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ANALYZING THE COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: A
REVIEW OF DIVERSE SCHOLARLY APPROACHES
Yoqubov Odil Mengliyevich
Teacher, English Department,
‘Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers’
National Research University, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Annotation:
Communicative competence is one of the most essential skills for foreign
language teachers, as it plays a central role in achieving fluency and effective communication in
the target language. This competence not only enables learners to use the language naturally, as
native speakers do, but also contributes significantly to successful language instruction.
Numerous scholars have studied communicative competence and proposed various models
outlining its components. This article aims to explore and compare different theoretical
frameworks of communicative competence through a model-based analytical approach.
Keywords:
communicative competence, language teaching, competence models,
communicative frameworks
INTRODUCTION
The term «communicative competence» is comprised of two words, the combination of
which means «competence to communicate». This simple lexica-semantic analysis uncovers the
fact that the central word in the syntagm «communicative competence» is the word
«competence». And «Competence» is one of the most controversial terms in the field of
general and applied linguistics. Its introduction to linguistic discourse has been generally
associated with Chomsky who in his very influential book «Aspects of the Theory of Syntax»
drew what has been today viewed as a classic distinction between competence (the monolingual
speaker-listener’s knowledge of language) and performance (the actual use of language in real
situations)
METHODOLOGY
In the research process, we used methods of analysis, synthesis and modeling (in order
to reveal the importance of communicative language learning in the process of language
teaching and to highlight the components of communicative competence). We also used the
classification method (in order to highlight the internal components of the communicative
competence introduced by the scientists), the system method (to collect research materials).
Induction and deduction methods were also partially used.
1
According to many general and applied linguists, Chomsky’s distinction between competence
and performance is based on the fundamental linguistic distinction between langue and parole
which was made by de Saussure.
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The phrase “communicative competence” was first coined in 1967 by the American
sociolinguist and anthropologist Dell H. Hymes in reaction to Chomsky’s notion of linguistic
competence. He defines communicative competence as what “enables a member of the
community to know when to speak and when to remain silent, which code to use, when, where
and to whom, etc. (Hymes, 1967, p. 13). Since then, the concept has developed over years and
different models of communicative competence have been offered by different scholars.
RESULTS
Before explaining the concept of communicative competence as presented by Hymes, the word
“competence” itself requires some clarification. The word competence or linguistic competence
was first used by Chomsky to refer to knowledge of language as different from performance
which he sees as the actual use of language. Although this dualism
between knowledge and use
of language was not new and it was already noticed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
(1817-1913), who distinguished langue “the linguistic competence of the speaker as a member
of a speech community” and parole “the actual phenomena or data of linguistics” (Robins, 1997,
p. 225), Chomsky is known for “reinterpreting in a psychological context the comparable
sociological distinction that de Saussure had drawn between langue and parole” (Howatt, 1986,
p. 270).
More explicitly, Chomsky’s competence is concerned with “an ideal speaker–listener, in a
completely homogeneous one of the turning points in the history of foreign language teaching
is the development of the National Curriculum, based on the Fundamental Reform Document in
Education, in which foreign language teaching has found a position speech community who
knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors” (Chomsky, 1965, p.
3). In other words, Chomsky’s competence is a decontextualized notion and the ideal speaker-
hearer he is talking about, is “an artificially constructed idealized person; not an actual language
user”. Hymes (1972), while accepting the superiority of Chomsky’s terminology over de
Saussure’s, contends: “Such a theory of competence posits ideal objects in abstraction from
sociocultural features”.
A linguistically competent person, who is master of fully grammatical sentences, is at best a bit
odd because “some occasions call for being appropriately ungrammatical” (p.277). Hymes adds,
in addition to knowledge of grammatical sentences, a person should acquire the knowledge of
appropriate sentences that is, he or she should know “when to speak, when not, and as to what
to talk about with whom, when; where, in what manner”. He continues, “There are rules of use
without which the rules of grammar would be useless”.
