French as a Second Language Teaching: Identifying Methods that Improve Adult Learners’ Competencies

 
Communicative Competence and L2 Teaching 
Communicative competence refers to the capacity of using a language in a contextualized 
format to convey a message or complete a task (Whong, 2013). Remarkably, communicative 
competence is comprised of three crucial pillars. First, grammatical competence entails lexical 
knowledge, semantics, phonology, morphology, and language grammar (Whong, 2013). Second, 
discourse competence involves the coherence of conversations and texts (Whong, 2013). Lastly, 
sociolinguistic competence pertains to understanding socio-cultural rules that enable users to 
determine the appropriate language for different situations (Sato & Loewen, 2019). 
Adult competence should be measured based on a mixture of knowledge, skills, abilities, and 
attitudes when learning a foreign language. With learning FSL, adult learners consider 
knowledge and skills as facts, practices, or a mandatory preparation related to a field, work, or 
study. Adult learners acquire them through teaching, assistance, and good resources provided by 
the instructors. Moreover, the key factors for learners’ own development of a new language are 
identified as abilities, attitudes, and competence. This means that managing resources and 
leading students helps to promote the development and efficiency of learning activities. It is 
essential for instructors to continuously foster the learning process to improve it, with the 

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eventual goal of helping learners reach their target. Hence, competence is compulsory for adult 
learners’ needs, motivations, and requirements. Instructors should therefore select appropriate 
learning styles, informative methods, and content for the learning process. They should also be 
capable of designing informational materials. Finally, in order to stimulate learners’ acquisition 
of FSL, they should act not only as learning facilitators, but also theoretical specialists in their 
fields.