Competence and use
المؤلف:
Muriel Saville-Troike
المصدر:
Introducing Second Language Acquisition
الجزء والصفحة:
C5P142
2025-11-18
29
Competence and use
The definition of communicative competence introduced in Chapter 5 is broadly inclusive in scope: “everything that a speaker needs to know in order to communicate appropriately within a particular community.” This construct combines the knowledge of language which defines linguistic competence, knowledge of the specific components and levels of a language, and knowledge that is required for their appropriate use in communicative activities. Accounting for competence in this broader sense also requires considering “encyclopedic” cultural knowledge concerning the content of what is written or talked about, and recognizing the social significance of the context within which language use takes place. Knowledge of culture includes content, context, and linguistic elements in important respects, as well as an understanding of the wider societal structures and practices that influence norms and conventions of language interpretation and usage. The relationship of these domains is represented in Figure 6.1.
The ability to use language appropriately includes pragmatic competence. This can be defined as what people must know in order to interpret and convey meaning within communicative situations: knowledge that accounts for “the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication” (Crystal 1997a :301).
The relationship of knowledge among domains of content, context, culture, language form and structure, and language use is dynamic, inter active, and constitutive. It would be a mistake to think of language use merely as the product of the other domains, since use plays an essential role in their very creation, maintenance, and change.
The knowledge that an L2 learner begins with includes everything that he or she has previously acquired as part of his or her general cognitive development and prior social experience, as well as in his or her acquisition of L1. This prior knowledge partly explains the advantages that older L2 learners such as college students typically have over children in expressing and understanding the information content of L2 writing and speech, in perceiving writer/speaker intent, and in fulfilling interactional and instrumental goals of communication. It also accounts in part for the interference which may occur when prior knowledge of content, context, and culture (as well as L1 linguistic elements) is inappropriately applied to situations of L2 use.
This chapter addresses aspects of communicative competence from the perspectives of the three basic questions which have organized this book. We focus here particularly on what knowledge of language is required for different types of language use, how activities in L2 reading, listening, writing, and speaking are achieved, and why learners reach different levels of proficiency in language use.
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
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