Grammatical competence described by Chomsky, Hymes believes (see figure 1), is only one
sector of communicative competence, the other ones mentioned by Hymes are the
psycholinguistic (i.e., implementational feasibility), sociocultural (contextual appropriateness)
and de facto (i.e., actual occurrence) sectors. In summarizing
A normal learner acquires knowledge of sentences not only grammatical, but also as
appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to
2
The theory that there are two opposite principles in everything.
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talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to
accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their
accomplishment by others.(Hymes,1972)
According to Hymes frame there are four main components of communicative competence.
They are linguistic competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and
strategic competence.
Linguistic competence is the knowledge of the language code, i.e. its grammar and vocabulary,
and also of the conversations of its written representation.
Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of socio-cultural rules of use, i.e. knowing how to
use and respond to language appropriately.
Discourse competence is the knowledge of how to produce and comprehend oral or written
texts in the modes of speaking/reading respectively. It’s knowing how to combine language
structures into a cohesive and coherent oral and written text of different types.
Strategic competence is the ability to recognize and repair communication breakdowns before,
during, or after they occur.
Another model of communicative competence was presented by the two Canadian applied
linguists, Michael Canale and Merrill Swain in 1980 in the first issue of Applied Linguistics.
Referring to the weak or neural and strong versions of Chomsky’s competence recognized by
Campbell and Wales, Canale and Swain agree with Hymes’ criticism of Chomsky’s notion of
competence –performance distinction in that it “provides no place for consideration of the
appropriateness[emphasis is original] of socio-cultural significance of an utterance in the
situational and verbal context in which it is used” (Howatt, 1986, p.4). Furthermore, referring to
two views regarding the relationship between grammatical competence and communicative
competence, they advocate Munby’s stance which sees grammatical competence a subpart of
communicative competence and not something separate from it. However, they do not
incorporate the notion of ability for use into their definition of communicative competence
Reviewing theories of basic communication skills, sociolinguistic perspectives on
communicative competence, and integrative theories of communicative competence, Canale
and Swain, suggest five guiding principles for a communicative approach. These include:
1. Communicative competence is composed minimally of grammatical competence,
sociolinguistic competence, and communication strategies, or what we will refer to as strategic
competence.
2. A communicative approach must be based on and respond to the learner's communication
needs.
3. The second language learner must have the opportunity to take part in meaningful
communicative interaction with highly competent speakers of the language, i.e. to respond to
genuine communicative needs in realistic second language situations.
4. Particularly at the early stages of second language learning, optimal use must be made of
those aspects of communicative competence that the learner has developed through acquisition
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American Academic publishers, volume 05, issue 05,2025
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and use of the native language and that are common to those communication skills required in
the second language.
5. The primary objective of a communication-oriented second language programme must be to
provide the learners with the information, practice, and much of the experience needed to meet
their communicative needs in the second language. (Hymes,1972)
Prior to introducing new model, Canale reminds the reader that in the communicative
competence model, communication is meant to be “the exchange and negotiation
of
information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols,
oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes” (Hymes,1972).
The four components of the revised framework are grammatical competence, sociolinguistic
competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.
Another model of communicative competence was proposed by Bachman, which has been
presented for measurement purposes. This framework includes three components of language
competence, strategic competence, and psycho-physiological mechanisms. Language
competence includes organizational and pragmatic competences. Organizational competence, in
turn includes grammatical and textual abilities or competences, which are involved in
producing and comprehending language. In other words, textual competence corresponds to
discourse competence in Canale’s model. Pragmatic competence is concerned with “the
relationship between utterances and the acts or functions that speakers (or writers) intend to
perform through these utterances” (Bachman, 1990, p. 89).
Pragmatic competence in Bachman’s model encompasses illocutionary competence and
sociolinguistic competence. Illocutionary competence entails knowledge and skill in using
language functions proposed by Halliday such as ideational, manipulative, heuristic,
instrumental, regulatory and imaginative functions. The second major component of
communicative competence in Bachman’s framework is strategic competence. Unlike Canale
and Swain’s and Canale’s model, where strategic competence is at the same level as
grammatical and sociolinguistic competences, in Bachman’s model, strategic competence is a
major component at the same level as language competence. The reason, as Bachman states, is
that previous models imply that communicative strategies are necessarily linguistic or verbal
ones but his model shows that strategic competence is a competence at the level of language
competence not a subpart so it may include strategies which are not linguistic.
