Vale Howard: "Communicative Competence" Canale and Swain

1 Background
1.1 Grammatical and communicative approaches
Page 2- Paragraph 1: Distinction between grammatical and communicative approaches.
Paragraph 2: Reference of situational syllabus.
Page 3- Paragraph 1: Approach refer to principles of syllabus construction.

1.2 Competence and performance
Page 3- Paragraph 2: Terms performance and competence.
Paragraph 3: Competence refers to knowledge of grammar and performance to actual use.
Paragraph 4: Theory of competence and performance (Chomsky).
Page 4 –Paragraph 1 : appropriateness.
Paragraph 2: Distinction between communicative competence and performance.
Page 5- Paragraph 1: Reference of communicative and grammatical competence.
Paragraph 2: Reference of communicative performance.
Page 6- Paragraph 1: Sociolinguistic competence.
Paragraph 2: Summarize/ CC refer to the interaction between grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence.
Page 6- Paragraph 3: Teaching methodology must be designed not only for CC also CP.
Page 7- Paragraph 1: CC includes grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence.
Page 7- Paragraph 2: Don’t incorporate the notion of ability into CC.
Page 8- Paragraph 1: CC and CP concerns aspect s of general psycholinguistic.

2. Some theories of Communicative Competence
Page 8- Paragraph 2: Theories of CC

2.1 Theories of basic communication skills
Page 9-Paragraph 1: Theory of basic communication skills can emphasizes minimum level of
communications skills pr cope with the most common situation the learner is likely to face. They don’t emphasize grammatical accuracy.
Page 9- Paragraph 2: Some examples of the skills include in theories.
Page 9- Paragraph 3: Language functions and notions.
Page 10-Paragraph 1:Principles of the theories of basic communication skills.
Page 10-Paragraph 2: Minimum level of skills is necessary to communicate.
Page 10-Paragraph 3: The view that is more effective when it emphasizes one meaning rather than grammatical.
Page 11-Paragraph 1: Grammatical accuracy in beginners and adults learners.
Page 12-Paragraph 1: Tolerance of sociocultural failure.
Page 12-Paragraph 2: Cases of GC as not a good predictor of CC.
Page 13-Paragraph 3: Conclusion is that GC is not a sufficient condition for the development of CC.
Page 14-Paragraph 2: There should be some combination of emphasis on grammatical accuracy and emphasis on meaningful communication from the beginners.
Page 15-Paragraph 2: Basic communicative approaches can be as effective as grammatical approaches in developing grammatical competence and more effective in approaches in developing communicative competence.

2.2 Sociolinguistic perspectives on communicative competence
Page 15 – Paragraph 3: Research on communicative competence from sociolinguistic perspective has been of a more theoretical and analytic nature than work on basic communication skills.
Paragraph 4: Theory cf communicative competence and analysis of the ethnography of speaking (Hymes).
Page 16- Paragraph 2: CC is viewed by Hymes as the interaction of grammatical (what is formally possible), psycholinguistic (what is feasible in terms of human information processing),sociocultural (what is the social meaning of value of a given utterance) and probabilistic (what actually occurs) systems of competence.
Paragraph 3: Notion of ethnography of speaking.
Page 17- Paragraph 1: Notion of speech event (aspects that are governed directly by rules of language) and components of speech events.
Paragraph 2: Analysis of components of speech event.
Page 18 Paragraph 1: Sociosemantic aspects of language and language use. Social system determines set of behavioral, semantic and grammar.
Paragraph 2: Analysis this sets in second language learners.
Page 19-Paragraph 1: Reason against about semantic options are only the realization of social behaviorism.
Paragraph 2: Theory of natural language semantics must make reference to social behaviorism.
Paragraph 3: Summary/ the theory of sociolinguistic is important to the development of a communicative approach in that they have been concerned with the interaction of a
communicative approach in that they have been concerned with the interaction of social
context, grammar and meaning.

