Developing Communicative Competence through Language Activities: Focus on Young Learners

Abstract

The term communicative competence has been used to refer to the rules of language use (Jacobovits, 1970; Widdowson, 1971; Hymes, 1972; Savignon, 1972; Munby, 1978). Canale and Swain use the term to refer to the relationship and interaction between grammatical competence (a knowledge of rules of grammar) and sociolinguistic competence (a knowledge of' rules of language use). Canale's (1983) definition of communicative competence encompasses four different components. They are (i) grammatical competence, (ii) discourse competence, which is the ability to connect sentences in discourse to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances, (iii) sociolinguistic competence, which refers to knowledge of sociocultural rules of the social context in which language is used, and (iv) strategic competence, which refers to communication strategies which speakers use when communication breaks down as a result of imperfect knowledge of the language. These strategies include correcting, paraphrasing, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance and guessing (Savignon, 1983).