Journal #2

Communicative competence and Communicative Language teaching

The communicative competence and the communicative language teaching establish no uniform interpretation of the meaning of a second language acquisition. The concept of Hymes based on Chomsky’s theory; the ideal listener speaker- listener knows and uses the language perfectly with out making any mistakes. For Hymes this cannot happen, the Chomsky’s theory cannot be true people in real life make mistake when speaking and interact in social life. Social life affects the rules of grammar. We need to understand the linguistic competence that deals with producing and understanding grammatical correct sentences, and the communicative competence that deal with producing understanding sentences that are acceptable to particular situations. You don’t speak to your students or colleagues the same way you interact and share ideas or opinions with your family member or friends.

In the other hand Widdowson’s concept of communicative language teaching establish that we need to acquire both the rules of grammar and the ability to use language to communicate. Knowing a language is more than understand speak, read and write is how to use them all in order to communicate. Woddwson establish that the communicative ability and the linguistic skills have to be developed at the same time. He suggests that we need to teach communicative competence along with linguistic competence. Giving the students the opportunity to be able to express correctly not only speaking but also writing correct sentences. The classroom presentation of language must ensure the acquisition of both kinds of competence by providing linguistic and communicative contexts.

Canales and Swain establish that there are rules of language use would be useless with out rules of grammar. This one includes grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competence. The grammatical competence, how to determine and express accurately wich includes knowledge of lexical items, and rules of morphology, syntax and phonology. Sociolinguistic competence includes sociolinguistic rules and rules of discourse. Strategic competence includes verbal and nonverbal communications.

The application of the concept of communicative competence to language teaching shows how to help our students acquire communicative competence in the classroom. Stern establishes to live the language as a personal experience through direct contact with the target language community. Rivers proposes methodological distinction between “skill-getting” and “skill using” activities. On the ‘skill getting” the teacher must provide activities to relate with real life situations.  But Rivers points out no matter how much we relate these activities to real life situations this practice rarely passes beyond pseudo-communication. I disagree the most real life situations you provide in the classroom the better for the student when they need to use the language in their own.  We should teach English based on our students needs. In order to prepare them for the future. On ‘skill using” they work on their own they are not supported or directed by the teacher. They must work one-on-one with another student or with small groups of students. Not my style, the teacher should be supporting the students and using the techniques to guide them throughout the lesson. Allowing them to use aids like gestures, drawings or pantomime, to express themselves. All the theories are important we must find the correct one that better serve our students needs. Not all the groups are the same not all the students learn the same way. We as teachers need to find the one that works better and get the results we want to accomplish.