Communicative Competence and Speaking Skills: A Comprehensive Guide
To relate communicative competence with communicative skills, first, we have to define and clarify what communicative competence is and its major characteristics. It occurs when functional or social linguistics are related to traditions such as pragmatics, text linguistics, and discourse analysis, etc. This offers us a theory of social processes involved in language use. Functional linguistics has developed the notion of communicative competence. This involves, apart from linguistic competence, the knowledge of the linguistic code; it includes knowledge of language use, meaning what a speaker has to know in order to communicate effectively in a speech community. For Hymes, adding a communicative element to competence means adding rules of use and grammar, rules of syntax, rules of semantics, and rules of speech. Speakers need all this in order to understand and use linguistic forms. Canale and Swain called grammatical competence to linguistic competence. Chomsky proposed that the objective of the study of formalist linguistics is linguistic competence. It implies idealization, abstraction of actual linguistic behavior. For him, it is the ideal speaker’s knowledge of language structure, the relations between elements in the various linguistic levels of the linguistic system or code.
Inside communicative competence, we have three essential competences: The first one is textual competence: the speaker/hearer’s knowledge of how to interpret individual elements in connection with other elements, how to combine them efficiently to integrate them into a spoken or written text. Interactional competence: the speaker/hearer’s knowledge of how to carry out and effective communication with the interlocutor. And finally, sociolinguistic competence: that refers to the speaker/hearer’s knowledge of the social context in which communication takes place.
We have to join these types of communicative competence in order to define and clarify speaking skills.
Communicative language teaching is also important and is taught by practicing structures in situation activities, the same that happens in skill’s activities. This communicative approach starts from a theory of language as communication. Basically, we have these characteristics: Language is a system for expression of meaning/ the primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication.
The learners have a negotiation role and they are expected to interact in groups with the teacher. The teacher’s role is to facilitate the communicative process between all participants in the classroom. The materials that are used are textbooks, tables of contents, and language practice, also games, role plays, and simulations.
If we want to speak about speaking skills, we have to relate this with the three types of competence. Inside interactional competence, we find that learners talk a lot and the participation is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants. Motivation is high because speakers are interested in the topic and have something to say about it. Language is of an acceptable level, and learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant. There are two types of turns. Short turns consist of only one or two utterances; a long turn consists of a string of utterances. What is demanded of a speaker in a long turn is considerably more demanding than what is required at a speaker in a short turn. The primary purposes for communication are social. People should make harmonious interactions between participants. All of this could form part of sociolinguistic competence. Inside this one, people who know a language are referred to as ‘speakers’ of that language. Many of the foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak. The context of the speaking is very important since when we are talking, we know the social context in which communication takes place. Sometimes this communication is not possible because one of the speakers does not know what to say, because basically they do not know the context of the communication.
The last competence is textual competence and it can be related to speaking activities in order to give coherence and cohesion to the speaking process. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom because they are worried about making mistakes. Sometimes they have nothing to say and there is a low participation. The other problem is that in class, all participants share the same mother tongue. In order to improve the learners’ speaking ability, we find several methods, for example, use group work to produce a lower inhibition in learners; also base the activity on easy language with easy expressions and words; Make a careful choice of topic and give some instructions to make this skill.
Role interaction is a useful tool to vary the kinds of spoken interaction that learners can experience in the classroom. The techniques that are used are: dialogues, plays, simulations in small groups, and role plays that are done in pairs.