Kassymova G.M., associate professor

Kazakh Leading Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Almaty(Kazakhstan)

The content of communicative competence in the frame of future specialists’ foreign language education

In the conditions of Kazakhstani triple language policy a great attention is given to learning English language as a way of successful integration of future specialists into a global economics. Such attitude to English language is well-grounded because an acquiring a foreign language opens to future specialists quite new perspectives in their professional development.

The changing of status of English language makes us study deeper the essence and content of communicative competence in order to improve the existing system and methods of foreign language education and work out a new one which meets the modern requirements.

As it is known, theory of competence is originally derives from Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance [1]. By competence, Chomsky means the shared knowledge of ideal speaker-listener set in a completely homogeneous speech community. Such underlying knowledge enables a user of language to produce and understand an infinite set of sentences out of a finite set of rules. The transformational grammar provides for an explicit account of this tacit knowledge of language structure, which is usually not conscious but is necessary implicit.

Performance, on the other hand, is concerned with the process of applying the underlying knowledge to the actual language use, commonly stated as encoding and decoding. But because performance can never directly reflect competence except under the ideal circumstances (ideal speaker-listener know and use language perfectly without making mistakes), performance cannot be relevant to a linguistic theory for descriptive linguists.

Later on Hymes finds Chomsky’s distinction of competence and performance too narrow to describe language behavior as a whole [2]. Hymes believes that Chomsky’s view of competence is too idealized to describe actual language behavior, and therefore his view of performance is an incomplete reflection of competence. Hymes points out that the theory does not account for sociocultural factors or differential competence in a heterogeneous speech community. Hymes maintains that social life affects not only outward performance, but also inner competence itself. He argues that social factors interfere with or restrict grammar use because the rules are dominant over the rules of grammar.

Hymes deems it necessary to distinguish two kinds of competence “linguistic competence” that deals with producing and understanding grammatically correct sentences, and “communicative competence” that deals with producing and understanding sentences that appropriate and acceptable to a particular situation. Thus Hymes coins a term “communicative competence” and defines it as a knowledge of the rules for understanding and producing both the referential and social meaning of language.

Close to Hymes position on language learning there is Widdowson’s views language learning which is not merely as acquiring the knowledge of the rules of grammar, but also as acquiring the ability to use language to communicate [3]. He says that knowing a language is more than how to understand, speak, read, and write sentences, but how sentences are used to communicate.

Widdowsons’s idea seems to be influenced by Hime’s thought that children acquire not only the knowledge of grammar, but also the knowledge of sociocultural rules such as when to speak, when not to speak, what to talk about whom and in what manner, at the same time as they acquire knowledge of grammatical rules. So Widdowson strongly suggests that we need to teach communicative competence along with linguistic competence.

To make the discussion of teaching both linguistic and communicative competence clear, Widdowson distinguishes two aspects of performance: “usage” and “use”. He explains that “usage” makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules, whereas “use” makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his ability to use his knowledge of linguistic rules for effective communication.

Thus acquisition of linguistic competence is involved in use. Widdowson suggests that the classroom presentation of language must ensure the acquisition of both kinds of competence by providing linguistic and communicative contexts. Linguistic context focuses on usage to enable the students to select which form of sentence is contextually appropriate, while communicative context focuses on use to enable the students to recognize the type of communicative function their sentences fulfill [3].

Canale and Swain also believe that the sociological work of Hymes is important to the development of a communicative approach to language learning. Their work focuses on interaction of social context, grammar and meaning (more precisely, social meaning). They strongly believe that the study of grammatical competence is essential to the study of communicative competence as is the study of sociolinguistic competence. Furthermore, they point out that no communicative competence theorists have devoted any detailed attention to communicative strategies that speakers employ to handle breakdowns in communication. Examples of communication breakdowns include false starts, hesitations and other performance factors, avoiding grammatical forms that have not been fully mastered, addressing strangers when unsure of their social status, and keeping the communicative channel open. They consider such strategies to be important aspects of communicative competence that must be integrated with other components [4].

Canale and Swane propose their own theory of communicative competence that minimally includes three main competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

Jakobovits L.A., whose points of view coincide with Hyme’s ones also distinguishes four aspects in the content of communicative competence: paralinguistic, kinetic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic components. At the same time the content of communicative competence doesn’t include grammatical knowledge [5].

Bachman L.F. represents in his works another description of communicative competence content, including language, discourse, speech, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, strategic and intelligent components [6].

The complex and multi aspect nature of communicative competence is observed in all definitions, given above. As it shown a great attention is given to sociological and psychological aspects of teaching a foreign language. Therefore we decided to apply the researches on communication in Psychology and Sociology. For example, Emeljanov U.N and Petrovskaja L.A. have investigated not only the essence and content of communicative competence but also the ways of its transforming into personal quality. Emeljanov U.N considers, that a real communication combines two integrated but at the same time different levels: exterior, behavioral, operational – technical level and inner, deeper level touching personal- meaningful formations and playing dominant role toward behavior level [7].

Petrovskaja L.A. considers competence in communication as a competence in a personal interaction. As communicative competence is realized in concrete social conditions of communication (communicative sphere, situation, status of communicators and their roles), it is socially dependent on. Development of grown-up people’ communicative competence means two sides process: on one hand it is an acquiring some new knowledge, skills, habits and experience, and on the hand it is a constant process of correction, changing the existing ones [8].

In social psychology the notion of “communicative competence” is understood as an ability to establish and support necessary contacts with other people. Taking into account the complexity of communicative competence provides effective communicative process.

Thus, a thorough analysis of linguistic, social and psychological literary sources showed, that for realizing Kazakhstani triple language policy it is necessary to form future specialists’ communicative competence, based not only on language knowledge and skills, but also on definite social, psychological and sociocultural skills, the possession of which allows them to orientate and adapt quickly to the constantly changing conditions of labor market and successfully integrate into new societies.

To our mind, the system of modern foreign language education needs an integration of language, social, psychological disciplines, working out and conducting special courses, workshops and trainings, teaching future specialists to communication.

The list of used literature

1 Chomsky, N. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press., 1965

2 Hymes, D. ‘On communicative competence’. In J.B. Pride and J. Holman, eds. Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972

3 Widdowson, H.G. “The Teaching of English as Communication” in Brumfit and Johnson 1972

4 Michael Canale and Merril Swain. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing.// Applied linguistics, Vol.1, No.1, Pp1-47

5Jakobovits, L.A. Foreign language learning. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.1970

6 Bachman L.F. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford University Press 1990.

7 Emeljanov U.N. Active social and psychological teaching (monograph) – L., 1985-162Pp.

8 Petrovskaya L.F. Competence in communication. – М., 1989.- 216Pp.