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From Communicative Competence to Language Awareness:An Outline of Language Teaching Principles

MANUEL SINOR Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta

This essay offers a critical review of some key theoretical issues relevant tosecond language acquisition and considers the practical implications of these issues onlanguage teaching. The discussion advocates a renewed communicative approach tolanguage pedagogy, which entails the educators’ readiness to act as teacher-researchers,their cautious considerations of individual learner differences, their familiarity with somedefining aspects of human learning, and their willingness to encourage the learners’discovery of formal language properties in a reflective and autonomous manner.

1 Introduction This essay reviews some of the key theoretical notions associated with second languageacquisition and considers the pedagogical relevance of these notions. In order to relate thediscussion to the practicalities of language teaching, we refer to the hypothetical case often adult learners of English, freshly arrived from Japan for a six-month course at aCanadian language school. These learners have earned their title of “mature students” notonly from their middle age range, but also because their country’s Foreign Office selectedthem for their motivation to study English in Canada. Despite this promising background,two burning questions haunt the teacher: “how good is their English?” and “how muchcan I hope to improve it?”.

We attempt to address these common concerns in light of contemporary theoryof second language acquisition, by successively discussing the prevailing communicativeapproach to second language proficiency, the individuality of language learners, andsome defining characteristics of the language learning process.

2 Selecting an adequate monitoring frameworkThe preoccupation of our fictitious teacher with the current and future proficiency of herstudents calls for a suitable model of the knowledge and performance that second learnersshould aim for. This model may in turn serve as a set of references against which toassess the strengths and weaknesses of the students throughout the course.

Whether or not such a framework should equate the target knowledge andperformance of the learners with “what native speakers know and know how to do”(Archibald & Libben, 1995, p. 91), it seems reasonable to expect that the learners willwant to do more with their second language than just produce grammatical sentences.Beyond linguistic correctness, it is comprehensibility and appropriateness of language

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use that the learners should strive for. Such mention of the communicative nature oflanguage use may seem a truism, but Hymes’s (1971) original description of“communicative competence” reminds us of the multiple and potentially complex skillsthat await language learners:

knowing when it is appropriate to open a conversation, and how, whattopics are appropriate to particular speech events, which forms ofaddress are to be used, to whom and in which situations, and how suchspeech acts as greetings, compliments, apologies, invitations andcomplements are to be given, interpreted and responded to.

(Hymes 1971, cited in Wolfson & Judd 1983, p. 61)

The apparently tall order expressed by such a description has not preventedcommunicative competence from becoming a tenet of second language education theory.As a result, a majority of language educators and applied linguists nowadays agree thatlanguage learners should not only seek to master the formal properties of their targetlanguage (i.e., phonology, morphology, syntax) but also the conditions in which theseproperties operate in human interaction. This general consensus applies to methods ofboth language teaching (Boas, 2001; Matsura, Chiba & Hilderbrandt, 2001; Lowe, 2002;Olivares & Lemberger, 2002; inter alia) and language testing (Zhou & Gao, 1998;Fulcher, 2000; Airola, 2001).

Yet, a number of curricula and recruitment procedures put in place by theindustry of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) have been suspected not toimplement the communicative paradigm that they claim to embrace. Such inadequacieshave been reported in connection with the assessment of spoken interaction skills (Wiyun& Young, 1998; Jacoby & McNamara, 1999) as well as with the design of TESLtextbooks (Clarke, 1989; Kitao, Yoshida, Kawamura, Kitao, Yoshida & Kurata, 1988;Parry, 2000). In this context, our hypothetical scenario plausibly involves anadministrative decision, made prior to the course, to allocate the ten incoming students to“beginning”, “intermediate” and “advanced” groups on the exclusive basis of writtenproficiency tests. An assessment of this kind, although it may facilitate the work of theschool’s administrator, runs the risk of inspiring contradictory interpretations by thestudents and the teacher. Such proficiency labels may indeed refer to the results ofmultiple-choice questionnaires that are likely to fall short of assessing the learners’communicative abilities (see Paxton, 2000).

The committed educator, who seeks to strengthen such abilities, may thereforewish to consider a framework of student monitoring that stays more accurately faithful tothe communicative paradigm, not only at the stage of preliminary testing, but throughoutthe course. The search for such a framework will lead the teacher-researcher to variousdescriptions of the components of communicative competence. Given the multiplicity ofthese accounts (see Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991 and Ellis, 1994 for review), we shallrestrict our attention to Bachman’s (1990) model of communicative competence, whichhas emerged as perhaps the most adapted to the teaching and testing of second languageskills.

