N. Ya. Heshko, D. B. Orobchuk

Bukovinian State Medical University, Ukraine

CONCEPTUALIZING “COMPETENCE” IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

English language teaching is based on the idea that the goal of the English language acquisition is communicative competence: the ability to use the English language correctly and appropriately to accomplish communication goals. The desired outcome of the English language learning process is the ability to communicate competently, not the ability to use the English language exactly as a native speaker does.

The objective of the present paper is the conceptualizing “competence” in the English language.

As formulated by the linguist Noam Chomsky, a person's linguistic competence is the set of internalized rules in his or her brain that makes it possible to understand and produce language – rules that stipulate, for example, the order words take to form a sentence. A person's performance consists of the actual phrases and sentences he or she produces on the basis of these inner rules [1, p. 67].

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-communication, who know its (the speech community's) language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this language in actual performance (Chomsky, 1965) [1, p. 83].

In this definition, Chomsky separates 'competence,' an idealized capacity, from the production of actual utterances, 'performance.' Additionally, competence, being an ideal, is located as a psychological or mental property or function (Lyons, 1996). This is in contrast to performance, which refers to an actual event.
    This definition of linguistic competence has come to be associated with a rigid and narrowly defined concept of grammatical competence. Therefore, Hymes (1974) introduced the idea of 'communicative competence." This has become generally defined as 'the socially appropriate use of language" (Paulston, 1992).

Competence means skills or abilities that enable a person to solve a problem, and cannot be observed directly. Performance is the behaviour, e.g. the answer that is given, and can be observed [4, p. 97].

There is such confusion and debate concerning the concept of ‘competence’ that it is impossible to identify or impute a coherent theory or to arrive at a definition capable of accommodating and reconciling all the different ways that the term is used (Elleström, 1997; Robotham and Jubb, 1996). This terminological confusion often reflects conflation of distinct concepts and inconsistent usage of terms as much as different cultural traditions. However, some differences are attributable to different epistemological assumptions (Pate, Martin and Robertson, 2003) and the rationale for the use of competence often determines the definition (Hoffman, 1999). As Norris (1991) argued, ‘as tacit understandings of the word competence have been overtaken by the need to define precisely and to operationalise concepts, the practical has become shrouded in theoretical confusion and the apparently simple has become profoundly complicated’. Describing competence as a ‘fuzzy concept’, Boon and van der Klink (2002) nonetheless acknowledge it as a ‘useful term, bridging the gap between education and job requirements’. Different cultural contexts influence the understanding of competence (Cseh, 2003) and this is especially important in relation to the extent to which competence is defined bycultural literacy involving group identities such as race, gender, age and class (ascription), as opposed to demonstrable behaviour (achievement) [3, p. 20].

The difficulty of using competence as an overarching term as well as a specific one is demonstrated by the tautological definition provided by Dooley (2004): ‘Competency-based behavioural anchors are defined as performance capabilities needed to demonstrate knowledge, skill and ability (competency) acquisition’. According to this construction, competency is a sub-set of itself [2, p. 90].

Mangham (1986) noted that competence may relate to personal models, outcome models or education and training models, as well as to the standards approach in which benchmarking criteria are used. Mansfield (2004) similarly contrasts three different usages of competence: outcomes (vocational standards describing what people need to be able to do in employment); tasks that people do (describing what currently happens); and personal traits or characteristics (describing what people are like).

Weinert (1999) lists nine different ways in which competence has been defined or interpreted: general cognitive ability; specialized cognitive skills; competence-performance model; modified competence-performance model; objective and subjective self-concepts; motivated action tendencies; action competence; key competencies; meta-competencies.

White (1959) is credited with having introduced the term competence to describe those personality characteristics associated with superior performance and high motivation. Postulating a relationship between cognitive competence and motivational action tendencies, White defined competence as an ‘effective interaction (of the individual) with the environment’ and arguing that there is a ‘competence motivation’ in addition to competence as ‘achieved capacity’. Theory building in this area has argued that an individual’s system of knowledge and beliefs, formed through experience with their own competence and achievement, influences subsequent performance through expectations, attitudes and interpretation [5, p. 105].

A distinction can be made between objective competence (performance and potential performance measured with standard tests) and subjective competence (assessment of abilities and skills needed to master tasks and solve problems relevant to performance) (Sternberg and Kolligian, 1990). Stäudel (1987) further divides subjective competence into three components [5, p. 110]:

- Heuristic competence (generalized expectancy system concerning the effectiveness of one’s abilities across different situations);

- Epistemological competence (beliefs and confidence that one posses domain specific skills and knowledge to master tasks and problems within a specific content domain - domain specific self-concept).

- Actualized competence (momentary subjective self-confidence that one possesses the abilities, knowledge and skills believed necessary for success in a concrete learning or performance situation) [3, p. 48].

- Action competence includes all the cognitive, motivational and social prerequisites for successful learning and application and has been used to analyse the conditions for success in meeting task goals.

Action competence as used by Boyatzis (1982) in defining management competence, includes intellectual abilities, content-specific knowledge, cognitive skills, domainspecific strategies, routines and sub-routines, motivational tendencies, volitional control systems, personal value orientations, and social behaviours into a complex system that specifies what is required to meet the demands of a particular role (Lévy-Leboyer, 1996).

Key competences are context-independent, applicable and effective across different institutional settings, occupations and tasks. These typically include basal competences, such as literacy, numeracy, general education; methodological competences, like problem solving, skills; communication skills, including writing and presentation skills; and judgment competences, such as critical thinking [4, p. 88].

Meta-competence is concerned with an individual’s knowledge of their own intellectual strengths and weaknesses, how to apply skills and knowledge in various task situations and how to acquire missing competences (Nelson and Narens, 1990). These include skills in planning, initiating, monitoring and evaluating one’s own cognitive processes; experience and knowledge about different task difficulties; knowledge about learning and problem solving; skills in using effective cognitive aids and tools, such as graphics and analogies. Often also described as generic and over-arching, (Reynolds and Snell, 1988), meta-competences typically include ‘learning to learn’ (Nuthall, 1999; Nyhan, 1991) and ‘coping with uncertainty’ (Brown, 1994). Drawing on the work of Burgoyne (1989) and Kanugo and Misra (1992), Brown (1993) defines meta-competences as ‘higher-order abilities which have to do with being able to learn, adapt, anticipate and create, rather than with being able to demonstrate that one has the ability to do’. The common theme with such lists of meta-competencies is that they relate t the cognitivе aspects of work, especially with the processes of learning and reflection that are critical to developing new mental models (Burgoyne and Stewart, 1976; Hyland, 1992; Kolb, 1986; Linstead, 1991; Nordhaug, 1993) [5, p. 115].

In summary, then, if intellectual capabilities are required to develop knowledge and operationalising knowledge is part of developing skills, all are prerequisites to developing competence, along with other social and attitudinal factors. Weinert (2001), for example, lists a range of dimensions held to influence an individual’s degree of competency: ability, knowledge, understanding, skill, action, experience, motivation.

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