One of the important contributions of Celce-Murcia et al. (Murcia.1995) was to specify that the
various components of communicative competence were interrelated and that it was important
to properly describe the nature of these interrelationships in order to fully understand the
construct of communicative competence. To this end they offered in their 1995 publication,
which made the interrelationships explicit: This 1995 model is a pyramid enclosing a circle,
surrounded by another circle. The circle inside the pyramid is discourse competence, the core or
central competence. The three points of the triangle
are the top-down socio-cultural
3
Negotiation is term that is formal discussion between people who are trying to reach an
argument
4
Three straight sides of communicative competence
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competence and the bottom-up linguistic competence and action competence. The arrows
indicate that the various components are constantly interacting with each other and the
discourse component. This construct thus placed the discourse component in a central position
where the lexica-grammatical resources, the action organizing skills, and the socio-cultural
context all come together and shape the discourse. The circle surrounding the pyramid is
strategic competence, an available inventory of communicative, cognitive, and metacognitive
strategies that allow a skilled interlocutor to negotiate meanings, resolve ambiguities, and to
compensate for deficiencies in any of the other competencies.
The final model of communicative competence reviewed here is the one presented by
Littlewood (2011). He also takes Canale and Swains’ (1980) and Canale’s (1983) model as the
initial model and develops it by adding a fifth component as well as adapting the terminology.
The components of communicative competence in Littlewood’s model are as follows:
-Linguistic competence includes the knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, semantics and
phonology that have been the traditional focus of second language learning.
-Discourse competence enables speakers to engage in continuous discourse, e.g. by linking
ideas in longer written texts, maintaining longer spoken turns, participating in interaction,
opening conversations and closing them.
-Pragmatic competence enables second language speakers to use their linguistic resources to
convey and interpret meanings in real situations, including those where they encounter
problems due to gaps in their knowledge.
-Sociolinguistic competence consists primarily of knowledge of how to use language
appropriately in social situations, e.g. conveying suitable degrees of formality, directness and so
on.
-Sociocultural competence includes awareness of the cultural knowledge and assumptions that
affect the exchange of meanings and may lead to misunderstandings in intercultural
communication(p.547).
This last component introduces psycholinguistic aspects of second language proficiency that are
not included in the Canale and Swain's framework but are fundamental to communicative
language use.
DISCUSSION
The first scientific work on communicative competence was conducted by Chomsky,
who included only Linguistic Competence in communicative competence. He perfected his
scientific work from 1957 to 1965 and based his opinion on facts and examples. Hymes, Canale,
and Swain later used this of his scientific research and divided it into components of
communicative competence. In the 1990s, Bachman also worked on Communicative
Competence, but his work was slightly different from models of Canale and Swain. Bachman
also proved them with his substantial components.
Five years after Bachman’s work, American professor Celce-Murcia worked on
Communicative Competence, introducing Actional Competence as a separate component in
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addition to Canale’s Communicative Model. By 2011, Littlewood Communicative had
perfected its competence. That is, earlier scholars included "socio-cultural competence" in the
internal structure of "Sociolinguistic competence". However, Littlewood singles out “Socio-
Cultural Competence” as a particularly important competency, describing it as the most
fundamental component of communicative competence. (You can also see this in the figure 3
below.) That is, over the years, communicative competence has been brought to perfection, and
its components have increased.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, the essential point is that all models agree that communicative competence
includes a grammatical or linguistic component, which entails knowledge of syntax,
morphology, phonology and vocabulary or lexis. In that case, teacher who aims to help learners
develop communicative competence, should first and foremost have already developed these
components of his or her communicative competence. That is to say, teachers need to have
good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as well as good pronunciation. In other words, a
Communicative Language Teaching teacher needs to be a skillful proficient teacher who can
serve as a model of communicatively competent speaker for the learners. This is important
because there exists a misconception among some teachers. In addition to grammar knowledge
for Communicative Language Teaching, teachers are required to have a good knowledge of
society and its using of language.
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