Although some authors have accused the communicative framework toundermine the role of grammatical skills in language learning (e.g., Lo, Tsang & Wong,2000; Kwolek, 2000), Bachman (1990) recognizes the importance of the “languagecompetence” subset of communicative competence (ibid., p. 84). He thus carefullyexamines the learners’ abilities to handle formal linguistic structures in sentences, texts,and conversations (ibid., p. 87 ff.). A complementary and equally important subset of hismodel, “strategic competence” (ibid., p. 100 ff.), incorporates the communicative andlearning strategies that second language learners are known to develop in order tomaximize their interaction skills in the target language. Communicative strategies refer to

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a wide range of ploys, such as word avoidance or paraphrase, which learners use toprevent potential interruptions in dialogues with native speakers (see also Tarone, 1981).As for learning strategies, they answer the long-term desire to fill gaps in one’sknowledge of the second language, and thus include various plans of action such as self-monitoring, inductive rule learning, or the cooperation with other students (see alsoO’Malley & Chamot, 1990).

In light of this picture of second language learning, the teacher’s communicativesyllabus should benefit from a systematic consideration of the strategic as well aslinguistic aspects of her students’ performance. For example, if one of the tasks of hercurriculum requires students to simulate a job interview, attention should not only be paidto the overall grammaticality of the students’ discourses, but also to their strategiccapacity for keeping the interaction flowing and for proposing specific ways to enhancetheir own interaction skills. These strategic considerations are all the more relevant to ourlearners of interest, whose high motivation could encourage advised consultation ofBachman’s strategic module as a self-rating tool.

Ultimately, through its concern for the breadth and width of second languageproficiency and its particular focus on problem-solving strategies, Bachman’s (1990)model should help teachers to refine their communicative assessment of learnerproficiency at a given time, as well as over time. And yet, this picture seems incomplete.Our outline of communicative competence may provide a good starting point formonitoring the communicative needs, goals and abilities of second language learners but,as it stands, it offers limited insights into the individuality of each language learner.

3 Acknowledging the individuality of the language learner

There are several reasons why a language teacher should acknowledge the individualityin which a learner approaches the language tasks at hand and, more generally, thelanguage learning process.

From a communicative point of view, learning goals are bound to vary from onelearner to another and so a teacher, whenever possible, should try to take these individualmotivations into consideration. From a cognitive point of view, speaker-specificperformance patterns–notably, but not exclusively, linguistic errors–suggest that alearner’s knowledge of the target language is a complete system, independent from theknowledge of a native speaker or of another learner. This suggestion has led Selinker(1972) to introduce the notion of “interlanguage”, which refers to the constant mentalreorganization of a learner’s own version of the language. Other insights into thecognitive uniqueness of each language learner come from the vast area of secondlanguage acquisition research concerned with individual learner differences, such as age,language aptitude, motivation, personality, or brain hemisphere specialization (seeLarsen-Freeman & Young, 1991 for review).

Yet, language teachers who are conscientious enough to take account of(observable) individual differences between their pupils should make sure not tooverestimate these peculiarities. The main ground for such prudence is that the impact ofpersonal characteristics on language performance remains in many cases unsettled in theliterature. For example, the idea that there may be an age factor in second languageacquisition has long been and continues to be controversial (cf. Singleton, 2000 forreview). It follows that the middle age range of our hypothetical learners may notnecessarily impede on their linguistic achievements. The role of a learner’s sociologicalbackground should also not be given more importance than it deserves. Let us bear inmind that the communicative view of language learners as decision-makers goes hand inhand with the argument that personal choices are goal-driven, rather than governed bynorms. This argument, in turn, forbids any deterministic emphasis on the sociologicalbackground of second language learners (Widdowson 1983, p. 7). In the present case,

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therefore, the possible reticence of Japanese learners towards conversational training inEnglish (Boxer, 1993; Kurita, 1994) should not be deemed inevitable.

Similarly, excessive reference to a learner’s errors may be of limited relevanceto our preferred approach to language learning. Among the problems encountered by theerror analysis studies conducted in the 1970s (see, e.g., Hammarberg, 1979; Yavas,1980), there is the failure to detect cases where learners deliberately avoid certainlinguistic structures (Archibald & Libben, 1995, p. 152). In fact, such avoidances areworth considering as communicative strategies, according to the working framework thatwe have borrowed from Bachman (1990). Let us, therefore, briefly return to this model tosee how it may highlight the individuality of learner performance on a communicativerather than strictly linguistic level.

As we have seen, communicative strategies available to language learners can beconsidered as ploys “to compensate for breakdowns in communication due toperformance variables or to insufficient competence” (Canale & Swain 1980, p. 30). Thestrength of this definition is that it implies the uniqueness of both the learners’ responsesto language-related difficulties and their readiness to address rather than avoidcommunicative difficulties. This being said, teachers who are equally concerned with thestudents’ performance of language learning tasks as with their ability to handle thehazards of communication may find the compensatory acception of the term “strategy”somewhat restrictive (see McDonough 1995, p. 5). We may recall, in this regard, thatBachman’s understanding of strategic competence further involves the proactive use oflearning strategies, whereby learners develop personal communicative devices tooptimize their use of the target language.

