Communicative competence

Communicative competence is a term from linguistics. It is the ability to not only apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. (Definition from the Dictionary of Teaching and Applied Linguistics.)

There are four aspects to communicative competence:

1. grammatical competence: words and rules
   
2. sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness
   
3. discourse competence: coherence
   
4. strategic competence: stategies when communication starts to fail such as moving onto something else

In the last 20 years, what has emerged from applied linguistics is that the goal of second language teaching should be communicative competence. This is in contrast to previous standards where grammatical competence was the priority. Recognition that successful communication includes more than constructing grammatical correct utterances has been influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech act as described in large part by John Searle and J.L. Austin.

External Link

http://www.edu.pref.kagoshima.jp/kari/iti-ken/English/Top/Communication/nouryoku.pdf

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