Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
communicative competence
in ELT
Cem Alptekin
This article questions the validity of the pedagogic model based on the native
speaker-based notion of communicative competence. With its standardized
native speaker norms, the model is found to be utopian, unrealistic, and
constraining in relation to English as an International Language (EIL). It is
utopian not only because native speakership is a linguistic myth, but also
because it portrays a monolithic perception of the native speakers language
and culture, by referring chiey to mainstream ways of thinking and behaving.
It is unrealistic because it fails to reect the lingua franca status of English. It is
constraining in that it circumscribes both teacher and learner autonomy by
associating the concept of authenticity with the social milieu of the native
speaker.
A new notion of communicative competence is needed, one which recognizes
English as a world language. This would encompass local and international
contexts as settings of language use, involve nativenonnative and
nonnativenonnative discourse participants, and take as pedagogic models
successful bilinguals with intercultural insights and knowledge. As such, it
would aim at the realization of intercultural communicative competence
in ELT.
Introduction Although there have been reformulations of the dierent components of
knowledge that underlie Canale and Swains inuential model of
communicative competence, the modelin its slightly modied form by
Canale (1983)still forms the conventional framework for curriculum
design and classroom practice associated with communicative language
teaching in many an educational context.
The notion of communicative competence described in the model entails
four competencies, which are commonly referred to as grammatical
competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and
strategic competence. The rst and foremost is grammatical or formal
competence, which refers to the Chomskyan concept of linguistic
competence; it is the native speakers knowledge of the syntactic, lexical,
morphological, and phonological features of the language, as well as the
capacity to manipulate these features to produce well-formed words and
sentences. It provides the linguistic basis for the rules of usage which
normally result in accuracy in performance.
ELT Journal Volume 56/1 January 2002