By reemphasizing this interaction between the students’ effective use of thesecond language (communicative strategies) and regular upgrading of theircommunicative repertoire (learning strategies), we gain a better sense of the learners’individuality. More specifically, the development of the overall strategic ability proves tocoincide with the students’ growing control of their own learning (Little 1996, p. 10).This dynamic approach to the notion of communicative competence in turn highlights theimportance of “learner autonomy”, defined by Little (1991, p. 4) as “a capacity fordetachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action”. Inevitably, theresulting learner-driven conception of language pedagogy should lead teachers to reflectmore closely on the dynamics of second language acquisition.

4 Considering the nature of second language acquisitionThe cognitive processes involved in second language acquisition should be of directinterest to language educators, since their role is to create an environment that makessuch processes more effective. In this context, and so as to further promote the value ofthe teacher-researcher mindset, we outline below some concepts associated with acognitive view of language learning known as information-processing (Anderson, 1980;McLaughlin, Rossman & McLeod, 1983). Other cognitive approaches could have beendiscussed, notably the increasingly influential paradigm of connectionism (see Gasser,1990; Ellis, 1998). But, given the scope of this paper, the following should providesufficient insights into the learners’ distinct abilities to register and utilize language-related information.

Perhaps the most evocative terminology to express this distinction is thedeclarative vs. procedural dichotomy, whereby “declarative knowledge” refers to theconscious and reportable access to the facts, and “procedural knowledge” refers to the useof these facts for performing actions (Anderson 1995, p. 308). These contrastivedefinitions raise two theoretical challenges, which both have pedagogical repercussions.

The first challenge consists in stating how many types of knowledge exist in thehuman mind and how they interact at the declarative and procedural levels (Multhaup1997, p. 77). This problem is, of course, far from solved. But its very existence reminds

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us that, in any situation of language use, communicative competence not only involvesknowledge of the target language, but also the ability to use this knowledge along withother types of information such as the understanding of one’s conversationalenvironment. Consequently, an awareness of the declarative-procedural contrast shouldencourage teachers not to overstress the transmission and evaluation of grammaticalskills to the detriment of other communicative skills. Suppose that our fictitious andpresumably business-minded students are asked to give presentations of differenteconomic regions of Japan. While the formal register of this communicative task shouldencourage phonological accuracy, the wide range of semantic domains involved by suchdiscussions is also likely to activate the multiple communicative abilities of the learner.The teacher should therefore not only evaluate the fluency of the students’ pronunciationbut also their propensity to interact with an Anglophone audience or to draw parallelsbetween Japanese facts and local, Canadian realities.

We now turn to the second theoretical and pedagogically relevant issue relatedto the declarative and procedural aspects of second language competence (or knowledge).The question here is whether learning requires that the declarative part of suchcompetence become procedural, or vice versa. In either case, the conceptual interfacebetween the declarative and procedural components of second language competence mayprove to be the key to successful learning. Let us consider what this missing link mightbe.

If we assume that declarative knowledge becomes procedural, then languagelearning consists of making increased usage of linguistic facts, (e.g., the canonicalsubject-verb-object structure of English sentences), until this information becomesengrained to the point of being automatically activated in real conversation (cf. Anderson,1980; Spolsky, 1989). Practice thus becomes the sine qua non for the ultimateroutinization of language skills, that is, fluency. Some may even argue that practice laysat the heart of a permanent restructuring in the learner’s internal representations of thelanguage being learnt (McLaughlin, 1990).

If, however, it is the procedural knowledge of the target language that needs tobecome declarative for learning to occur, then we must consider the developmental pathsof learners capable of using certain linguistic forms, but having trouble identifying thestructural patterns that underlie these forms. Thus, one of our hypothetical (and decidedlyless than ideal) students may easily produce direct questions such as “do you missOsaka?”, but fail to construct other ones, such as “have you seen that film?” or “will theyleave?”. While such a deficiency may be due to a lack of procedural, practice-basedknowledge of interrogation in English, it is also imputable to a lack of the declarative(i.e., conscious, reportable and extendable) knowledge that direct questions call for theinsertion of an auxiliary verb such as do, have or will.

Clearly, instilling a new balance between this learner’s procedural anddeclarative knowledge of interrogative sentences requires that he become able toexplicitly describe the relevant features of English grammar: direct questions, auxiliaries,and so forth. Metalinguistic awareness, or “language awareness”, defined as the ability to“think about language” (Gnutzmann 1997, pp.69-70), thus becomes the missing elementin our picture of second language learning. Incidentally, it is this same awareness whichmay enable Japanese learners of English interrogatives to overcome the potentialinterference of their native subject-object-verb syntax (see Odlin, 1990; Takashima,1992).