2.3 Integrative theories of communicative competencePage 19 - Paragraph 3: Introducing idea of an integrative theory of competence.
Page 20- Paragraph 1: Integrative theory of communicative competence: synthesis of knowledge of basic grammatical principles, of how language is used in social context to perform communicative functions and of how utterances and communicative functions can be combined.
Paragraph 2: Munby's model of communicative competence: sociocultural orientation,
sociosemantic view of linguistic knowledge and rules of discourse.
Paragraph 3: Distinction between cohesion and coherence.
Page 21:Paragraph 1: Analysis of discourse in the literature.
Paragraph 2: Analysis of Munby's model/ grammatical complexity.
Page 22-Paragraph 2: Combining grammatical and communication skills.
Paragraph 3: There is an overemphasis in many integrative theories on the role of
communicative functions and social behavior options in the selection of grammar forms.
Page 23-Paragraph 2: Introducing the 3 basic assumptions that are responsible for an overemphasis on communicative functions in communicative syllabus organization.
Paragraph 3: The assumption that the essential purpose of language is communication.
Paragraph 4: The assumption that grammatical forms follows the communicative purpose.
Page 24-Paragraph 2: The assumption that in normal communication one is concerned with aspects of language use and not with aspects of grammatical usage.
Paragraph 3: Summarize/ little theoretical motivation for the overemphasis on language function and lack of emphasis on grammatical complexity.

2.4 General Comments
Page 25: Paragraph 1: The first conclusion is that not many theorist have devoted any detailed attention to communication strategies that learner employ to handle breakdown in communication.
Paragraph 2: The second conclusion most of the theories don't deal rigorous with a range of criteria sufficiently for establishing the sequencing of semantic concepts, grammatical forms and communicative functions in a communicative approach.
Paragraph 3: The third conclusion is that there hasn't been paid to much attention to the criteria for evaluation and levels of achievement with respect to a given theory of CC.
Page 26- Paragraph 1: Discrete point test of communicative competence.
Paragraph 2: Analysis of a integrative test of CC.

3 Toward an adequate Theory of Communicative Competence

3.1 Guiding principles for a communicative approach
Page 27- Paragraph 1: 5 principles that must guide the development of communicative approach for a second language programme.
Paragraph 2: CC is composed minimally of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic
competence and communication strategies (strategic competence).
Paragraph 3: A communicative approach must be based on and respond to the learner's communication needs.
Paragraph 4: Second language learner must interact with highly competent speakers.
Page 28 -Paragraph 2: Exposure to realistic communication situations is very important.
Paragraph 3: That the more arbitrary and less universal aspects of communication in the second language be presented and practices in the context of less arbitrary and more universal aspects.
Paragraph 4: The primary objective of a communication -oriented second language programme must be to provide the learners with the information and the practice.

3.2 A proposed theoretical framework fro communicative competence
Page 28 – Paragraph 5: Introducing the tentative theory that includes 3 main competencies (GC, SoC, SC)
Page 29- Paragraph 1: General assumptions about the nature of communication.
Paragraph 2: Assumption that a theory of CC interacts with a theory of human action and with other systems of human knowledge.
Paragraph 3: The communicative approach that author propose is an integrative one in which emphasis is on preparing second language learners to exploit through aspect of sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence grammatical features.
Paragraph 4: GC understood where includes knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology,syntax, sentence-grammar semantics and phonology.
Page 30- Paragraph 1: GC will be an important concern fro any communicative approach.
Paragraph 2: Introducing the idea that SocC is made up of 2 sets of rules (sociocultural rules of use and rules of discourse) .
Paragraph 3: Analysis of Sociocultural rules of use were will specify in which utterances are produced and understood appropriately.
Paragraph 4: Rules of discourse understood in terms of cohesion and coherence.
Paragraph 5: Analysis of Strategic Competence where is made up of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that can compensate for breakdowns. There are 2 SC those relate to GC and those to SocC.
Page 31- Paragraph 2: Assumption of a subcomponent of probability rules of occurrence.

3.3 Implications for a communicative approach to teaching
Page 31- Paragraph 4: Introducing the idea that the theoretical framework will have implications in: syllabus design, teaching methodology, teacher training and material development.
Page 32- Paragraph 1: Implication in syllabus designed.
Page 33- Paragraph 3: Implication in teaching methodology (classroom activities where students are engaged).
Paragraph 4: Implication in teachers training.
Page 34- Paragraph 1: Implication in material development (current books will not be appropriate).

3.4 Implications for a communicative testing programme
Page 34 – Paragraph 2: 2 important general implications fro testing. First; testing must be devoted not only to what learners know and about how to use it but also to what excent the learner is able to actually demonstrate this knowledge in a meaningful communicative situation.
Paragraph 3: Integrative type test and discrete point test can be useful in the proposed communicative approach.

