Understanding Language Learning Through Second Language

FiGuRe 1.1 Communicative Competence

Source: Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning by Alcon Soler, Eva. Reproduced with permission of Springer, Netherlands, in the format Book via Copyright Clearance Center.

5. 
   Interactional competence is the hands-on component of sociocultural competence and features three subcomponents: (1) actional competence, knowledge of how to perform speech acts in the TL through interpersonal exchanges such as expressing opinions, complaining, apologizing; (2) conversational competence, which enables a speaker to take turns, open and close conversations, establish and change topics, interrupt, etc.; and (3) non-verbal/paralinguistic competence, which accounts for non-linguistic communication such as the use of gestures, kinesics (body language), proxemics (use of space), etc. (pp. 48–49).
   
6. 
   Strategic competence encompasses the use of learning strategies and communication strategies to communicate and compensate for deficiencies in the other areas of competence. For example, speakers may employ the communicative strategy of “interacting” to appeal for help/clarification or to negotiate the meaning of the message received in the face of misunderstanding.
   

an implication of the current model of communicative competence for language teachers is that students need more than grammatical or linguistic knowledge alone to function in a communicative setting. As depicted by the two-way arrows shown in Figure 1.1, language users constantly call upon multiple areas of competence at once in constructing messages. In this vein, for communication to take place as it does in the world beyond the classroom, language instruction must be integrated with cross-cultural instruction, discourse as it is used in the world outside of the classroom, dynamic interaction, and strategy training (Celce-Murcia, 2007). Further, as proposed by Paradis (2009), motivation is also a key factor in developing competence, one that results in much variability among second-language learners (see discussion later in this chapter).
The Role of Input