Reconceptualizing language teaching: an in-service teacher education course in uzbekistan

SECTION 1.1
Principles of Communicative Competence
“Human communication fulfils many different goals at the personal and 
social levels. We communicate information, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and atti-
tudes to one another in our daily interactions, and we construct and maintain 
our positions within various social contexts by employing appropriate lan-
guage forms and performing speech activities to ensure solidarity, harmony, 
and cooperation – or to express disagreement or displeasure, when called for” 
(Celce-Murcia & Olshtan, 2000, p. 3).
GOALS
This section shows that successful human communication is not lim-
ited to linguistic competence (i.e. pronunciation, lexical items, appropri-
ate word order, etc.); non-linguistic factors such as culture, lifestyle, shared 
norms, history, and other social circumstances play a role in securing suc-
cessful communication (Coupland & Jaworski, 2009; Grice, 2004; Richards & 
Rodgers, 2014; Wardhaugh, 2006). Successful communication is therefore a 
social process, within which what is said by a speaker is accepted as mean-
ingful and appropriate by a hearer.
By the end of this section, you will be able to...
A) discern how linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and strategic com-
petencies are categorized within the Common European Framework of 
Reference (CEFR); and,
B) compare traditional (Grammar Translation Method – GTM) and com-
municative language teaching (CLT) approaches to understanding lan-
guage.
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) was imple-
mented in Uzbekistan in 2012 as a framework for teaching, learning, and 
assessing languages. CLT is employed within CEFR (Beresova, 2017) and 
the approach is much different than the rule-based/grammar-translation 
method (GTM) to language teaching that language teachers are accus-

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RECONCEPTUALIZING LANGUAGE TEACHING
tomed to in Uzbekistan (more on this topic will be discussed in Chapter 2). 
Within CLT, the identity of a language teacher is that of a facilitator instead 
as a conduit of information. Learning languages for communicative pur-
poses shifts the classroom focus from the teacher to the learner; however, 
this shift does not mean the teacher no longer has a role to play! A teach-
er’s role is to guide students to become communicatively competent in 
the following four areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and strategic. 
This section is intended to discuss communicative competencies and in-
troduce classroom interactive activities on how to better to teach foreign 
languages within the CEFR framework.
Think about the following:
What is the difference among traditional and non-traditional ways to 
teaching language?
What do you understand when we speak about different communica-
tive competencies?
How one can organize classes in terms of four competencies?
UZBEK VIGNETTE
A head of an English Language department was asked by the rector of 
the University to observe a teacher’s lesson, and to determine if the language 
teacher is using communicative approaches in his/her class. The head of the 
department (observer) expected to see a class on family, in which, students 
interacted with one another and did group discussions on their own stories 
on this chosen topic. However, the head of the department only saw the 
teacher explaining the vocabulary and the expected grammatical rules stu-
dents should memorize. The observer reported the class was not interactive 
and the teacher’s voice could be heard only during the lesson. 
The following day, the head of the English Department decided to con-
duct a master class based on CLT. Everyone was interested in this commu-
nicative class, including the teacher who was recently observed. The class 
started. The topic was “The Principles of Communicative Competence.” 
Rather than starting with an explanation of the rules on the principles of 
communicative competence, the head gave two examples. The first read:
The sister (she) of my friend (he), sitting in front of me, is the best.
The head asked the class to discuss for two minutes who is sitting, he 
or she. Some said he is sitting, while others said she is. Furthermore, the 

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25
CHAPTER ONE: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
head asked the teachers why some people made the decisions they did. 
The class discussed but did not come to a consensus. The head asked if 
there were any syntactical rules that would guarantee his or her sitting? 
No teacher could answer the department head’s question. This exam-