COMMUNICATIVE COMPENTENCY IN ENGLISH IS THE GOLDEN KEY FOR

SUCCESS IN THE GLOBAL ARENA

Communicative competence is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's

grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social

knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.

The term was coined by Dell Hymes in 1966, reacting against the perceived inadequacy of

Noam Chomsky's (1965) distinction between competence and performance.To address

Chomsky's abstract notion of competence, Hymes undertook ethnographic exploration of

communicative competence that included "communicative form and function in integral

relation to each other" (Leung, 2005).[3] The approach pioneered by Hymes is now known as

the ethnography of communication.

1.grammatical competence: words and rules

2.sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness

3.discourse competence: cohesion and coherence

4.strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into the

broad headings of

This includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence .

This includes both sociolinguistic and "illocutionary" competence.

Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely accepted

that communicative competence should be the goal of language education, central to good

classroom practice.[6] This is in contrast to previous views in which grammatical competence

was commonly given top priority. The understanding of communicative competence has been

influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts

as described in large part by John Searle and J.L. Austin.

Business Communication Competencies Needed by Employees as Perceived by Business

Faculty and Business Professionals

Implementation of total quality management and continuous process improvement require

validation of competencies by an institution's customers. This study was designed to

determine if business faculty and business professionals perceive

(a) business writing skills

(b) oral/interpersonal skills

(c) basic English skills

(d) other business

communication abilities with the same degree of importance.

Four one-way analyses of variance revealed no significant difference between 35 business

professionals and 30 business faculty concerning the four areas.

However, when the 50 competencies within the four areas were ranked, some visible

differences occurred in using the telephone and intercom, asking questions, and applying

confidentiality.

The increased emphasis toward total quality education, student and faculty accountability,

and outcome-based education require evaluation and validation of the content of the

undergraduate business communication course.

During the past six years, Central Missouri State University (Central), a mid-sized regional

institution, has adopted a new educational paradigm, Continuous Process Improvement (CPI).

This paradigm espouses many of the principles of the total quality management (TQM)

movement which is currently prevalent in business and industry. Two of several principles

common to CPI and TQM include (a) explicitly stated outcomes (b) that have been validated

by the organizations customers. Prospective employers and faculty members who are part of

this study are some of the university's customers; others include students and alumni.

We have an extremely memorable sympathetic story on the case that the fourth Indonesia

President Abdurrahman Wahid was entering the Indonesia Presidential Palace in his first day

as Indonesian President with wearing his luxurious very expensive presidential coat, but he

was leaving the palace in a political eviction with only have sufficient time to wear his

disheveled undershorts . We indeed will not questioning the case of because all of Indonesian

knew that the apprehensive sympathetic case was originated by the failure of communication.

Abdurrahman Wahid was previously stated that Indonesia Parliament (members) just look

like Taman Kanak-Kanak (Kinder Garden). Most of the parliament members offended and

then intercepted all kaind of the president policies therefore he fallen and dislodged from the

presidential throne.

Therfore communication competency is very essential for the success in the golden arena.

Failures in various domains of life, in business, educational, health or political, can be traced

to communication problems or what is commonly termed miscommunication .

Miscommunication does not mean that communication has not happened; rather, “it means

that often the meanings that communicators create in response to messages sent to them are

very different from the meanings that were intended” (Kreps and Thornton, 1992:7).

In political arena, one remarkable miscommunication took place when the word mokusatsu

was interpreted by the US authority in World War II.

This Japanese word was a response of the Japanese to the ultimatum of the Allies asking

the Japanese to surrender. The US authority took it more or less as “to ignore” (“we do not

care”) or “to treat with silent contempt” instead of the more appropriate meaning, “do not

give a comment until a decision is made,” or “We will comply with your ultimatum without

further notice” as intended by the Japanese (see also Smith, 1993:55; Jandt, 2004:155).

This misinterpretation probably led to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by

the US in August 1945.

