite smile, or a “Well, I have to be going now,” is not an easy one for an L2 learner to master.  Styles Styles are not social or regional dialects, but they vary considerably within a single language user’s idiolect (i.e. the way a particular person speaks, at a specific time, as distinct from others). So, for example, an informal conversation with a friend employs a different style from that which you might use in a job interview.  Martin Joos (1967) provided one of the most common classifications of speech styles using the criterion of formality , which subsumes subject matter, audience, and occasion: 1. Oratorical: Language conventions used in public speaking before a large audience. Wording is carefully planned in advance, intonation is somewhat exaggerated, and numerous rhetorical devices are utilized. * rhetorical devices are techniques or types of language that is used by a speaker or an author for the purpose of evoking a particular reaction from the listener or reader or persuading them to think in a certain way such as metaphor, irony, hyperbole, euphemism, etc. 2. Deliberative: Conventions employed in more unrehearsed contexts in front of audiences. A formal news interview and a classroom lecture are typical examples. 3. Consultative: A dialogue, formal enough that words are chosen with some care. Examples: business transactions, doctor-patient conversations, teacher-student conferences. 4. Casual: Language used in conversations between friends, colleagues, or sometimes members of a family. In this context, words need not be guarded and social barriers are moderately low. 5. Intimate/personal: Language characterized by complete absence of social inhibitions. Talks with family, lovers, loved ones, and very close friends are examples.  register Registers, which enable people to identify with a particular group and to maintain solidarity, are identified by phonological variants, vocabulary, idioms, and other expressions that are associated with different occupational or sometimes socioeconomic groups. Colleagues in the same occupation will use certain jargon to communicate with each other, sometimes to the exclusion of outsiders. Truckers, airline pilots, salespersons, and farmers, for example, use words and phrases unique to their own group.  PRAGMATICS Pragmatic is the study of how context contributes to meaning. Consider the following conversation: Pragmatic considerations allowed all three participants to interpret what would otherwise be ambiguous sentences: “Is your Mom there?” is not, in a telephone context, a question that requires a yes or no answer. Stefanie’s “Just a minute” confirmed to the caller that her mother was indeed home, and let the caller know that she would either (1) check to see if she was home and/or (2) get her to come to the phone. Stefanie’s “Mom! Phone!” was easily interpreted by her mother as “Someone is on the phone who wants to talk with you.” Mom’s response, otherwise a rather worthless bit of information, in fact informed Stefanie that she was “indisposed,” which was then conveyed to the caller. The caller didn’t explicitly respond “no” to Stefanie’s offer to take a message, but implicitly did so with “I’ll call back later.”  Sociopragmatics and Pragmalinguistics Second language acquisition becomes an exceedingly difficult task when sociopragmatic (the interface between pragmatics and social organization) and pragmalinguistic (the intersection of pragmatics and linguistic forms) features are used. In this case the nonnative English speaker misunderstood the illocutionary force (intended meaning) of the utterance within the contexts. Grammatical knowledge, or in Bachman’s terms, the organizational rules of a language, are fundamental to learning the pragmalinguistic features of an L2. But grammar is just one dimension among many when compared to the complexity of catching on to a seemingly never-ending list of pragmatic constraints. Consider the following examples: 1. Address forms (how to address another person in conversation) can prove to be problematic for English speakers learning a language like German, and other languages that distinguish between formal and informal forms of “you” (German: Sie and du ). 2. Apologizing , complimenting , and face-saving conventions often prove to be difficult for second language learners to acquire. 3. Expressing gratitude becomes complex for Japanese learners of English who may express gratitude by saying “I’m sorry,” a direct transfer from Sumimasen (SUMIMASEN has many different meanings: "I'm sorry", "thank you" and to get someone's attention), which in Japanese commonly conveys a sense of gratitude, especially to persons of higher status. 4. Cooperation principles are especially difficult to master: the difference between “Rake the leaves” and “Don’t you think you could rake the leaves?” is an example of how, in English, cooperation is sometimes given precedence over directness. 5. Politeness conventions are a complex set of pragmalinguistic factors that are difficult to learn, especially considering the possible range of politeness from extremely in formal situations (“I humbly beg you to consider...”), to casual situations (“Oh, sorry”).  NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Kinesics: certain body movements and gestures which serve as a form of non-verbal communication. Eye Contact Facial Expressions Proxemics Artifacts Kinesthetics: sometimes referred to as kinesthetics , also called haptics Olfactory Dimensions  Communicative Language Teaching CLT is best understood as an approach , rather than a method. Four interconnected characteristics as a definition of CLT. 1. Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of CC and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence. 2. Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Organizational language forms are not the central focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learner to accomplish those purposes. 3. Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques. At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in language use. 4. In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts.  Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) TBLT draws the attention of teachers and learners to tasks in the classroom. Skehan (1998) describes a task as an activity or a related set of techniques in which (1) meaning is primary, (2) there is a problem to solve, (3) a relationship to real-world activities, and (4) an objective that can be assessed in terms of an outcome. David Nunan (2004) is careful to distinguish between target tasks (uses of language in the world beyond the classroom) and pedagogical tasks (those that occur in the classroom). The latter is exemplified in a map-oriented problem-solving task , which might involve (1) teacher-initiated schema setting comments, (2) a review of appropriate grammar and/or vocabulary useful for the task, (3) pair or group work to propose and discuss solutions, and (4) a whole-class reporting procedure.  How is one to judge to difficulty of a task? Long (2007) suggested a number of parameters for sequencing tasks: linguistic (grammatical, lexical) complexity, utility (usefulness), task conditions (circumstances under which the pedagogical tasks are carried out), the interactional nature of the task, and the extent to which negotiation of meaning is required (e.g., open-ended tasks are more difficult than closed-ended). Others suggested gauging complexity by cognitive complexity (e.g., familiarity of topic, sufficiency of information), communicative stress (e.g., time pressure, stakes), learner factors (intelligence, personal experience), and processing demands (i.e. the amount of cognitive computation) imposed by the structure of the task. TBLT is an approach that urges teachers, in their lesson and curriculum designs, to focus on many of the communicative factors discussed in this chapter. In order to accomplish a task, a learner needs to have sufficient organizational competence, illocutionary competence to convey intended meaning, and strategic competence to choose among linguistic options and, when needed, to repair attempts to communicate. Thank You