4 Directions for Research
Page 35- Paragraph 4: Reflecting the idea that many aspects of CC must be investigated in a more rigorous manner before a communicative approach can be fully implemented.
Page 36- Paragraph 1: There has to be a description of the communication needs of a given group based on factors particular to the learner and to the speech community.
Paragraph 2: There has to be a explicit statement of grammatical rules, sociocultural rules,discourse rules and communication strategies.
Paragraph 3: There has to be an analysis of the similarities and differences between rules in sociolinguistic components.
Paragraph 4: There has to be an investigation of the optimum balance of factors like grammatical, cognitive-semantic and perceptual complexity.
Paragraph 5 and 6: There has to be a study of the relation between a minimum level of communication skills needed for students and for teachers.
Paragraph 7: There has to be a development of classroom activities that encourage meaningfulcommunication.
Paragraph 8: There has to be an identification of the advantages and disadvantages of the use of authentic texts in addition to or place of contrived texts.
Paragraph 9: There has to be a development of test formats and evaluation criteria.
Page 37- Paragraph 1: There still has to be a more deep research of whether or not adopting a communicative approach.
Paragraph 2: There has to be a description of the manner in which communication is focused on in different classes.
Paragraph 3: There has to be an investigation that see the suitable of the different aspects of a communicative approach.
Paragraph 4: Investigate about the evidence .
Paragraph 5: It is not clear that a communicative approach is more or less effective than a grammatical approach in developing learners flexibility in being able to communicate.
Page 38- Finally, it must be determined whether or not a communicative approach increases learners motivation to learn and teacher motivation to teach.

Your Approach Indicator

About the questionnaire I choose the following questions.

First I think that the main focus in a language class should be on the meaning especially when you are teaching beginners. Because is the meaning what is going to be remembered. Of course this doesn’t mean we should left out the grammar but this could be introduce afterwards or slowly. And that is why, in every language we first learn the meaning of the words and afterwards the grammar rules in a way because is more practical.

Classes operate more successfully by encouraging intrinsic motivation and I think that in English can be easier to find classes where students want to earn the language. Why? Because is a different one, is the main way to communicate with others. But if we not, we as teachers have to appeal to the students to a find a motivation.

I think that now days in Chile we don’t have too many cultures, is true that are arriving a lot of immigrants, but still I don’t think that are many teachers that have to handle with students that have different cultures. However, teachers should respect difference on their students no matter their beliefs or where they are from.

Finally about the rewards I am not very sure which one is the best way. Maybe immediate rewards could be good to have their attention or to motivate them buy then definitely long-term reward is much better because what you are going to gain afterwards is going to be more valuable than what you can have immediate. For example learning the language and being able to make yourself understand by others and communicate.

Designer Methods of the spirited 1970´s

It is going to be during the 1970’s where appeared some innovative methods for second language learning. Despite that these methods weren’t perfect it was a beginning.
The first of the methods is Community Language Learning, where it took on a distinctly affective nature. In this case it was important for the learners to interact in an interpersonal relationship where students and teachers worked together to facilitate learning. Also the teacher was sort of a counselor where centers all the attention in the learner needs. The main disadvantages where that the teachers can become too nondirective and the students need instructions especially the ones that are begging to learn. Also it can be too inductive for example were the learners determining the type of conversation and analyze it inductively. The Suggestopedia was based in that the brain could process a big amount of material if given the right condition for learning. In this method the aim was to relax the states of mind therefore there could be a more retention and for this the music was essential as well as having a comfortable environment. Having these two elements is difficult and this method was more attempted to teach memorization techniques instead of making the learners comprehend. The third is Silent Way, it was also more cognitive. In this case students constructed conceptual hierarchies; also they develop independence, autonomy and responsibility. The main issue was that teachers where too distant and sometimes students needed more guidance and overt correction. The Total Physical Response, this method focus on that memory is increased if it is stimulated through association with motor activity. They used imperative mood, for example commands, “Open the door”. This helped avoid anxiety. The problem is that despite it was very useful on beginning levels it wasn’t that much on advance. The last method was Natural Approach, where the most important thing was that teachers had to provide comprehensible input, in other words understandable language. Also at the beginning was focus more in the meaning than in the form and in listening skills. The objections were that these strategies worked with kind of “timetables”, but what happened when a learner had different times, when their language emerged after?
Now I think that all this methods where revolutionary and that you can take out very good things from each one of them to improve your class.