If miscommunication could lead to fatal danger, it could also create the same danger in the

health care. Specifically, it may lead to the death of patients.

It is worth noting that decisions to be made by health care providers must be based on

messages provided by the clients, colleagues, and other members of the health care team.

Their interpretation of the patient’s condition and symptoms resulted from blood test, X-

rays or CAT-scan will be risky if it is misleading. In Indonesia, for example, there have been

some cases where the misinterpretation of patients’ symptoms by physicians led them to give

inappropriate drugs that made the patients get worse or even die.

Communication is said to be effective if the results of communication fits the purpose of

the communicators, whether to inform, to entertain, to persuade, to induce action, or to settle

a problem.

Communication among those involved in Information Technology based

Telecommunication is effective if it fits the expectation of the communication participants

(machine makers/ programmers, computer users, telecommunication network users, and

certainly all other stakeholders)

Since the need to an effective communication in our day to day life is inevitable at this

globalized world, learning communication is thus not only important but also will bridging

our self to be effectively relate to others who have their cultural diversities which differ from

us.

Yet merely understanding people from different cultures will help us to understand not

only their cultures but also their feeling, their wants, and their thought and or ideas, therefore

communication in the other word can be nicknamed as A Golden Bridge To A Better

Sociocultural Life.

I indeed think that human being are really communication being, just as Samovar suggest

that we can not not communicate (Samovar, 1982).

Communication is a culture and culture is communication (Samovar,1991). A well-known

anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1976) divides culture into high-context cultures characterized

by high-context communication (messages) and low-context culture characterized by low-

context communication (messages). People living in high context-cultures (most countries in

Asia, Africa, and Latin America and some countries in Southern Europe) communicate

implicitly, relying much on nonverbal symbols and behaviors, including facial expression,

tone of voice, and even silence. While, they often hide their feelings to maintain rapport with

others, people living in low-context cultures (North America, North Europe, Australia, New

Zealand) are blunt and straightforward to make statements. They say what they mean and

mean what they say.

Deddy Mulyana argued that it is not only no doubt but really true that our culture must

contain biases that may inhibit our communication with others. We have to keep some

distance from our own culture by “living in other cultures,” by putting ourselves on their

shoes not on our shoes. We can only see our own culture clearly from some distance. Samuel

Johnson, an English writer in the eighteenth century believed that he would understand his

country much better when he stood in another’ culture, or in the words of the French

philosopher Jean Baudrillard, “To open our eyes to the absurdity of our own customs is the

charm and benefit of travel” (Schneider and Barsoux, 1997:10).The crux of the problem is

that most people are not aware of the importance of suspending their judgment of other

cultures before exploring their own culture so that they can clearly see the positive as well as

the negative aspects of their culture, an attitude characterized by understanding and empathy

that may enable them to more just and tolerant toward other

Refer to the previous two dictums, we can conclude that culture and communication are

likely as the two sides of the same coin. There is no communication unless it is characterized

as culture bound; and no culture wherever it arised and developed by its embracers entity

unless it is the product of communication pratices.

This is a wise statement I got from my teachers that the “best conclusion of a speech is that

the speaker pleasing the audiences to make their own conclusion based on their sociocultural

and or personal perception”. I am however will regardly propose that mastering properly

communication competency is inevitably to all of us, whatever our field of profession, indeed

that we are telecommunication engineers. The main aspect which should be our concern in

mastering communication competencies are the content we have to construct logically in term

of our academic and professional disciplinary, and the relation in which way we have to

deliver our constructive communication contents to other.

communication is culture bound, and the key aspect of the sociocultural behavior we have to

compete is empathetic competency. In the other simpler word, best communicator must be

the most empathic person, therewith communicator (you and me) try and try to endeavor and

finally master the competency of understanding other rather than wanting to be understood.

And, the highest empathetic understanding will be occured when we get a perfect

understanding on whatever we did not understand about others and in whatever and why the

others did not understand about us.