The above two scenarios concerning the dynamics of procedural and declarativeknowledge are in fact reconcilable, if we assume that every learner combines interactiveabilities for both the analysis and the fluent usage of language (Bialystok, 1988). Thistheoretical twist would seem to support the commonsensical view that practice andlanguage awareness coexist at the heart of successful language development. Suchcompromise would, in turn, shed new light on our learner group. Suppose that the highmotivation of this group does not correlate with high achievement in the target language–

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as is sometimes the case (Au, 1988) and that a substantial proportion of these studentslacks the understanding of how the English system of sounds is organized. More thanever, our teacher’s syllabus should seek to raise the language awareness of such studentswhile attempting to provide them with suitable communicative activities. Thus, back toour presentation task, we could imagine that a component of the teacher’s feedbackfocuses on some pronunciation errors by an individual presenter. But word-by-wordcorrections, even if given after the student’s performance, are less likely to yield long-term improvement than a simple metalinguistic description of some recurring errorpatterns. This description is nothing but a concise yet empathic diagnosis that uses basiclinguistic terminology and an adequate list of symptoms to be remedied through practice.Here is an example: “Good improvement on your vowels Hiro, but you still tend tomisplace syllable stress on long words, as in ecoNOmy instead of eCOnomy”.

More generally, teachers willing to trigger the metalinguistic awareness of theirstudents should seriously consider the kind of linguistic reflection that the students are toengage in. Of course, encouraging learners to think about the English language makessense if we consider that such reflection can reduce the effects of native languageinterference (Odlin, 1990; Tarnopolsky, 2000) or help learners to better evaluate thegrammaticality of a given sentence (Renou, 2001). A whole range of communicativeactivities, including pre-task brainstormings and language-related discussions, can alsoeffectively contribute to this metalinguistic development (Skehan 1998, p.39). But byitself a commitment to such activities brings little to a broadly communicative curriculumalready careful not to neglect the importance of linguistic form. Because our task-based,communicative syllabi intend to fulfil clear behavioral objectives, teachers should notonly encourage a reflection about the formal properties of language, they should alsoinvite students to set themselves linguistic goals that best suit their learning expectationsat a given time. One such learner-specific goal could be the revision of the different waysto express the past in English, along with the semantic, functional nuances that thesedifferent linguistic structures express. Language learners, if they are to act autonomously,should therefore plan, monitor and evaluate their own work in parallel with thecommunicative and language analysis tasks proposed by the teacher. Such expectationscall upon the learners’ use of learning strategies, as outlined earlier within the frameworkof Bachman’s (1990) model.

In sum, language awareness requires more from the learners than contemplatingthe structural properties of their target language, it also entails intellectual introspectionand management of one’s own learning. From this standpoint, our position on the olddebate over the place of the teacher in the language curriculum clearly favors a learner-centred approach, as alluded to in our earlier definition of learner autonomy.

Surely, this framework poses very practical difficulties. Designingtasks that involve maximal language use is an already familiar challenge for the teacher,but in this new context of raising language awareness, the control of class dynamicsrequires brand new skills. Because developing a capacity for reflection is a very personalprocess, there is a risk that some students might feel isolated by the metalinguisticenterprise, and that teachers themselves might lose sight of the interactive nature ofcommunicative teaching. Consequently, along with the question of how to assist studentperformance (see Gallimore & Tharp, 1990), determining the right proportion ofcommunicative activities and individual focus on language structures becomes a delicatetask of classroom management.

The scheme is ambitious, but feasible. It suffices to consider those recentcommunicative syllabi that have managed to substantially raise student achievement inareas as various as learning strategies (Feyten, Flaitz & LaRocca, 1999), Englishpronunciation (Rajadurai, 2001), or computer-assisted language learning (Schwienhorst,1998).

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5 ConclusionThis paper has proposed several directions for a theory-driven enhancement of languageteaching practices. We have seen how a teacher’s familiarity with models of secondlanguage acquisition could reduce the existing gap between the uses of the term“communicative” by scholars and instructors (cf. Van Patten, 1998), and could thusreassign to this two-decade buzzword its legitimate status of pedagogical principle. Thefocus on strategic aspects of language learning has then shifted our discussion from theissue of learner characteristics to the fundamental question of the dynamics of languagelearning. Finally, we have considered what learners could achieve by thinking activelyabout the formal properties of their target language, at the risk of occasionally distancingthemselves from communicative tasks. By introducing this decontextualized,metalinguistic approach to second language acquisition, we have not only gone a longway from a strictly utilitarian view of language learning, we have also rediscoveredcertain intellectual qualities that an exclusively communicative pedagogy might haveoverlooked: critical reflection, problem solving, and independent action.

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