English Teaching Methods 2 – 08/03/2019

Methadological Era

Conceptionalizon Communicative Competence Hymes communicative competence did have main components which are

  1. Possibility
  2. Feasibliltiy
  3. Acceptibality
  4. Appropriatenes

In the original conceptiulzation by

Canale and Swein: They stick to the conceptituzaliton by Hymes but they updated it to some extend. They stated that there are 4 components,

  1. Grammatical Competence: It refers to the knowledge of all linguistic units including syntax, semantics, lexicology, phonology, grammar. All the linguistic code features make up the grammatical competence.
  2. Socio-Linguistic Competence: We refer to knowledge of contextually appropriate language use. We should be able to making/using sentences in the right context and with the right accuracy. We acquire this competence at the same time with the grammatical competence. Especially significant, in order to make and receive and make sense of illocutionary sentences we use grammatical and socio-linguistic competence.
  3. Discourse Competence: Discourse is the largest meaningful object of the language. Any discourse is coherent and makes it is coherent and cohesion. Cohesion is achieved in the context, it is unity of the text such as when a person utters a illocutionary sentence and the other one gets the message that means that there is cohesion.Coherence is mainly about relationship among the utterances such as how they are bind together. Coherence and cohesion are the main elements of what makes a discourse a discourse. They help us to understand utterances in a discourse by connecting them together. Discourse competence refers to knowledge of achieving coherence and cohesion.
  4. Strategic Competence: More about communication stragetigs that we use to keep the conversation nor communication more effective to avoid misıunderstaning or six the misundetstahings or two avoid comuıncation breakdown or fix it. It is not about second language bu it is about language in general. If you for example just paraphrase your main points to make the conversation possibility go on, than this is a communication strategy. These are more about repairing or making the communication go on. Without this competence the communication will be blocked, won’t go smoothly or experience breakdowns. For example when you say something but the receiver doesn’t understand you try to convey the same message in a different way and this is a communicative strategy, too. Circumlocution* is defining a word in a different way to express it.

Canale and Swein takes feasibility as something as universal, excluding it from communicative competence and saying that we acquire it naturally, it is given.

We expect to main things in the classroom,

  • We as teachers need to do activities or teaching practices which aim to increase four of all these compteneecties but some of the activities my focus on various activities at the same time but when there’s an increase in one of the competences we expect to see increase in other ones too. If only one competency is invested all the time and the others are ignored , awe can’t say the same thing of course.

If we compare this with Hymes’, there similarities and differences

  1. GC is similar to Possibility
  2. SLC is similar to Appropriateness
  3. DC isn’t similar to Feasiblility
  4. DC is a part of Appropriateness and Acceptibaliyty


CLT expects teachers to make meaningful activities and situations.


Celee-Murcia (1995)

  1. Linguistic Competence:
  2. Sociocultural Competence: The cultural background knowledge needed to interpret and use a language effectively.
  3. Actional Competence:
  4. Discourse Competence: –
  5. Strategic Competence: –

2 + 3 = Sociolinguistic Competence

Common European Framework for Languages

  1. Linguistic Competence:
  2. Sociolinguistic Competence:
  3. Pragmatic Competence: Combines discourse competence and strategic competence.

Celce-Murcia (2008)

  1. L
  2. S
  3. D
  4. S
  5. Formulaic Competence: Knowledge of those faces and orefactivated chucks of language that speakers use heavily in everyday interactions, such as routines, collocations, idioms, and lexical frames. Referring to the knowledge of those frequently used chucks or utterances without necessarily grammatical elements which enables you to survive in basic manners.
  6. Interactional Competence
    1. Actional Competence:
    2. Conversational Competence:
    3. Non-verbal/paralinguistic competence:

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