The ministry of higher and secondary specialized education of the republic of uzbekistan

Chapter I. Language and Communicative competence

1. 
   Principles of communicative competence and its practical reflection
   

Homework Task One

Please choose one English language class (e.g., speaking class or vocabulary class), which you have already taught, and which you will use for your homework tasks in this book. This class could be one you feel has been very successful, mediocre, or not successful. When you choose an English language class, please write a short description about it (e.g., who are the students, language levels, content area, etc.) and explain the challenges you have in making this class communicative. Then, please choose one lesson from your English language class you described above. Please give a brief overview (1 paragraph) of the lesson. You will use this lesson throughout the book and you will have different versions of the same plan with different focus.

Teaching the aspect of Reading and Writing is one of essential subjects where students develop their competences by task-based approach as they have to work in small groups or individually on a particular topic. The aim of the course is to develop student’s communicative skills, language skills and transferrable skills.

I’m conducting Reading and Writing lessons to the second-year students who majors in the English Language. There are 15 students in a group who has multi-level of English knowledge; 4 male and 11 female students are at approximately at the same age from different regions. The students in the group are kind and friendly with each other and eager to develop their language competencies those help me to conduct lessons in a comfortable and right atmosphere. Almost all of the students are quite sociable and have good proficiency of English. On top of that all of them are very responsible ones as they are always in time for class and ready with all home assignments. However, some of these conscientious students are very shy when it comes to presentation or giving speeches. Most of the time, they become quite competent and confident with the tasks of speaking activities, when they work in small group activities or in pair works. The other students have intermediate level of English in comparison to their peers; nevertheless, they always tend to ask questions and demonstrate their ideas.

CLT approach-based tasks work quite well with all students of this group. I have Reading and Writing lessons with them once a week. During the pre and post stages of the lesson, which are built on discussions and group work, all students except some are very active. Personally, I assume one should always try to implement case study or problem-solving activities in such situations.

When I used the Interviewing technique, I understood that even with shy and low-level students it works quite effective as they attempt to speak to their peers or groups. Though it was a bit challenging for me to control them during activity, the students were active and they were speaking or sharing their ideas with group members. The challenge in using these techniques were regrouping the students for several times, and speculating students’ following the instruction that is presented by me. Besides sometimes students are too much engaged in the activity with great enthusiasm and it is really difficult to stop them, so time management becomes a problem.


Homework Task Two
Please refer to the lesson you chose for Homework Task One. In a one-page report please do the following: First, explain how you understand linguistic competence in general (i.e., what does linguistic competence mean to you); Second, explain how the lesson you chose for Homework Task One (A) can be transformed to have linguistic competence as the focus.
In my personal point of view, linguistic competence is the structure of linguistic knowledge possessed by the users of the language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a language system is used in communication. To be more precise, linguistic competence involves the combination of language skills dealing with grammar, syntax, semantics, phonetics and stylistics. When a language learner studies language strictly following the grammar of the language and a teacher has a lesson that focuses only on grammar and analysis of the grammatical structures of the target language. When a lesson aims at developing linguistic competence, the teacher and the learner work on the topic considering all the above-mentioned skills. The lesson that I described in my homework 1, Reading and Writing, the topic Sport, was based on developing linguistic competence through teaching sport idiomatic expressions can be considered as a part of the focus because students practice the language of sport dealing with the features of sport idiomatic expressions related to grammar, semantics and phonetics.

Homework Task Three

Please refer to the lesson you chose for Homework Task One. In a one-page report or less, please do the following: First, explain briefly how you understand pragmatic competence (i.e., what does pragmatic competence mean to you); Second, explain how the lesson you chose for Homework Task One (A) can be organized so that pragmatic competence is the focus.

Pragmatic competence is the ability to use the language successfully in a communicative interaction besides it should be implemented in contextually appropriate way. It has a rudimentary feature of a more general communicative competence. Pragmatic competence develops student’s ability to interpret meaning both verbally and non-verbally. The teacher who focuses on pragmatic competence should focus on students to survive in real life situations. Therefore, without being aware of developing pragmatic competence, students will find out challenges and difficulties when they are communicating with foreigners. Being aware of pragmatic competence, students can understand each other’s intended meanings even with grammatically incorrect sentences the communication is still successful.

Chomsky accepts that language is used purposefully; indeed, in later writings, he introduced the term pragmatic competence-knowledge of how language is related to the situation in which it is used. Pragmatic competence "places language in the institutional setting of its use, relating intentions and purposes to the linguistic means at hand". As well as knowing the structure of a language, we have to know how to use it.

There is little point in knowing the structure of: "Can you lift that box?" if you can't decide whether the speaker wants to discover how strong you are (a question) or wants you to move the box (a request). Or "Why are you making such a noise?" is a possible sentence of English and that "Why you are making such a noise." is not. It's the province of pragmatic competence to explain whether the speaker who says: "Why are you making such a noise?" is requesting someone to stop, or is asking a genuine question out of curiosity, or is muttering a sotto voce comment.

This competence helps students with tools that help them to have successful communication. The technique of Information Gap has elements of pragmatic competence. During the activity, students work in two different groups, each having different tasks and group members. The successful completion of the activity requires students not only ability to understand the meaning of the information but also the skill of explaining or interpreting the spoken message. Each student in the group has to explain or teach new members of the group; otherwise, the task is not completed. This in turn means that each student has responsibility to feel and do the task, so that the group does not fail. Even though the pragmatic competence is not the focus, it is there in the activity.

Another way of focusing on pragmatic competence can be the content of the reading passage. The groups can have tasks that will help them to focus on the structure, language and organization of the text. Each group can be given a task which asks them to have a think of a certain area of the task. Moreover, the language features can be a specific exercise that will give the groups an opportunity to see how the English authors use the language to present their views.